Three rules for a career: Don’t sell anything you wouldn’t buy yourself. Don’t work for anyone you don’t respect and admire. Work only with people you enjoy.
I believe in the discipline of mastering the best that other people have ever figured out. I don’t believe in just sitting down and trying to dream it all up yourself. Nobody’s that smart.
Remember that reputation and integrity are your most valuable assets – and can be lost in a heartbeat.
If you’re trying to create a company, it’s like baking a cake. You have to have all the ingredients in the right proportion.
Great companies are built on great products.
No, I don’t ever give up. I’d have to be dead or completely incapacitated.
I think that’s the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.
Be undeniably good. No marketing effort or social media buzzword can be a substitute for that.
What do you need to start a business? Three simple things: Know your product better than anyone. Know your customer, and have a burning desire to succeed.
Don’t worry about failure; you only have to be right once.
Waiting for perfect is never as smart as making progress.
Starting your own business is like riding a roller coaster. There are highs and lows and every turn you take is another twist. The lows are really low, but the highs can be really high. You have to be strong, keep your stomach tight, and ride along with the roller coaster that you started.
Make every detail perfect and limit the number of details to perfect.
Nothing works better than just improving your product.
I knew that if I failed I wouldn’t regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not trying.
When you innovate, you’ve got to be prepared for people telling you that you are nuts.
There is only one boss: the customer. And he can fire everybody in the company, from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.
Whatever you’re thinking, think bigger.
The very first company I started failed with a great bang. The second one failed a little bit less, but still failed. The third one, you know, proper failed, but it was kind of okay. I recovered quickly. Number four almost didn’t fail. It still didn’t really feel great, but it did okay. Number five was PayPal.
If you double the number of experiments you do per year you’re going to double your inventiveness.