We knew that Lyft was going to raise a ton of money. And we are going [to their investors], Just so you know, we’re going to be fund-raising after this, so before you decide whether you want to invest in them, just make sure you know that we are going to be fund-raising immediately after.
- Travis Kalanick
Notable Quotables
-Gardens, not buildings–Great projects start out feeling like buildings. There are architects, materials, staff, rigid timelines, permits, engineers, a structure.It works or it doesn’t.Build something that doesn’t fall down. On time.But in fact, great projects, like great careers and relationships that last, are gardens. They are tended, they shift, they grow. They endure over time, gaining a personality and reflecting their environment. When something dies or fades away, we prune, replant and grow again.Perfection and polish aren’t nearly as important as good light, good drainage and a passionate gardener.By all means, build. But don’t finish. Don’t walk away.Here we grow.
- Seth Godin
The first Apple was just a culmination of my whole life.
- Steve Wozniak
I want to change history, do something important in my life, and influence individuals like we have with millions of small businesses on Alibaba. Then they love and respect you because you made their life important.
- Jack Ma
The time will never be just right, you must act now.
- Napoleon Hill
There are two ways to grow: by stealing from the competition or by growing the market. The first path is slow and painful and difficult. The second path is where the magic of fast growth kicks in.
- Seth Godin
I am very lucky that I have talented and creative people around me. Also, mediation has been a very big part of my freedom, because it allows me to watch all the things going on and allows me to focus.
- Russell Simmons
Social networks do best when they tap into one of the seven deadly sins. Facebook is ego. Zynga is sloth. LinkedIn is greed.
- Reid Hoffman
Nobody spends any money on smallpox unless they worry about a bio-terrorist recreating it.
- Bill Gates
E – Executions, how to get things done
- Jack Welch
I was not an easy student, and I had to apply myself diligently to prepare my lessons, said Rockefeller, who described himself accurately as reliable but not brilliant.
- John D. Rockefeller
Definite planning even went beyond the surface of this planet: NASA’s Apollo Program began in 1961 and put 12 men on the moon before it finished in 1972.
- Peter Thiel
For any Silicon Valley company, the most important thing is the company. And any great founders need to get out of the way of the company. We presented a spark with an idea.
- Jack Dorsey
We thought this [downturn] would last for two quarters, … Now we are saying that it will last for at least – at least ? three quarters.
- John Chambers
We have an average household net worth of $3.7 million. Of course, some of our cohorts have accumulated much more. Nearly 6 percent have a net worth of over $10 million. Again, these people skew our average upward. The typical (median, or 50th percentile) millionaire household has a net worth of $1.6 million.
- Thomas J Stanley
Backed by our conviction, we remain committed to investing wholeheartedly to improve the people’s living conditions, regardless of all uncertainties.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Everything important to us—the universe, the planet, the country, your company, your life, and this very moment—is singular.
- Peter Thiel
I think there are more politicians in favor of electric cars than against. There are still some that are against, and I think the reasoning for that varies depending on the person, but in some cases, they just don’t believe in climate change – they think oil will last forever.
- Elon Musk
I think a big test we all face in life on a regular basis is that discouragement test. Life’s not always fair, but I believe if you keep doing the right thing, God will get you to where you are.
- Joel Olsteen
I’m a little unusual: I’m a six-person-or-less extrovert.
- Reid Hoffman
MAY 31 The Power of Your Words Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit. PROVERBS 18:21 NASB OUR WORDS have tremendous power and are similar to seeds. By speaking them aloud, they are planted in our subconscious minds, take root, grow, and produce fruit of the same kind. Whether we speak positive or negative words, we will reap exactly what we sow. That’s why we need to be extremely careful what we think and say. The Bible compares the tongue to the small rudder of a huge ship, which controls the ship’s direction (see James 3:4). Similarly, your tongue will control the direction of your life. You create an environment for either good or evil with your words, and if you’re always murmuring, complaining, and talking about how bad life is treating you, you’re going to live in a pretty miserable world. Use your words to change your negative situations and fill them with life.
- Joel Olsteen
That’s the hard thing about hard things—there is no formula for dealing with them.
- Ben Horowitz
Security guys break the Mac every single day. Every single day, they come out with a total exploit; your machine can be taken over totally.
- Bill Gates
Google’s not a real company. It’s a house of cards.
- Steve Ballmer
You may think you’re getting the short end of the stick, but when it’s all said and done, God will make sure that you don’t lose anything truly valuable. Moreover, He’ll make sure you get your just reward. Your responsibility is to remain calm and peaceable even when those around you are not.
- Joel Olsteen
A lack of realism in the vision today costs credibility tomorrow.
- John C. Maxwell
Even god doesn’t propose to judge a man till his last days, why should you and I?
- Dale Carnegie
To find the right things, we’ll need to go to the garden.
- Timothy Ferriss
You only have to succeed the last time.
