Categories:
- Dealing with Failure
- Ins and Outs of Entrepreneurship
- Overcoming Challenges
- Personal Success
- Rallying the Team
- Thoughts on Innovation
- Conquering Fear
Thoughts on Innovation
Always make new mistakes.
The first 98% of the engineering design takes 98% of the time. The remaining 2% of the design work takes the other 98% of the time.
I think strategic planning is the antithesis of building a corporation.
A leader is a dealer in hope.
After 35 years, there is not a shred of evidence that stock-based compensation by company officers is correlated with company performance.
We hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.
An expert is [somebody] who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a very narrow field.
Proving it will be a homerun ahead of the swing is impossible! You have to try for a hit first and sometimes it turns into a homerun.
Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.
The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low and achieving our mark.
Complaining is not a strategy.
Make space for the new mistakes.
We were given some great advice early on: Strategy is what you don’t do. Whenever we do anything, we ask ourselves, ‘Is this true to Warby Parker?’
Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted. The trouble is, I don’t know which half.
It is very hard to find any evidence which shows that a focus on maximizing shareholder value actually maximizes shareholder value.
Advertising is art serving capitalism.
Great advertising can make food taste better, can make your car run smoother.
Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.
If I knew what I was going to do next, I wouldn’t do it.
In my next life, I will try to commit more errors.
A joint venture is two parties in the same bed with different dreams.
The four most dangerous words in investing are: This time it’s different.
Teach thy tongue to say: ‘I do not know.’
Creativity without action is merely imagination.
Organizations resist innovation because people are more comfortable with what they know than what they don’t.
Arguing that you don’t care about privacy because you have nothing to hide is like saying you don’t care about full speech because you have nothing to say.
Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice and discipline.
We shall make no progress today.
What got you here won’t get you there.
The beginning of thought is disagreement – not only with others but also with ourselves.
If no one ever took risks, Michaelangelo would have painted the Sistine floor.
There is always a well-known solution to every human problem – neat, plausible, and wrong.
History has shown that incumbents tend to fight trends that challenge established ways and, in the process, lose focus on what matters most: customers. Customers always win.
There are decades when nothing happens and then there are weeks where decades happen.
Expedite the inevitable.
Building a great company is necessary but insufficient for building a great investment.
Failure and invention are inseparable twins. To invent you have to experiment.
A pessimist sees the glass as half empty. An optimist sees the glass as half full. The engineer sees the glass as twice the size it needs to be.
Success is an accident … well placed.
Science is truth found out.
A leader’s job is to have all the questions. You have to be incredibly comfortable looking like the dumbest person in the room.
The future is like a Japanese game show. You have no idea what’s going on.
One never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to be done.
In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true either is true or becomes true.
The four most important words in business are ‘What do you think?’
Innovation is the only insurance against irrelevance; the only guarantee of long-term customer loyalty.
Never mistake a clear view for a short distance.
The only thing worse than a big flop is a small success.
Imagination is a good servant, and a bad master.
If everything is important, then nothing is.
Change before you have to.
Choice is the enemy of decision.
The main thing is keeping the main thing the main thing.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–I took the one less traveled by. And that has made all the difference.
The greater the area of our knowledge, the greater the perimeter of our ignorance.
I made it because I believed I’d make it.
Be ready to revise any system, scrap any method, and abandon any theory, if the success of the job requires it.
History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme.
We’re not funding Mother Teresa. We’re funding imperial, will-to-power people who want to crush their competition.
Advertising cannot sell a poor product. It might induce people to try it once. But it cannot build an enduring business on such a product.
Any data fed to AI is chosen subjectively. Computers do not see the world precisely as it is; they see it within the limits of the data given to them to represent the world. That’s a flaw AI and people have in common.
You don’t give people what they want. You give them what they don’t yet know they want.
Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.
If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.
Looking forward, people need to get comfortable with being uncomfortable.
Face-to-face contact will give you the edge over your competitors every time.
To do a common thing, uncommonly well, brings success.
The impossible missions are the only ones that succeed.
If it doesn’t scare you, you’re probably not dreaming big enough.
When assessing ‘first mover advantage’ remember that mousetraps demonstrate the wisdom of being the second mouse.
Leaders define reality and provide hope.
Investing is about meeting people’s needs.
Purpose is not the sole pursuit of profits, but the animating force for achieving them.
Innovation often originates outside existing organizations, in part because successful organizations acquire a commitment to the status quo and a resistance to ideas that might change it.
Developers will fill the world with empty buildings – if you pay them to do it.
Trying to come up with a great idea is not a great idea. Go for quantity over quality.
Feed the strong, starve the weak. Lead with your strength and avoid protecting the weak – weak brands, weak products and weak people. Know your strengths and lead with them.
Less is more.
Objects have their own world. Making an object means imbuing it with its own spirit.
Facts tell. Stories sell.
No amount of advertising can force any large number of people to buy things they do not want. Advertising can only create a new market for products which fill a genuine – though often unexpressed or latent – consumer want.
