Top 37 Quotes & Sayings by Jeffrey Skoll
Explore popular quotes and sayings by a Canadian businessman Jeffrey Skoll.
Last updated on December 3, 2024.
When I started Participant, I felt that the movie business was ripe for a company that dealt with big issues in a systemic way. I was a little surprised that nobody had done it before. But to most people, entertainment is escapism.
Young entrepreneurs, in general, feel they're too busy running their companies, which I think is a mistake. But once they're older, you see much more of a propensity to be involved in philanthropy.
When I was 14, my dad came home one day and told us he had cancer. It was looking pretty bad. And I remember him saying how afraid he was that he hadn't gotten to do the things he wanted to do during his life. He had surgery and survived. And he's still alive today, thank God. But it made a big impact on me.
I wanted to be a writer, to write these stories that would make people see the world in a different way. But I ended up going to business school because I thought I could ultimately get to where I wanted to go faster that way.
When I first moved to Hollywood from Silicon Valley, I had some misgivings. But I found that there were some advantages to being in Hollywood. And, in fact, some advantages to owning your own media company. And I also found that Hollywood and Silicon Valley have a lot more in common than I would have dreamed.
My dream is that Participant is producing content in every language in every part of the world.
If you can find ways to give people hope that they can achieve something or make a difference, then there's an opportunity for something good to happen.
We remain committed to inspiring and compelling social change to the world's most pressing problems through the power of great stories and engaging our audiences to take meaningful action.
My goal was to leverage the power of movies and the reach they have and include important messages. Of course, they still have to be entertaining so that people will watch them, but I wanted to make sure there was a message, a takeaway.
As a teenager I read a lot of books. Books with lots of scary trends, things like nuclear weapons and overpopulation and global diseases, and I thought, 'Wouldn't it be great to write stories that showed people these problems and that we could do something about them.'
It's in my own interest - it's in everybody's interest - to have streets that are safe, children that are educated, and drug use that's diminished, crimes that are not affecting us.
I went from living in a house with five guys in Palo Alto, and living off their leftovers, to all of a sudden having all kinds of resources. And I wanted to figure out how I could take the blessing of these resources and share it with the world.
The goal of Participant is to tell stories that serve as catalysts for social change. With our television channel, we can bring those stories into the homes of our viewers every day.
Looking at America, which has so much wealth and potential and yet has so many deep-rooted problems, I think it gives us, as Canadians, an opportunity to be on the world stage on the climate change issue.
We gravitated to the idea of social entrepreneurs when it was a fairly nascent thing. We began to build the organization, focused on investing in and celebrating social entrepreneurs. Not long after that, we realized there was another opportunity to help bring them together and tell their stories.
At Participant, I am the board. I am the sole greenlight at the company. If something happened to me, that would be a problem.
I backpacked around the world and went to places like Mexico City and Pakistan, where I'm like, 'Oh. Things aren't quite as good.'
My goal was to be at the point - no older than 40 - where I would have enough resources to make a difference in the lives of disadvantaged people.
By 2007, 85% of Americans cited climate change as an important issue, compared with just 33% in prior years. The phrase we invented, 'An Inconvenient Truth,' became a part of the lexicon.
If you believe that people are basically good, and you remove obstacles, then they'll do the right thing by each other.
As an industry, the film industry is better than most. It's not perfect - I wish every company would carbon-offset their productions - but it's better than one would expect.
My dad always wanted to sail. They lived on a boat for eight years.
My views tend to be centrist. I'm not a big fan of George W., but my politics tend to be more Republican than not.
As a philanthropist, I give away a lot of money every year. Yet I thought there was a higher leverage to come in and create movies and TV shows that were actually able to do some good in the world.
My goal is to make the biggest difference possible in the world. I have only so many resources and so much time.
I learned Hollywood is a small community, and you really have to be a part of the community to get anything done. Unlike traditional industries, where you can do things from afar with phone calls and e-mail, this town is really about being social. Because that's how trust gets built.
It's a real concern of mine every day. What can we do? How much can we do? How quickly can we address all these important things?
Philanthropy is all about making a positive difference in the world by devoting your resources and your time to causes you believe in. In my case, I like to support causes where "a lot of good comes from a little bit of good," or, in other words, where the positive social returns vastly exceed the amount of time and money invested.
The pace at eBay was frantic and urgent. We knew that if we didn't move fast, somebody would come into the market and quash us. Participant doesn't make a lot of sense from a financial investment perspective, so it's unlikely that other people will be approaching the business in the same way. So you see less urgency; you see a thoroughness and willingness to spend extra time to get things right. Which I think is really important.
Business skills, when well applied, can do more than just make money. They can potentially make money and do some real good, which is immensely satisfying. To do that, it's important to think outside the box, take risks, and be an entrepreneur.
I believe that Silicon Valley is truly a place of excellence and the impact of this tiny community on the world is completely disproportionate to its size. We are the undisputed leaders of technological change. But with our abundance of talent and resources, we also have the opportunity to be the pioneers of social change and, ultimately, this may be our greatest contribution.
A little bit of good can turn into a whole lot of good when fueled by the commitment of a social entrepreneur.
The goal here is to build a brand around social relevance in media (with his Participant Productions company).
Social entrepreneurs come from all levels of society and from communities in nearly every country of the world. They all share the same underlying drive and passion to see their ideas through. Many of them have had a huge effect on the world, yet most people have not even heard of them - a trend we hope to change!
Not everyone can be Gandhi, but each of us has the power to make sure our own lives count - and it's those millions of lives that will ultimately build a better world.
I was living in a house with five guys, eating their leftovers when they weren't watching. I went from that to having $1-billion-plus on paper.
Participant (Productions) is the only production company in town that has a double bottom line: social good plus financial returns. It's too early to tell how our returns are going to look - though all signs are promising - but social good is what we're really after.
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