- Phil Knight
Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities – but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world.
- Winston Churchill
Big companies have trouble with innovation. Innovation is about bad ideas, or ideas that look like bad ideas. That’s the fundamental thing.
- Ben Horowitz
The tool that’s most associated with the recent progress against malaria is the long-lasting bed net. Bed nets are a fantastic innovation. But we can do even better. We can invent new ways to control the mosquitoes that carry the malaria parasite.
- Bill Gates
Do you remember the things you were worrying about a year ago? How did they work out? Didn’t you waste a lot of fruitless energy on account of most of them? Didn’t most of them turn out all right after all?
- Dale Carnegie
My first company, Pure Software, was exciting and innovative in the first few years and bureaucratic and painful in the last few before it got acquired. The problem was we tried to systemize everything and set up perfect procedures.
- Reed Hastings
Wal-Mart became Wal-Mart by ordinary people joined together to accomplish extraordinary things.
- Sam Walton
You can make a positive out of the most negative if you work at it hard enough.
- Sam Walton
Don’t fight change; embrace it, and you will step into the fullness of what God has in store.
- Joel Olsteen
Who decides what’s in Windows? The customers who buy it.
- Bill Gates
Start believing today that things are going to change for the better. Your best days are still out in front of you.
- Joel Olsteen
People work better when they know what the goal is and why. It is important that people look forward to coming to work in the morning and enjoy working.
- Elon Musk
They said it was only a ground shark, but I was not wholly reassured. It is as bad to be eaten by a ground shark as by any other.
- Winston Churchill
Artists don’t think outside the box, because outside the box there’s a vacumm. Outside the box there are no rules, there is no reality. You have nothing to interact with, nothing to work against. If you set out to do something way outside the box (designing a time machine, or using liquid nitrogen to freeze Niagara Falls), then you’ll never be able to do the real work of art. You can’t ship if you’re far outside the box. Artists think along the edges of the box, because that’s where things get done. That’s where the audience is, that’s where the means of production are available, and that’s where you can make impact.
- Seth Godin
Where does the family start? It starts with a young man falling in love with a girl – no superior alternative has yet been found.
- Winston Churchill
I think it is possible for ordinary people to choose to be extraordinary.
- Elon Musk
And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
- Anais Nin
Success is about being where we are supposed to be and doing what we need to be doing.
- David Robinson
We’ve got to lift our game tremendously. We’ll sell our business news and information in print, we’ll sell it to anyone who’s got a cable system, and we’ll sell it on the Web.
- Rupert Murdoch
If you don’t love what you’re doing with unbridled passion and enthusiasm, you’re not going to succeed when you hit obstacles.
- Howard Schultz
It is a mistake to hire huge numbers of people to get a complicated job done. Numbers will never compensate for talent in getting the right answer (two people who don’t know something are no better than one), will tend to slow down progress, and will make the task incredibly expensive.
- Elon Musk
There’s no point in… just giving them money
- Lee Shau Kee
An enterprise shall help the people overcome all difficulties to savor the fruit to be borne on the motherland, come rain or shine.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Profit in business comes from repeat customers; customers that boast about your product and service, and that bring friends with them.
- W. Clement Stone
To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day.
- Winston Churchill
There is far more opportunity than there is ability.
- Thomas Edison
I always try to acknowledge what someone’s done well before talking about what could be done better. – David Novak CEO OF Yum! Brands
- David Novak
about 15 percent of one’s financial success is due to one’s technical knowledge and about 85 percent is due to skill in human engineering—to personality and the ability to lead people.
- Dale Carnegie
If you learn a profession well and work hard, your future is secure and you will inevitably rise to the top, drive a fast car, and find beautiful people of the opposite sex pursuing you relentlessly. Like so many romantic promises, this is an illusion. What your parents and professors don’t tell you is that the closer you get to the top, the better you must know how to sell because everyone at the top sells better. If you are going to the top of your profession you must sell well, too.
- Jerry Vass
You never achieve success unless you like what you are doing.
- Dale Carnegie
I try to build a full personality for each of our cartoon characters – to make them personalities.
- Walt Disney
The people who are the best in the world specialize at getting really good at the questions they don’t know.
- Seth Godin
In American math classes, we teach a lot of concepts poorly over many years. In the Asian systems they teach you very few concepts very well over a few years.
- Bill Gates
No company should depend on one person no matter how that person is smart or genius, whether it’s Apple or News Corp, or Citibank or any other company in the world.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
Positional leaders ignore the fact that every person has hopes, dreams, desires, and goals of his own. And leaders must bring their vision and the aspirations of the people they lead together in a way that benefits everyone.”
- John C. Maxwell
Part of company culture is path-dependent – it’s the lessons you learn along the way.
- Jeff Bezos
It’s difficult for any single company to develop all the applications and services.
- Ma Huateng
When I was little, I wanted to be an astronomer, but that didn’t happen.
