Top 72 Quotes & Sayings by Ted Waitt

In 1992, we did $1.1 billion in revenues. In the first nine months of 1993, we did just under $1.2 billion.

We compete with Dell and HP. Now, we are going to compete with Sony and Best Buy. Are we going to be like Best Buy? No. Are we going to be a small Dell? No. We are going to be uniquely Gateway.

If all we wanted to do was to make money on PC hardware, that wouldn't be a good business model.

So many people got caught up in the excitement and the promise of the Internet that they kind of lost sight of their senses.

We like being an independent company. We do not need to merge or do anything different.

Technology for technology's sake is not innovation. What we in the industry have to be concerned about is what products do, as opposed to what the processing power is.

I don't see anybody pointing to desktop PCs as being a hot Christmas item.

We never put any limitations on what Gateway could be. We had big dreams, big goals.

There's a large risk to our society if a group of people doesn't have access to technology or even the desire to get on the Net and see what opportunities are out there. Technology can be a great equalizer.

PCs will go the cell-phone subsidy route.

You don't know the impact of Windows XP. You don't know what the economic impact is going to be.

I'd be lying to you if I said I had not done some soul searching.

For any business that has an indirect model to move into the direct business is very difficult and very challenging.

But - there's no point in aiming to be Number Two. You've got to have a plan-to-win attitude.

I came from an entrepreneurial family. My father and five generations of people in my family do not make good employees.

You know, growing up in the cattle business, I know a lot about cattle.

The PC is going to become one key product in an ever-expanding array of products.

You can get business with price, but you have to have service to keep it.

I was fascinated to see that if you knew what you were doing, you could sell a $3,000 computer system over the phone.

Technology people have as much interest in protecting patents as the entertainment industry.

We have to have a successful box business if we are going to go beyond the box.

The biggest challenge is adding the bureaucracy it takes to run the company without becoming fat, lazy, inflexible - bureaucratic.

I'll end up living where I feel is the best place to raise my kids.

I kind of became apolitical.

I've used soap dishes as ashtrays in the best hotels in the world.

When you fall short of your internal forecast, two things happen: Costs go up as a percentage of sales, and margins go down.

From our perspective, there's been a price war in the PC industry since we opened for business in 1985.

We want a Gateway to be the last computer our clients will ever buy.

The entertainment industry always chooses to fight things out through the courts and legislation. Technology people always think there's a business solution.

We were unknown before, and that was an advantage. Nobody knew who we were, so we snuck up on the competition.

I definitely don't welcome takeover interests.

The complexity increases exponentially when you try and combine two companies that both need to be restructured in their own right.

We've got tremendous equity in cow spots and in the name Gateway, so this isn't anything radical, but you'll see us getting more sophisticated in our marketing efforts.

Corporations want stable, reliable, and easy-to-maintain systems.

Companies that are closest to the customers are the ones who are going to lead the industry.

The PC business is not about price, it's about value, or what you can give the customer for his or her money.

I love Gateway, and I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure the company can grow and prosper in this challenging environment.

People are looking for more than a faster and faster PC. It has to do what they want. Will it fill some void, add some value, deliver something that they can't do previously at a price that people are willing to pay for?

Don't get me wrong; we have a great relationship with Intel going back over many, many years. But we're not a wholly-owned subsidiary. We can do our own thing.

For a while there, companies were pushing technology on people and people were buying it. Now the consumer is really in the driver's seat. Now it's more of an overall solution: How can technology make your life better? How can it save you time?

When Mike Hammond and I started Gateway 12 years ago on my father's cattle farm, we knew it could be big. We talked big. But there's no way we could have been prepared to go from less than $300 million in revenues to $5 billion in six years. You can't so much prepare for that kind of growth as sort of ride it and try to manage it.

We spend as much time looking at companies that are smaller than we are as we do at those that are bigger.

There are hundreds of competitors in the direct marketing of computers. We have been very successful because of quality, price, service and the way we treat the customer.

The first thing I got was a jet. And it's the last thing I'd get rid of if I go bankrupt.

I don't subscribe to the idea that everything moves to the network. Theoretically it's possible that everybody will use little hand-held devices to access the Internet, but I expect more of a hybrid environment.

Both Gateway and I are products of Sioux City.

Sometimes people have a hard time believing that a company is intentionally trying to make itself smaller.

We started putting '2000' at the end of our name. That was in 1985, and 2000 seemed very futuristic.

Intel's a great company, and Microsoft is a great company. Everybody seems to do a lot better when there is competition.

If you buy a CD and want to put your favorite songs on one CD, you should be able to do that.

To me, the consumer-electronics business feels a lot like the PC business in the late 1980s. It's an inefficient market.

Let's face it, politics in this country is coin-operated. Does that really equate to a real democracy? It's very difficult to say.

We think the right categorization for digital devices is something you hold in your hand, a mobile-type product, and something you sit two feet away from.

The PC is an important part of our business and will continue to be for a long, long time.

If Dell's going to be a fast follower, then we'll continue to innovate.

I didn't have the patience to wait to take a degree before starting work, because I wanted to run my own business.

I'm not in favor of stealing music.

It's not a matter of being first, it's being there at the right time, being first in volume to market, and knowing what trends to stay away from.

I mean, you don't get a chance to buy a company like Gateway, you know, at or near book value very often.

The Internet is the number one reason people buy PCs, and the number one use of PCs is on the Internet from our customer base.