Grow With the Flow

Ross made the latter point with an anecdote about how the Pony Express spent time and money in the mid-19th century developing a network of horsemen who could deliver messages from Missouri to California in a matter of days.

“For a while, it was the hottest prospect — the Google of its time,” Ross says. “What the people at Pony Express didn’t notice were these very boring guys with the big wooden poles and the wires moving along behind them. Then the New York City-to-San Francisco telegraph went live, and Pony Express went bust. They were completely blindsided.”