With Facebook's IPO, the world learned a new way of organizing businesses around one overriding imperative: to ship new products quickly.
Many of the libertarian entrepreneurs who only want the government to leave them alone have simply forgotten how important government research, public education, and immigration policy are to Silicon Valley's long-term success.
Funny money has always been the reason housing prices have risen too fast. First, it was liar loans and negative-amortizing mortgages, where the total amount you owed increased rather than decreased every month. We all know how that ended, with the global financial crisis of 2008.
Almost nothing can make you more miserable than when your company is struggling, and only then do you realize that this is exactly when it's almost impossible for a CEO to quit.
I do think entrepreneurs need to be smart, but there's another scale I never evaluated myself on that is now the source of my deepest strength: Not how much brains I have, but how much love I have.
To build a great business, you have to do something hard just to be able to withstand all the competition that will later come your way.
I wish I was as annotative as Elon Musk.
Folks are leaving Silicon Valley, mostly because they can't afford to stay.
Every firing happens differently except in this one respect: the person being fired can't believe how fast it happens.
People can smell a lack of respect from a mile away.
I wish I was as smart as Jeff Bezos. He's just a large-brained space alien.
Once you become more like Madison Avenue, you become acutely sensitive to what's going to annoy your clients.
Steve Jobs knows how to hold his hand out, to build beautiful products and make people pay for them.
I'm an identical twin, and I felt that with my twin brother, we sort of formed this unassailable force, and it gave me the confidence to be different. Even if I was a goofball, my twin brother was a goofball with me, so I didn't have to worry about fitting in as much. I was able to march to my own drummer.
The tech industry's love for scrappy, accessible founders adds to the pressure. You're expected to lead by example, to roll up your sleeves, to know everything going on.
I think the corporate world is pretty starved for personality. The reason you have comic strips like 'Dilbert' and sitcoms like 'The Office' is that people just can't be genuine human beings in a corporate environment. So if you can really be your own self, even if it's a little bit different, I think people are really drawn to that.
As a captain of industry, I would prefer more tax breaks to help people buy houses, but as a citizen, I realize someone has to pay.
I just don't like bullies. Especially hypocritical bullies.
If you actually believe in free speech and not simply the free distribution of other people's intellectual property, you should let journalists, law firms, and investors exercise their rights to it alongside your own.
So many tech companies have embraced a mission that they say is larger than profits. Once you wrap yourself up in a moral flag, you have to carry it to the top of other hills.
