University administrators are the equivalent of subprime mortgage brokers selling you a story that you should go into debt massively, that it’s not a consumption decision, it’s an investment decision. Actually, no, it’s a bad consumption decision. Most colleges are four-year parties.
We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters.
All Rhodes Scholars had a great future in their past.
We need more pessimism that the future might be a lot worse, and we need more optimism that the future might be better.
If you think about basic science or coming up with new theories of mathematics, these are not the kinds of things which are necessarily a well-defined market to pay people.
If people were super-optimistic about technology there would be no reason to be pessimistic about the future.
I do tend to think that things that have incredibly long time horizons often do involve market failures.
Rivalry causes us to overemphasize old opportunities and slavishly copy what has worked in the past.
The idea of becoming an entrepreneur is something that is not taught very well in school and is something that people should try to do earlier on.
Every tech story is different. Every moment in history happens only once. All successful companies are successful in their own unique way. It’s your task to figure out what that future history will be.
Every business is successful exactly to the extent that it does something others cannot.
Forget startup companies. The next frontier is startup countries.
Today’s ‘best practices’ lead to dead ends; the best paths are new and untried.
Recruiting is a core competency for any company. It should never be outsourced.
In a world where wealth is growing, you can get away with printing money. Doubling the debt over the next 20 years is not a problem.
If they don’t go to law school, bright college graduates head to Wall Street precisely because they have no real plan for their careers.
I think in my twenties I tended to think of all people as sort of more or less alike. In now think that people are really different in all these subtle ways that are very important.
Whatever the career, sales ability distinguishes superstars from also-rans.
There’s a wide range of sales ability: there are many gradations between novices, experts, and masters. There are even sales grandmasters. If you don’t know any grandmasters, it’s not because you haven’t encountered them, but rather because their art is hidden in plain sight.
Competition is overrated. In practice it is quite destructive and should be avoided wherever possible. Much better than fighting for scraps in existing markets is to create and own new ones.