Actually, I'm amazed at how certain games correlate with startups and business.<p>Has anyone ever played Natural Selection? You basically work with a team of 12 marines vs. 12 aliens. One marine is commander, and he must make sure resource towers are built and defended from aliens. On top of that, marines must defend their base and actively be out preventing the aliens from building new hives (as well as destroying existing hives).<p>The purpose of the game is to hold the most resource towers. But you also want to be with a really good team of marines, which means you don't have to micromanage "Player X, go build the resource tower in Location Y. NOW!" They naturally go to the locations and ask for you to drop a resource tower.<p>Aliens get special abilities based on how many kills they make. You find that highly specialized aliens are very destructive (so hire that dude who is REALLY good at Objective-C for doing iPhone development).<p>> Building and keeping resource towers == making sure you have enough funding at all times, cash flow is the name of the game<p>> Getting with the best team of aliens/marines == hire the best people that you can, it means zero micro-managing<p>> Your team could be terrible, your commander could be the best, but you'll still lose the game == even if Steve Jobs were in charge of a company with 100% bad employees, the company would fail<p>> Specializing when you can == you're a very difficult fire to put out, and when it comes to competing, you're unstoppable<p>> Keeping team morale high gets player cooperation == don't be a prick, your team doesn't like working for that type of person and won't follow orders when the time comes<p>> Allowing the enemy time to build up is dangerous, always be on the offense == always be pushing faster and sooner than your competitors<p>> One marine camper with a phase gate can take down your entire alien team == corporate espionage is a bitch, Steve Jobs isn't paranoid after all<p>> If you can't get your team to all jump through a phase gate and rush an alien hive at once, you're done for == team cooperation with focus is really good<p>I sometimes feel like I'm playing a game of natural selection while I'm working in a startup or on a project. It's weird, I know. Ok everyone downvote me now.
Tony Hsieh is awesome. I can't wait to read this book. Zappos is a company to be looked up to.<p>If all companies were this fanatical about customer service, the world would be a much better place.
"The guy who never loses a hand is not the guy who makes the most money in the long run."<p>If you never lost a hand then you would be the guy who makes the most money in the long run. Everyone else would lose.
Well that's done it!<p>I think that poker is definitely a good training for many things, but personally feel it is most relevant for investing.
The possible universe of outcomes becomes massive when you get into the area of running a business compared with the set of poker outcomes.<p>I wrote an "ebook" two years ago about how to learn investing through the medium of online Texas Holdem poker.
I didn't release it at the time because of all the controversy about online gambling and US laws.
But now I think it's time has come.
I might have saved some people some money if I had have released it back then before the boom started busting.
The method is called Texas Holdem Investing.
And seeing that this guy will release a book of a similar type I might as well join the party.<p>Wish me luck!