I’m probably most proud of the fact that we are bootstrapped and that we are able to do not just the typical Silicon Valley startup thing. We are basically throwing away all the typical conventions of other startups.
The next Google or Facebook will come from somewhere other than Silicon Valley.
There’s no single right place to be an entrepreneur, but certainly there’s something about Silicon Valley.
People in Silicon Valley are starting to realize politics is not a toy.
Companies in Silicon Valley invest a lot in understanding their users and what drives user engagement.
In Silicon Valley, if you spend a lot of time thinking about the obstacles, you’ll talk yourself out of everything, because the more you look at it, the less logical something sounds, since no one has done it yet.
Silicon Valley tends to be very myopic – to be focused on one or two things – which has some strengths as well as weaknesses.
The truth is, Silicon Valley doesn’t like people who are older, and they’re not that much of a friend of the woman. I certainly was a woman, and I was older.
Here in Silicon Valley, I have taken part in hundreds of conversations trying to convince people to dive in and become entrepreneurs. All too often, innovators with good, safe, jobs are unwilling to put their family’s access to health care at risk by walking away from company-backed medical insurance.
The Sharks step right on each other’s questions, and if I ever did that in Silicon Valley, I would be considered a pariah. I literally had to learn how to interrupt.
My mom is from Cuba, my dad is from Spain, and I grew up in Miami. So there’s maybe a little more flair in me than typical Silicon Valley types.
I don’t think Silicon Valley understands the power of Wikipedia, how it works, or the opportunities it represents.
I would say Silicon Valley and New York have inflated salaries.
I think that’s exactly what Silicon Valley was all about in those days. Let’s do a startup in our parents’ garage and try to create a business.
Growing up in Silicon Valley, during my time at Morgan Stanley and as a member of Stanford’s Board, I’ve had the opportunity to experience firsthand how tech companies can help people in their daily lives.
Seed investing is the status symbol of Silicon Valley. Most people don’t want Ferraris, they want a winning seed investment.
I love Silicon Valley, but there is a dominant voice of, ‘Tech is cool. Tech is geeky. Tech is a guy with a hoodie.’
We talk a lot in Silicon Valley about product pipelines and sales pipelines, but what about talent pipelines? It is, after all, talent – people – who give us products to sell.
I’ve spoken to people in Silicon Valley, and many times they have said to me, ‘X storyline, or that thing that happened in your show – pretty much verbatim has happened to me.’ And it’s either identical or similar enough to be scary.
Silicon Valley and Beijing are the leading hubs of AI, followed by the U.K. and Canada. I am seeing a lot of excitement in India, going by the number of people who are taking Coursera courses on AI.
It used to be that you had to come to Silicon Valley, walk up Sand Hill Road, network with individuals. That’s now being completely changed and turned on its head by the whole ICO thing.
The stuff coming out of Silicon Valley is dorky. Like, it’s not very sexy.
There is an often-told story that Silicon Valley is filled with women looking to cash in by marrying wealthy tech moguls. Whether there really is a significant number of such women is debatable.
Success in Silicon Valley, most would agree, is more merit-driven than almost any other place in the world. It doesn’t matter how old you are, what sex you are, what politics you support or what color you are. If your idea rocks and you can execute, you can change the world and/or get really, stinking rich.
In 2014, Utah cities Salt Lake City and Provo both surpassed Silicon Valley in per-deal venture capital averages. From large, multi-campus companies to promising start-ups, Silicon Slopes offers a promising climate for businesses. The entire tech industry has its eyes on Utah.
There’s been entrepreneurs working in the Valley for probably 50-60 years. It’s not to say that you can’t create that in other places, but I think people are a little bit impatient about creating the next Silicon Valley.
If you want to go and build a company that exists in Silicon Valley, then you should go and do it there. But if you want to build a company that is Australian, that represents your culture and your being, then you should do it in Sydney.
