If everyone played it safe, we wouldn’t get anywhere.
Spreadsheets are fiction. Believing in what you’re doing and what you’re building is what’s important.
Oil replacements and then efficiencies in engines and housing and the way we build houses is a very interesting market.
Entrepreneurs have the flexibility and the ability to do things that large companies simply cannot. Could a large company pull off a trick like Amyris, going from anti-malaria medicine to next-generation fuel?
Is it 10 years, 20, 50 before we reach that tipping point where climate change becomes irreversible? Nobody can know. There’s clearly a probability distribution. We need to ensure this planet, and we need to do it quickly.
Startups allow technologists and scientists to take risks and change plans in a way that would be frowned upon in a big company. Having said that, big companies will play a key role in certain areas and in partnerships with little companies. Each has its strengths.
The first rule of venture capitalism is hands-on experience. You have to get your hands dirty.
Imagine the world of mobile based on Nokia and Motorola if Apple had not been restarted by a missionary entrepreneur named Steve Jobs who cared more for his vision than being tactical and financial.
I’m not a political person. I’m a techie nerd, and I enjoy the techie part. I mean, all my life, I’ve loved great technology.
Religion asks you to believe things without questioning, and technology and science always encourage you to ask hard questions and why it is important in science and technology. So I was always interested in science and technology.
Seeking an acquisition from the start is more than just bad advice for an entrepreneur. For the entrepreneur it leads to short term tactical decisions rather than company-building decisions and in my view often reduces the probability of success.
Certain food-based biofuels like biodiesel have always been a bad idea. Others like corn ethanol have served a useful purpose and essentially are obsoleting themselves.
I don’t mind the low probability of success, but it better be impactful if we do succeed.
Big data will replace the need for 80% of all doctors.
The right way to build a company is to experiment in lots of small ways, so that you have plenty of room to make mistakes and change strategies.
There are parts of the country in America, in the Midwest, where wind is a big resource, and we should absolutely use it. But to try and apply it nationally doesn’t make sense. There are technologies that will work that are appropriate to certain regions.
Future is not extrapolation of past.
I’ve probably failed more often than anybody else in Silicon Valley. Those don’t matter. I don’t remember the failures. You remember the big successes.
I’m a fiscal hawk. I vote against all taxes, but I do believe the environment, and climate change, is a bigger issue than fiscal deficits are as a risk to the nation.
Communication always changes society, and society was always organized around communication channels. Two hundred years ago it was mostly rivers. It was sea-lanes and mountain passes. The Internet is another form of communication and commerce. And society organizes around the channels.