Insights from Philip Su

Philip Su has an excellent post of insights based on his time at Microsoft as he departs for Facebook.  He makes many good points, but my favorites are:

Good ideas are a dime a dozen.  Great ideas are usually laughed at.  Neither sees the light of day without you taking action.  Do the work to prove your idea, or stop talking about it.  In an entrepreneurship class in college, I pitched the idea of an online grocery delivery service and got laughed off stage.  Hurt, but convinced of my great genius, I returned the following week to pitch the idea of online movie rentals using the postal service.  I called it NetVideo.  Everyone thought it was absurd.  I used to tell this story to bolster what I thought was my streak of unrecognized, prognosticating technical genius.  These days, I tell the story to remind myself that in the end, only action and execution matter.

and

Above all else:  Integrity.  You must be able to trust who you work with and for.  Theodore Roosevelt once fired a rancher who stole some neighboring cattle and added them to Roosevelt’s herd.  When asked about this by incredulous friends, Roosevelt simply replied, “A man who steals for me will also steal from me.”