Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I think, with any new product that's difficult to understand, there are always lots of questions and criticism. I think we have all the right criticism. We're just going to keep executing on what we believe.
Your insurance broker has your telephone number, but your insurance broker doesn't have your Facebook ID. I think they are very different modes of communication. Commingling them can come with risk and peril.
I didn't want my parents to know about 4chan at first because of the adult content. By the time I was 18 and could talk about it, the site had become notorious for its exploits and the adult content on there.
Because it's so empowering, I want people to think about being entrepreneurial regardless. They don't have to start companies, but that's what makes them great employees, that's what makes them great citizens.
So many things that I was excited about as a kid were about proximity. The idea that somebody could grow up in rural Iowa and be into break dancing because of YouTube - that was a really simple, profound idea.
The people with the passports, the people who travel more, tend to be the most understanding. And it's ironic that the people who travel the least have the strongest opinions about the people they've never met.
Business is all about learning to balance the short-term, medium-term and long-term and I think it's when things are going well it covers up a lot of mistakes and bad decisions because you're growing so quickly.
I think the next big thing in music, and it's kind of because I come from the tech industry, is actually, I think it's the platform... Spotify is incredibly interesting. I think the platform is becoming the star.
Snapchat really has to do with the way photographs have changed. Historically, photos have always been used to save really important memories: major life moments. But today... pictures are being used for talking.
We're somewhat lucky here in the United States, where we hope that the checks and balances hold out for many years to come and decades to come. But in a lot of countries, you don't have these checks and balances.
Our belief is that if you get the culture right, most of the other stuff, like great customer service, or building a great long-term brand or empowering passionate employees and customers, will happen on its own.
I think we are a better and a more efficient society when people actually get to do the things that they really are passionate about, and really are amazing at, because it's going to mean better stuff for us, too.
Having ideas and doing them - that's what entrepreneurship comes down to. That's something that makes you not just a great founder who I want to invest in, but also a great employee or someone I want to work with.
I use Pinterest for everything. Book collections, trips, hobbies. It’s all there. I planned my wedding on it. When I had a kid, I planned all his stuff on it. So it was nice to discover that I wasn’t the only one.
I was obsessed with this idea that these things that you collect, they just say so much about who you are. I can't say it came from hard-nosed business analysis... It was just something I really want to see built.
I use Pinterest for everything. Book collections, trips, hobbies. It's all there. I planned my wedding on it. When I had a kid, I planned all his stuff on it. So it was nice to discover that I wasn't the only one.
For the longest time, the way that I had understood 4chan was this idea that the lack of an archive made the content really ephemeral, and it took me a while, but I finally realized that that's just totally wrong.
Conforming happens so naturally that we can forget how powerful it is. But the thing that makes us human are those times we listen to the whispers of our soul and allow ourselves to be pulled in another direction.
Having a higher purpose is more than just about profits. You actually end up making more profits in the long run because employees really are a lot more engaged and customers see the higher purpose in the company.
As long as people are using the Internet, people are going to do stupid stuff, and people are going to do bad stuff. And by the time that robots are sentient, they're going to enslave us anyway, so it won't matter.
The stronger the culture, the less corporate process a company needs. When the culture is strong, you can trust everyone to do the right thing. People can be independent and autonomous. They can be entrepreneurial.
As long as our user base continues to grow, at some point it will have critical mass, and at some point it will tip, and at some point, people will just have to use WhatsApp because their friends are using WhatsApp.
Our team has always believed that neither cost and distance should ever prevent people from connecting with their friends and loved ones, and won't rest until everyone, everywhere is empowered with that opportunity.
I think MySpace is doomed, I give them about two more years.... I think Facebook is the next Microsoft in both the bad and the good senses. That's an amazing company that is going to do a lot of good and bad things.
I really think that even though Pinterest isn't a lot of people's idea of hard technology, it helps make everyday things a little bit better. And I believe that for most people, everyday things, those are everything.
Think of the imagination as a giant stone from which we carve out new ideas. As we chip away, our new ideas become more polished and refined. But if you start by editing your imagination, you start with a tiny stone.
