Success Quote by Trip Hawkins

Trip Hawkins isn’t selling a product here so much as he’s selling inevitability. The halting, conversational phrasing - “we also think,” “quite alot more” - reads like an executive mid-pitch, trying to sound measured while quietly declaring victory. It’s a classic Silicon Valley move before Silicon Valley became a cliché: wrap ambition in an almost modest hedge, then let the superlative do the muscle work. “Any new format has ever had” isn’t just confidence; it’s an attempt to rewrite the baseline of what success should look like.

The intent is strategic reassurance. New formats die all the time, and everyone in the room knows it. By foregrounding “support,” Hawkins shifts the conversation away from technical merit (which can be debated) to coalition-building (which sounds like destiny). Support implies partners, distribution, retailers, developers - an ecosystem. The subtext: this isn’t a gadget; it’s a platform, and platforms win by recruiting believers early enough that doubt becomes expensive.

Contextually, Hawkins’ career sits at the hinge-point where entertainment began to look like software and software began to look like a cultural industry. In that world, “format” is a power word: it suggests standards, lock-in, and the right to define what counts as normal. The quote’s quiet flex is that it treats adoption as a foregone conclusion, as if the market’s job is simply to catch up to the network he claims is already forming.