Rubin was giving the closing keynote at this week's Vator Splash in Oakland – his backyard, he told us. "I turned down South by Southwest, but Oakland? Yes to Oakland."
The picture of the kettle is to illustrate an interesting but fundamentally flawed idea: that we have the desire to test out things and keep an open mind beaten out of us as we grow up. Your mom always tells you not to touch the kettle because it will be hot. But as a kid, you touch it anyway, just to be sure.
The analogy kinda breaks down there. If being an entrepreneur was about ignoring good advice, you wouldn't go far, and there would be a lot of people with burnt fingers. The main drive of Rubin's talk took a similar line between making you think, and hoping you didn't think too much.
