I said from the very beginning, ‘Yahoo should position itself as a technology innovation company, not as a media company.’
It used to be that you needed a $500-million-a-year company in order to reach a worldwide audience of consumers. Now, all you need is a Steam account. That changes a whole bunch of stuff. It’s kind of a boring ‘gee, information processing changes a stuff’ story, but it’s going to have an impact on every single company.
When you manage your company for long-term shareholders, and you manage the company for clients, two of the biggest stakeholders, you will make the right decisions.
Our entire team is focused on managing this company for value – fixing or eliminating those operations that lessen value and expanding or adding those that enhance value.
One, I love the creativity. I love the ability to create a capital structure that is appropriate for a company, no matter what field it happens to be in.
If you hire only those people you understand, the company will never get people better than you are. Always remember that you often find outstanding people among those you don’t particularly like.
Phone phreaking is a type of hacking that allows you to explore the telephone network by exploiting the phone systems and phone company employees.
In AirAsia, we consider ourselves basically a dream factory. We deliberately decided that we wanted a company where people can pursue their passion, and we wanted to make use of all the talent that we have in-house.
I’d love to do Shakespeare. I’ve been asked to do Malvolio but for one reason or another haven’t been able. On a school trip to the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford I saw the great Emrys James as Feste and it’s always been a role I’ve coveted.
People are definitely a company’s greatest asset. It doesn’t make any difference whether the product is cars or cosmetics. A company is only as good as the people it keeps.
For years, the company was known as a women’s shoe company. Then we added men’s clothing, shirts and shoes, and people thought of us as a men’s brand.
I was born in Karachi, where my father used to work in the sales department of a pharmaceutical company. The nature of his job required him to travel, so we moved to Athens, Dubai, Saudi Arabia, and Riyadh and then went to Manchester during the Gulf War, moving back to Lahore closer to my father’s retirement.
Company culture is my number one priority. It’s more important than the team, the product, the business model, or the investors. All of those things can be fixed and made better over time. But culture has to be established on Day 1.
I have my own production company called Urban Dreams.
I work constantly but I work at a lot of different things. You know, I run a theater company in New York, I direct plays, act in plays, in movies, so I try to keep it eclectic.
Focus on the long term, and always do what’s right to grow the company and not make short-term decisions. And outlast everyone one.
More company increases happiness, but does not lighten or diminish misery.
The world is moving, and a company that contents itself with present accomplishments soon falls behind.
A company is stronger if it is bound by love rather than by fear.
I do not own a single security anywhere that doesn’t pay a dividend, and I formed a mutual-fund company with that very simple philosophy.
The obligation of every ethical management is to make sure we optimize the long-term value of the company.
My mother has always encouraged me to do what I love. When I started being interested in fashion, she was very supportive, bringing me to see exhibits and buying me books. And when I started my company, she was right there to help me!
Back in the day, if you did any commercials or were affiliated with a company you were a sellout. Now it’s kind of normal to do that.
To become a classical ballerina, you have to move to New York when you’re 12 or 11 and that becomes your life. I just wanted to be good in my company in Charleston and I wanted it to always be part of my life.
The number of African Americans in Silicon Valley is dismal. It’s not up to one company – it’s up to the entire industry to make sure that we are moving the conversation forward. Sometimes those walls of competition need to come down so we can move the entire industry forward.
To turn really interesting ideas and fledgling technologies into a company that can continue to innovate for years, it requires a lot of disciplines.
Fortunately for me, I discovered Ring of Honor. And I saw guys who were much smaller in stature but were putting on these amazing matches that I had never seen in WWE before. So I thought, at the very least, I’d love the chance to be able to wrestle in a company like that someday.
If we reduce social life to the smallest possible unit we will find that there is no social life in the company of one.
The world doesn’t need another clothing company. But it does need a certain funk.
Execution really shapes whether your company takes off or not.
Even though I am Chairman of Dole Food Company, I do most of my own grocery shopping.
To me, it’s not the end of the world if I end up not being with someone. I love romance. I love sex. I love men’s company, but I don’t feel I have to be married. Men are a wonderful part of life, like chocolate. But my life goes on whether they’re there or not.
Every time you make the hard, correct decision you become a bit more courageous, and every time you make the easy, wrong decision you become a bit more cowardly. If you are CEO, these choices will lead to a courageous or cowardly company.
People are stunned to hear that one company has data files on 185 million Americans.
EBay is a great company. There are a lot of good assets and good customers, and the U.S. people love it.
I worked for three years in a small IT firm in Chicago. I managed our client base, so I translated into human speak for our technicians. But our company was sold, and the atmosphere and the culture really changed, so I quit without having anything else lined up.
Every major car company is trying to figure out, ‘How do I deploy the Internet into the car? How do I get cars to talk to each other? How do I get more safety? How do I get the ownership experience to change dramatically as a result?’
I think Amazon is the greatest start-up and the greatest company in the world. The way they are using new technologies is not just disrupting retail, it’s getting ready to disrupt everything.
The ability of a successful company to add functionality to its product has long been upheld.
There has never been a time when a career in the Penney Company was not a challenge that brought out the best in a man.
Being a part of SKECHERS is exciting. It is such a hip company with a great attitude and image.
The biggest mistake we made as a company was betting too much on HTML5.
The legacy of Steve Jobs and the strength of Steve Jobs is that he established a company that’s clearly firing on all cylinders and clicking very well.
When you’re running a company, you have employees – lots of them – that can interrupt your schedule. You have customers that can interrupt your schedule. You have a certain obligation to wave the flag because people expect to get out and wave the flag. The number of ways that others can command your time is high.
As a company, we have to be very transparent. We are in a business very related to finance, and I want this company to last long, and I want this company to be audited by everyone.
I’m a romantic and will only marry for love where there’s respect and compatibility. I’d like to be with someone if the right person came along. I really like male company. I like the male mind.
A fairly bright boy is far more intelligent and far better company than the average adult.
When I was 26, I founded Peaceworks as a food company that brought together Israelis, Arabs, Turks, and others in conflict regions to make and sell various food products from the Middle East. That economic cooperation helped bridge divides and cultivate mutual understanding among neighbors.
Hubspot’s leaders were not heroes but rather a pack of sales and marketing charlatans who spun a good story about magical transformation technology and got rich by selling shares in a company that still has never turned a profit.
No company is preferable to bad. We are more apt to catch the vices of others than virtues, as disease is far more contagious than health.
What happens to a private company that comes out with a quarterly report and an annual report? It gives transparency. It talks of basic issues of governance and transactions with related parties.
The restructuring theme can be of various kinds. Some amount of debt gets serviced out of cash flows, some gets back-ended and resolved with sale of non-core assets of the company, and some debt gets converted into equity which might today look like a haircut.
I come from a blue-collar family. My father worked at the American Can Company as a mechanic. He broke his back and was disabled, and the first memory I have of him is in the hospital. My mother was a working mother – she had two jobs. Everybody in the house had to help out.
I know that when I’m standing alone below a thousand-foot wall, looking up and considering a climb, my sponsors are the furthest thing from my mind. If I’m going to take risks, they are going to be for myself – not for any company.