- Ma Huateng
We’re absolutely going to have a better facility.
- Ed Clark
When I am abroad, I always make it a rule never to criticize or attack the government of my own country. I make up for lost time when I come home.
- Winston Churchill
Another hero was Tom Swift, in the books. What he stood for, the freedom, the scientific knowledge and being and engineer gave him the ability to invent solutions to problems. He’s always been a hero to me. I buy old Tom Swift books now and read them to my own children.
- Steve Wozniak
[On the first twitter tweet] The first tweet that was actually written by a human was by me and it was inviting co-workers.
- Jack Dorsey
It partly depends on the currency regimes in place in the country.
- John Chambers
The customer reaction to Dell going private has been a lot more positive than I would have ever imagined. Customers see it as – ‘You don’t have to be distracted. Now you can totally focus on your business.’ So they see it as a positive.
- Michael Dell
When you come in to court as a plaintiff or as a defendant, it is terribly important that you look up at the bench and feel that that person represents you and will understand you, that that person is reflective of our community and of our society.
- Michael Bloomberg
The husband and wife who open another delicatessen store or another Mexican restaurant in the American suburb surely take a risk. But are they entrepreneurs? All they do is what has been done many times before. They gamble on the increasing popularity of eating out in their area, but create neither a new satisfaction nor new consumer demand. Seen under this perspective they are surely not entrepreneurs even though theirs is a new venture. McDonald’s, however, was entrepreneurship. It did not invent anything, to be sure. Its final product was what any decent American restaurant had produced years ago. But by applying management concepts and management techniques (asking, What is “value” to the customer?), standardizing the “product,” designing process and tools, and by basing training on the analysis of the work to be done and then setting the standards it required, McDonald’s both drastically upgraded the yield from resources, and created a new market and a new customer. This is entrepreneurship.
- Peter Drucker
How has being realistic” or responsible” kept you from the life you want? How has doing what you should” resulted in subpar experiences or regret for not having done something else?
- Timothy Ferriss
I think that people just have this core desire to express who they are. And I think that’s always existed.
- Mark Zuckerberg
Make a point to continually search for a better way of doing things, even when things are going well, to ensure that a better alternative has not been overlooked and to keep your creative talents in practice.
- John C. Maxwell
Keep the big picture in mind. There are always opportunities and possibilities, and thinking too small can negate a lot of them.
- Donald Trump
Don’t count the things you do. Do the things that count.
- Zig Ziglar
On an opponent:”He loves the working man. He loves to see him work.
- Winston Churchill
most cold calls didn’t get to the intended person for one reason: gatekeepers. If I simply made all my calls from 8:00–8:30 A.M. and 6:00–6:30 P.M., for a total of one hour, I was able to avoid secretaries and book more than twice as many meetings.
- Timothy Ferriss
I still get up fairly early around six, but I work out for an hour every morning, I read often while excercising and give myself some private team. I’ll speak with administrative my administrative assistant, Donna Hughes, who is an organizational genus on the way into the office and go through the day, so by the time I get to the office around 8:30 or 9:00 I can hit the ground running…In both my workday and my life, what I try to achieve is balance.
- David Novak
It will change the way we work, live, play and learn.
- John Chambers
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
If anyone has a vested interest in space solar power, it would have to be me.
- Elon Musk
It sounds awful, but a crisis rarely ends without blood on the floor. That’s not easy or pleasant. But sadly, it is often necessary so the company can move forward again.
- Jack Welch
I’ve always been very happy. I’ve always been easy going and I’ve always been very encouraging, it’s just my personality.
- Joel Olsteen
I will not lose, for even in defeat, there’s a valuable lesson learned so it evens up for me.
- Jay-Z
A girl child who is even a little bit educated is more conscious of family planning, health care and, in turn, her children’s own education.
- Azim Premji
I love people, and the hustle.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Fear itself is quite fear-inducing. Most intelligent people in the world dress it up as something else: optimistic denial.
- Timothy Ferriss
We know more about the physics of faraway stars than we know about human nutrition.
- Peter Thiel
Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
They are, therefore, not overly impressed by speed in decision-making. Rather they consider virtuosity in manipulating a great many variables a symptom of sloppy thinking. They want to know what the decision is all about and what the underlying realities are which it has to satisfy. They want impact rather than technique, they want to be sound rather than clever.
- Peter Drucker
I don’t want anybody to not recognize how appreciative I am of the volume of e-mails I get.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
The sudden attacks on the United States of America brought about adverse effects on the global economy in the short term. However, Mainland China has until now been able to maintain its economic growth on a steady course.
- Lee Shau Kee
One ought never to turn one’s back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half. Never run away from anything. Never!
- Winston Churchill
An organization’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.
- Jack Welch
To be Jedi is to face the truth, and choose. Give off light, or darkness, Padawan. Be a candle, or the night.
- Yoda
I think Yahoo is a great company, with great assets.
- Jack Ma