In most parts of the world, starting a company that goes bust is dubbed a ‘failure.’ In Silicon Valley, we call this ‘gaining experience.’ We are willing to take the risks that are inherent for innovation.
The thing we should all be looking for are people who want to make a difference. I’m a big believer in the Silicon Valley religion of the power of markets. But I also believe in our obligation to give back, and to give back in the way we do business, to create more value than we capture for ourselves.
I was in Bangalore, India, the Silicon Valley of India, when I realized that the world was flat.
I moved to San Francisco when I was 20 years old. I couldn’t even drink yet. My friends in college thought I was so stupid for missing out on the four best years of my life. But I was so ready to start living my own life and absorb Silicon Valley culture.
Graduating business school, I had $150,000 of debt. An investment firm offered me a steady job, but it didn’t feel right. It was 2007 in Silicon Valley, and I dreamed of starting an Internet company.
Running a real business is exacting, daunting, repetitive work. Even in Silicon Valley.
The idea that there is a meritocracy where anyone from any background really might have the social and economic mobility to rise to the top in Silicon Valley, those are antithetical to a lot of the principles that the Trump administration apparently stands for.
Silicon Valley is a mindset, not a location.
People are still very focused on the startup story: Risk-taking founders, with a bold idea, some capital and a network supportive environment, go out and take the shot on goal. But the problem is, this is no longer the truth about what makes Silicon Valley so special.
I think that Silicon Valley and technology can play a huge role in redefining what community looks like and how people come together and what authentic relationships look like, but that is not only their burden.
I really like the ‘Silicon Valley’ show. It’s good to do a little rib-poking and not take yourself too seriously, so I think it’s awesome the show does that.
China just banned ICO fundraising. They did Silicon Valley and the U.S. a favor – now we get first dibs.
One of the nice things about living in Silicon Valley is that I end up at all these conferences and things, and I get to listen in on the zeitgeist.
It had not yet been named Silicon Valley, but you had the defense industry, you had Hewlett-Packard. But you also had the counter-culture, the Bay Area. That entire brew came together in Steve Jobs.
Sometimes it feels hard to remember that Silicon Valley is an actual place, a collage of parched suburbs, and not just the collective noun for information-technology companies.
As a community, Silicon Valley must adopt principles that reflect our abhorrence toward sexual harassment – and it is these principles that must guide our collective behavior.
Introverts listen better, they assess risks more carefully, they can be wiser managers. It’s not for nothing that the Silicon Valley billionaires are so often the retiring types.
What I Iove about Y Combinator is that it is a level playing field. If you get in, you immediately become a Silicon Valley insider.
For all the billions of dollars created here, Silicon Valley is remarkably stingy when it comes to giving.
Even Silicon Valley investors have put well over a $1 billion in new energy technologies.
The most successful company in Silicon Valley is Apple, and they’re the most secretive.
Not everybody wants to be Mark Zuckerberg, but everybody wants to create a little piece of the American dream, the Silicon Valley version. I don’t think that’s a bad thing.
There’s this myopia among American venture capitalists to not go anywhere beyond Silicon Valley and New York.
Mexico is very well positioned in the IT sector, thanks to our closeness to North America and how things are being developed in Silicon Valley.
Silicon Valley has been developing as a startup community for over 60-70 years. This notion that you can create something in two or five years is foolish.
Mozilla has one foot in the Valley, Silicon Valley product technology, and partly one foot in the social enterprise space.
The reason why Silicon Valley is a worldwide innovation center is because it is a open culture that embraces diversity. You see people from all over the world. When you have many people from different backgrounds gathered together, that is where innovation comes from.
If you look at where the tried and true of Silicon Valley VC’s are investing, it’s in people who understand what it takes, who’ve been through it and have a network of people they can tap and resources to pull together.
What people often ask me is, ‘What are the ingredients of Silicon Valley?’ While the answer to that is complex, some of the ingredients I talk about are celebrating entrepreneurship, accepting failure, and embracing a mobile and diverse workforce.
