A Quote by Roelof Botha
I try getting in front of as many opportunities as possible, but in the late '90s, I had no idea that I'd end up being CFO of a technology company. I'd no idea what venture capital was.
Related Quotes
Today, I think a CFO needs to be more of an operating CFO: someone who's using the financial data and the data of the company to help drive strategy, the allocation of capital, and the management of risks.
For a first-time entrepreneur, there's nothing better than being in Silicon Valley because there is so much going on, and there's such a large number of inventors, that even a B level idea or a C level idea could be nurtured and be given venture capital there.
With the policymaking process, you have an idea, and you try to sell other stakeholders on the idea. That's not much different than in business, where you're trying to find capital to make your idea a reality.
My idea for the Jamison Project was rather like a pickup company. The idea was to give the dancers a taste of the menu. Today, dancers need to try as many companies as possible without having a drop-dead loyalty to me or anyone else. They like to have the leeway to go their own way.
If Star Wars had been released in the late '60s, or late '80s, or late '90s, adjusting for technology, it fits spectacularly well.
I often say Policy Planning is very analogous to a venture capital firm. A venture capital firm sees an interesting idea and puts money behind it; in Policy Planning, we look for promising ideas and then put contacts and relationships behind it.
I got the idea for Netflix after my company was acquired. I had a big late fee for Apollo 13. It was six weeks late and I owed the video store $40. I had misplaced the cassette. It was all my fault.
The ability of so many people to live comfortably with the idea of capital punishment is perhaps a clue to how so many Europeans were able to live with the idea of the Holocaust: Once you accept the notion that the state has the right to kill someone and the right to define what is a capital crime, aren't you halfway there?
I have this romanticized idea of dance music in the '90s because, obviously, I was way too young to be a part of it. So I have this rose-tinted idea of it. I have this idea of it being a very special time. But I still don't know that much - I can never remember any names of seminal artists.
At the beggining of my career, for me the comedy circuit was a combination of desperation and the fact that it was something I could do. I sort of meandered and really had no idea what I was going to do with my life. I had a go at stand-up, and I was sort of okay at it. I'd say I'm the opposite of someone that has the urge to stand in front of strangers and make them laugh, but the idea of getting up and telling a story and people finding it amusing always appealed to me. So I'd say it was probably more about that than anything.
My idea was that if I loved to sing, I would just do it anywhere I could, and always go out and always try to learn and try to perform, and try to find opportunities. Little by little, I sort of built upon that idea.
There's almost too much venture capital in India - there are issues with seed capital, but for venture capital, there's a lot money chasing deals here.
The late '90s were a really bad time for people trying to be rock stars, you know what I mean? It seemed like everyone was a one-hit wonder on the radio. We had friends who had a hit single on the radio and sold 500,000 records, and then they couldn't get arrested a year later. I had this feeling at the time that that was not possible anymore, so the idea of becoming the biggest band in the country—it seemed laughable. I felt that having those sort of ambitions was foolish, because there was no way that was going to be possible. If you saw it that way, you were just deluding yourself.
Amazon thrived because it implemented the online bookstore idea better than any of its early rivals did, not because it was the only company to have the idea or the first company to have the idea. It continues to grow only because it keeps trying to improve on the details of the idea and the way it puts it into practise.
I certainly felt I had an idea of World War II, and it's probably the idea that many people share: there was this insane aggressor, and there was really only one way to proceed in resisting him. What I didn't realize is that there were many voices belonging to reasonable, interesting, complicated people who had a different way of interpreting the possible responses to the Hitlerian menace.
I think everybody is psychic. I think it's one of the things in our subconscious that, for some reason, we've convinced ourselves that it's not real or possible, and luckily, we're getting closer and closer, I think we're using technology to give us these psychic powers that we already had. It's sort of like the idea that you can't dream up something unless it already exists.
Related Authors
Bill Gates Quotes
American
Businessman
Charlie Munger Quotes
American
Businessman
Dieter F. Uchtdorf Quotes
German
Businessman
Henry Ford Quotes
American
Businessman
Jim Rohn Quotes
American
Businessman
Joseph B. Wirthlin Quotes
American
Businessman
Mark Cuban Quotes
American
Businessman
Mark Zuckerberg Quotes
American
Businessman
Peter Drucker Quotes
American
Businessman
Richard Branson Quotes
British
Businessman
Russell Simmons Quotes
American
Businessman
Sam Altman Quotes
American
Businessman
Steve Jobs Quotes
American
Businessman
Tom Peters Quotes
American
Businessman
Walt Disney Quotes
American
Businessman
Warren Buffett Quotes
American
Businessman