Favourite Quotes

Published on 5 Jun 2023 ⸱ 6 min read ⸱ 72 views

Living document of all my favourite quotes.

I work out and keep myself healthy because I want my worst day to be better than someone else' best day. - Daniel Ek's neighbour Source
The only disability in life is bad attitude - Scott Hamilton
There is no historical precedent where you get all of these beneficial things (technological innovations) by starting from pessimism first. Pessimism doesn't get you to optimistic outcomes - Kevin Scott, CTO Microsoft Source
Whatever the percentages, it’s (entrepreneurship) still the best system on Earth. I respect anyone who grinds hard for years to make useful products & services, even if it doesn’t work out in the end. - Elon Musk Source
What's the point in telling everyone all that you know? It's a lot more fun to learn about things that you don't know. - Charlie Munger Source
If you actually have to choose between the most experienced person, the most educated person or the person who actually wants it the most, you always pick the person who wants it the most. - Joshua Kushner, Founder, Thrive Capital Source
Trust = competence + intent + consistency - attributed to Doug Leone Source
Performance is something that we will give more time; behavior we won’t. And that’s because behavior is a choice, not a skill set. - Frank Slootman Source
Culture is not a set of beliefs. It’s a set of actions. - Ben Horrowitz Source
We don't make change, motherfucker! - Ben Horrowitz (to Jorge Conde on paying when late for meetings) Source
Brilliant thinking is rare but courage is in even shorter supply than genius - Peter Theil Source
You want to position yourself near opportunity. You don’t have to be that perfect. You want to position yourself near the tree. Even if you don’t catch the Apple before it hits the ground, so long as you’re the first one to pick it up. - Jensen Juang, CEO of NVidia Source
We look for three things when we hire people: Intelligence, Initiative (energy) and Integrity.... you can't change the way you're wired much but you can change a lot of what you do with that wiring. - Warren Buffet Source
The chains of habit are too light to be felt until they're too heavy to be broken. - Warren Buffet Source.
"Never give up. Without commitment, you'll never start. But more importantly, without consistency, you'll never finish. It's not easy. So, keep working. Keep striving. Fall down seven times, get up eight. Ease is a greater threat to progress than hardship. So, keep moving, keep growing, keep learning. See ya at work." - Denzel Washington Source
"A players hire A players but B players hire C players and C's D's so the first B you hire takes the whole company down". Max Levchin, Cofounder, Affirm. Source
"Ignore the received wisdom and try to approach investment problems from first principles and when you're confused, come back to them (received wisdom)". Nick Shalek, Partner, Ribbit Capital Source
"Conviction is critical but certainity will kill you". Nick Shalek, Partner, Ribbit Capital Source
"... it's the disease of thinking that a really great idea is 90% of the work and that if you just tell all the other people "here's a great idea" of course they can go and make it happen. The problem with that is there's a tremendous amount of craftsmanship in between a great idea and a great product. And as you evolve that great idea, it changes and grows, it never comes out like it starts, because you learn a lot more, you get into the subtilties. You also find there's tremendous trade offs that you have to make. There are certain things you can't make electrons do, there are certain things you can't make plastic do, or glass do or factories do, or robots do. As you get into all these things, designing a product is keeping 5,000 concepts in your brain and fitting them all together and continuing to push them together in new and different ways to get what you want. It's that process that is the magic." Steve Jobs, cofounder Apple. Source
"Time and time again, the best companies are created with very little outside funding. It's guerrilla warfare vs. conventional warfare. The disruptors vs. the establishment. We've seen over and over again that companies which stay hungry and figure out how to do more with less end up developing much more staying power. It's a paradox which confounds investors with too much money to put to work - when it comes to creating companies built to last, less is more." - Ho Nam, Partner Altos Ventures Source
"You can't ride on the fences" - Michael Jordan Source
"What's the point of fearing death if you ain't living, my guy" - Rapper Hanumankind Source - Spotify
"I can give my children everything in the world except for the one thing that made me who I am, which is my sense of desperation" - Doug Leone Source
"The problem is we're in a details business. If you're just trying to separate good from bad, you don't necessarily need to be in the details. If you're trying to separate good from great and great from exceptional, the truly exceptional, like the one out of every couple thousand companies that's really going to matter, you've got to be in the details. Because the 10 or 15 that all look about the same from a distance are going to look very different when you get up close. And so when picking, you need to have the attitude, work ethic and tenacity of somebody who's earlier in their career and trying to prove themselves, coupled with the experience and the knowledge of somebody who's actually been around and seen a little bit of that" - Pat Grady, Partner, Sequoia. Source

Note: All blogs posts till 2022 were migrated to this platform (react+next+tailwind). While all efforts were made to migrate wihtout any loss, the migration lost some images and broke a bunch of links in old posts. If you spot anything amiss, please notify me?