Honest criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance – or a stranger.
The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
This way to the egress.
To be persuasive, we must be believable. To be believable, we must be credible. To be credible, we must be truthful.
Fear is an excellent motivator. I find that it really brings out the true ingenuity of a creature.
95% of Initial Coin Offerings give the rest a bad name.
I’m only interested in designing for a certain type of woman. Specifically, one that has money.
Give someone a book, they’ll read if for a day. Teach someone how to write a book and they’ll experience a lifetime of paralyzing self-doubt.
Wonder what your customer really wants? Ask. Don’t tell.
Many angels have seen more deals than they can remember. Some remember more homeruns than they have seen.
More is more.
Wandering is an essential counterbalance to efficiency.
Your results may be worthless or misleading … but at least the data was easy to collect and you got published.
When you’re through changing, you’re through.
There are only two problems in business: 1. Not enough orders. 2. Not enough capacity to ship the orders.
You can fool all the people all of the time – if the advertising is right and the budget is big enough.
A setback is a setup for a comeback.
Purpose is not a mere tagline or marketing campaign, it is a company’s fundamental reason for being.
If all you ever did is all you’ve ever done, then all you ever get is all you’re gonna get.
Purpose motivates employees better than profit. They are proud if they can say, ‘Our company is making the world cleaner, the food healthier.’
There is no reason for any person to have a computer in their home.
Startup companies don’t do better just because you throw more money at them.
Anyone who has ever taken a shower has had a great idea.
The speed of current breakthroughs has no historical precedent. When compared with previous industrial revolutions, the Fourth (broadly, Artificial Intelligence) is evolving at an exponential rather than a linear pace. Moreover, it is disrupting almost every industry in every country. And the breadth and depth of these changes herald the transformation of entire systems of production, management, and governance.
Neatness rejects involvement.
We may be wise, after all, to treat impossibility as something other than an absolute condition. Alone among all the creatures in the world, we can think about fantastical things and, at least some of the time, bring them into being.
Mistakes … the portals of discovery.
Failing is good as long as it doesn’t become a habit.
The cloud is like the Roach Motel. Your data checks in, but it can’t check out.
But that is what fashion is about, when you look at something, and you aren’t sure if you like it or not.
Never rule out that there are economic linkages you don’t understand.
What is not possible is not to choose.
A man with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.
Corporations don’t have morals.
Our mission is to delight people who appreciate quality of life.
An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man.
The most dangerous phrase in the language is ‘We’ve always done it this way.’
The amount of money start-ups raise in their seed and Series A rounds is inversely correlated with success. Yes, I mean that. Less money raised leads to more success.
No matter what cohort you think you are part of, there is always a bell-shaped curve.
Deliberately obsolete your product. Do this by raising expectations for the category and ‘reinventing’ your brand in the eyes of the consumer. Nothing puts more pressure on a competitor.
Smart MFs sound like Crazy MFs to Dumb MFs.
Creativity is the sudden cessation of stupidity.
Nobody cares about your product, service or solution. All they care about is the difference you can make for their organization.
If you don’t know where you’re going, any road’ll take you there.
Whatever people … do not understand, they are always prepared to dislike.
The most serious mistakes are not being made as a result of wrong answers. The truly dangerous thing is asking the wrong questions.
Many things are improbable, only a few are impossible.
If you try to do some big thing, you don’t just need it to be big: you need it to be good. And it’s really hard to do big and good simultaneously.
The less money you need, the harder it is to run out.
Be a skeptic but never a cynic.
For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
The business of America, it turns out, is not business. It’s monetizing what is in our heads.
Price is what you pay, value is what you get.
It’s so much easier to suggest solutions when you don’t know too much about the problem.
It’s not the note you play that’s the wrong note – it’s the note you play afterwards that makes it right or wrong.
Even a correct decision is wrong when it was taken too late.
Even if the situation or challenge is very complex, usually the simplest solution is the one to go with.
The universe is under no obligation to make sense to you.
There is no limit to what a man can do or where he can go if he doesn’t mind who gets the credit.
People have anxiety about ambiguity.
Discovery is the process of simultaneously seeing things that everyone sees and thinking things that no one has thought.
Sleep on your big decisions and then be decisive.
If you don’t have a solution to match the scale of the problem, you have a hobby.
Is anything more un-American than an empty shelf?
I hate any advertisement that pretends to know me. You’re not my friend. You’re a company.
The meek shall inherit the earth – but not its mineral rights.
Invention requires a long-term willingness to be misunderstood.
If you’ve gotten to the point where you are thinking it might be time to think about replacing the founder, its past time to replace the founder.
For nothing is hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed that will not be known or brought out into the open.
When the rate of change outside exceeds the rate of change inside, the end is in sight.
If you’re the smartest guy in the room, find another room.
Seek first to understand, then to be understood.
Think like an entrepreneur. Create like an innovator. Perform like a teammate.
Whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting over.
A recent study found that intense tedium is a major contributing factor in the desire for an early death. I just made that up. But I’ll be we could pay for research that would find that.
