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Hot Seat
book

Hot Seat

by Dan Shapiro
May 2015
Intermediate to advanced content levelIntermediate to advanced
322 pages
7h 26m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from Hot Seat

Chapter 46. Sparkbuy’s Story

Deals are like toddlers. Their natural inclination is to fall apart. Only careful tending, deliberate attention (or strategic inattention), and a large measure of luck can prevent a meltdown. And even then it happens more often than not.

Google Discovers Sparkbuy

I hate talking to people on airplanes.

I’m not a natural misanthrope. Under normal circumstances I enjoy talking to people. I love social events with friends. I don’t care for the forced mixing of “networking events,” but I have become accustomed to them. But airplanes... all I want to do is sink down in a seat and thumb some dead trees; maybe pay too much for WiFi and plunk my way toward inbox zero. I never talk to people on planes.

With two exceptions.

First, if I’m flying to and from the Valley. Second, if I catch a lucky upgrade to first class.

So it was with a heavy heart that I realized, as I slouched into the oversized leatheresque chair in Seat 7F in the first-class cabin of Alaska Air Flight 327 nonstop from San Jose to Seattle-Tacoma, that I had a conversation ahead of me.

My seatmate saved me the trouble of making the first move. I pulled out my phone and went through the press-and-hold ritual to set it in airplane mode, then shut it down.

“Is that a Nexus One?” he asked.

It was indeed a Nexus One, a svelte and sturdy phone that marked Google’s first experiment with radical carrier disintermediation. It was a brave experiment, but they didn’t sell a lot of phones.

“Yeah, have you ...

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9781449360801Errata Page