that.
It is worth it sometimes, if you can do it, to reach for the stars. Microsoft
didn’t reach for the stars. Microsoft was step by step by step to where they got,
and it was profitable all the way to it. So that’s the traditional way of doing it.
The Google, Netscape way, those things, sometimes it works, and sometimes—
usually—it doesn’t. But sometimes it does, and the payoffs are incredible. But,
if you’re a business person who wants your business to succeed, as a business,
because you like that business, you take a different view. So the risk profiles are
different.
A lot of people make money because they’re very good at timing. We were
close. If we hadn’t been sued, I would have done pretty well financially, because
Bob and I owned most of the company at the time. And we would have had an
interesting next step, going into what was probably the leading online business
at the time. Maybe it would have ended up into the Internet or something, or it
would have made the jump better. Who knows? But it didn’t happen.
Livingston: Do you have any regrets? That one was out of your hands.
Bricklin: Yeah, it was out of our hands. If we had been able to settle in advance,
the thing would have closed, and we would have made a lot of money, and we’d
have a bigger house, and whatever. But, you know, as I always tell people, here
it is, 25 years later, and you’re still interviewing me. There’s fame and fortune. I
didn’t get much fortune out of it, but, on the other hand, the fame has basically
given me a meal ticket ever since, and I learned a lot from it, and the rest of my
life has been pretty good. All in all, I can’t complain. I did a lot better than I
ever expected to, in all sorts of ways. So there are no regrets about that. I mean,
each thing, you think, “Well, if I had put this feature in, it would have been
better.”
Livingston: Do you remember any disagreements that you and Bob had?
Bricklin: Oh, we had lots of disagreements, all the time. People always thought
the company was going to die, because we’d yell at each other on all sorts of
issues. It was usually over technical stuff. Bob’s much more aggressive in many
ways than I am, and I’m much more conservative. So we’re very complementary.
While I’m disorganized, he’s more disorganized, in certain things, so he
depends on me for the drive to get things to completion. On the other hand, I
depend on him for some of the reaching for the stars.
So we were very complementary, but that’s tough. It’s like having old married