Even if you have no interest in starting a company, having the experience of having ideas and doing them, that's muscle to exercise because that's what people are going to want to see. That's what makes you different.
Utilities get out of the way. Can you imagine if you flipped a light switch and had to watch an ad before you got electricity? Can you imagine if you turned on a faucet and had to watch an ad before the water came out?
The best part of being an angel investor is seeing these kids coming up with companies that get way more traffic than Reddit had when we sold it. I think, 'Are you kidding me? They're just kids, and they've done so much.
As children, we have vivid imaginations. We stay up late waiting for Santa Claus, dream of becoming president, and have ideas that defy physics. Then something happens. As we grow older, we start editing our imagination.
The best part of being an angel investor is seeing these kids coming up with companies that get way more traffic than Reddit had when we sold it. I think, 'Are you kidding me? They're just kids, and they've done so much.'
What's unique about [4chan] is that it's anonymous, and it has no memory. There's no archive, there are no barriers, there's no registration. ... That's led to this discussion that's completely raw, completely unfiltered.
Love making jewelry? Awesome! Find blogs that inspire you, follow people on social media who have great taste, start an Etsy store, and borrow a friend's DSLR to take some beautiful photos of your craft. All of this costs $0.
I look around my neighborhood, and I see people hailing a cab or ordering their food and then paying for it all with their phone. I've read about that stuff for a really long time, and now it's starting to become commonplace.
For a lot of people, 4chan is their tree house - they go there to hang out. You can actually see the culture shift with time zone. Seeing how threads unwind and unravel is just a thrill, and you can't really share that magic.
Reddit offers the opportunity for us as humans to connect on a much deeper, broader level because users have an alter ego and aren't tied to a social network of friends with whom they want to share how perfect their lives are.
Customers are willing to try new things, and if you can survive, you will have fewer competitors. It's like entering the eye of the storm. As long as you are strong enough to survive, you can end up in still water by yourself.
As a kid, I always idolized entrepreneurs. I thought they were cool people in the way that I thought basketball players were cool people. It's cool that some people get paid to dunk basketballs, but I'm not one of those people.
There is reason to smile and celebrate when you win, but when you struggle, that is about laughter. That is the pathos that is rooted in all comedy. And business is full of pain and hardship and with that, laughter and release.
There's this weird thing that happens when you contribute something to a static profile. You have to worry about how this new content fits in with your online persona that's supposed to be you. It's uncomfortable and unfortunate.
I grew up in Russia. We had a telephone line, but a load of our neighbours didn't. It became a shared resource for the whole apartment complex. People would come and knock on the door and ask to call their family in another city.
I tend to eat things in fours. I'll eat four nuts, four grapes, four chips at a time. I don't know why. It's not really a superstition. I don't think anything bad will happen if I don't, but three potato chips doesn't seem right.
If you imagine Maslow's hierarchy of needs, if you can get all those requirements checked off and have all those amazing things that we need to just live lives, but actually get to do the thing that you're really passionate about.
There are a lot of really valuable services that are always pushing you to communicate with other people. But there are relatively few services that are about helping you be the person you want to be and fulfilling your ambitions.
When I was a kid trying to communicate with family in the Soviet Union, it was very difficult. You had to go through the long-distance phone companies like MCI, which were difficult to navigate and expensive to make calls through.
Business, like life, is funny. We all go through difficult times, and we all have to face curve balls and challenges, each and every week. And we need to laugh when things are funny. If we take it all too seriously we will go mad.
I'm not saying the whole world will work this way, but with Airbnb, people are sleeping in other people's homes and other people's beds. So there's a level of trust necessary to participate that's different from an eBay or Facebook.
When I was growing up in Huntsville, Alabama, this is where the space and rocket center was. This is where all of the German rocket scientists came after war and started designing rockets for NASA, for the moon landing and all that.
Whatever the press is talking about, they want to keep talking about it. So instead of asking yourself, 'How can I get them to start talking about me?', figure out a way to get yourself involved in what they're already talking about.
Because there's no structural barrier to joining 4chan, the community is really dynamic; for every five people that leave, five new people join, bringing their perspective and culture. A lot of other communities get set in their ways.