Done is better than perfect.
People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
A business exists to create a customer.
What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others lives on.
The best innovation comes from technology which reduces the time between intention and action.
In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded.
Continuous effort – not strength or intelligence – is the key to unlocking our potential.
If you build a better mousetrap, you will catch better mice.
An entrepreneur is someone who shoots an arrow and then runs to move the target, so the arrow hits it.
Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.
Much good work is lost for the lack of a little more.
Try to become not a [person] of success, but try rather to become a [person] of value.
Content is king but context is the kingdom.
A principle isn’t worth anything if it doesn’t cost you.
If the shoe fits, you probably didn’t buy it online.
We’re all born different, that’s what we got in common.
I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full victory!
On ne règne sur les âmes que par le calme. (One leads by calm.)
Humility is the most underrated aspect of being an entrepreneur. Once your head gets too big, you’re cooked.
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
Failing to plan, is planning to fail.
The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything.
If I’m the smartest guy in the room, I’m in the wrong room.
I look for businesses in which I think I can predict what they’re going to look like in ten to fifteen years’ time.
If you have no idea how something is supposed to be done, I guarantee you’ll be disruptive. Let what you don’t know become your greatest asset.
I not only use all the brains I have, but all I can borrow.
The power of compound interest is the 8th wonder of the world.
If you don’t listen to your customers, someone else will.
A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.
Solving big problems is easier than solving little problems.
More startups die of indigestion than starvation.
I never know how much of what I say is true.
If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.
No nationwas ever ruined by trade.
Entrepreneurship exists in the tiny space between madness and genius; and, its journey requires a few cross border violations across both madness and genius to get to the final destination.
Better salesperson always beats better product.
The first step in exceeding your customer’s expectations is to know those expectations.
There is nothing so depressing as boundless optimism.
History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.
Elon cares a lot about humanity, but he doesn’t really care about individual people all that much.
In economics, things take longer to happen than you think they will, and then happen faster than you thought they could.
Mediocre people are always at their best.
640 [kilobytes] ought to be enough for anyone.
When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
You can’t innovate once.
Success is easy if you think of it like rust: It’s inevitable if you keep at it.
It’s not necessary to do extraordinary things to get extraordinary results.
Done equals good.
The future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed.
One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.
You can’t make a good deal with a bad person.
It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.
Terrible is the temptation to do good!
Our company is guided by three deeply held beliefs: That brands with purpose grow, companies with purpose last and people with purpose thrive.
If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go long, go together.
Make no little plans.
To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.
I never read. I just look at pictures.
A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.
You’ll see it when you believe it.
The greatest discoveries in nanotech have been 20 years away for 20 years.
I never had an idea in my life. I’ve got no imagination. I never dream. My so-called inventions already existed in the environment – I took them out.
It’s not a good strategy until it costs you something to pursue.
I’m sure that you’re trying to challenge yourself to invent something new. That’s impossible.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
The public wants what it can’t get.
Nothing new ever happened before.
Prediction is difficult, especially about the future.
There’s only one boss: the customer. He can fire everybody from the chairman on down simply by spending his money elsewhere.
The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
I just invent, then wait until man comes around to needing what I’ve invented.
One can learn to cook, but a restaurateur is born.
They say the secret of success is being at the right place at the right time, but since you never know when the right time is going to be, I figure the trick is to find the right place and just hang around.
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
The world needs dreamers and the world needs doers. But above all, the world needs dreamers who do.
Innovation is seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.
If I can’t make money in the $5 trillion U.S. market, it may be a little bit of wishful thinking to think that all I have to do is get a few thousand miles offshore and I’ll start showing my stuff.
Anytime anybody says, ‘It’s good enough,’ it’s shitty.
Even if you are on the right track, the train will run you over if you just sit there.
Don’t overuse exclamation marks!!!
Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.
Focus wins. Doing too many things fails.
Outstanding leaders go out of their way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves it’s amazing what they can accomplish.
Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.
You have undertaken to cheat me. I won’t sue you, for the law is too slow. I will ruin you.
Customers don’t want 1/4 drills, they want 1/4 holes.
There is nothing like writing to force you to think and get your thoughts straight.
Typos in your presentation tell your investors how carefully you plan to manage their money.
Your job is to make people care about your obsessions.
Nothing is easy. If you want to do nothing, that’s easy.
I don’t want the revenue; I just want the profit.
A financier is a pawnbroker with imagination.
If you watch entrepreneurs long enough, you observe that innovation is typically a ground game, not a Hail Mary pass.
Good enough never is.
It’s hard to teach a young dog old tricks.
You can’t really run the company by pissing off the scientists who do the work.
At the opening of the Hoover Dam, a beaver told a rabbit: ‘Well, I didn’t build it. But it’s based on my idea.
As our circle of knowledge expands, so does the circumference of darkness surrounding it.
They tried to be too clever, and that was their undoing.
Strategy – is figuring out what is the most important thing for your company and deciding to focus on it and say no to everything else.