The Ledger, every show

“Your moral compass should exist at a higher level than, how can I make the most money? And so you may have to, you know, you may have to take stands. And to take an extreme example if Apple and Tim Cook cannot take a stand, who can? Who can? You're the most fr…”

“I must admit that I think that the most important thing is the product.”

“If you talk to someone like Mike Moritz of Sequoia will tell you that the richest vein for Sequoia's investments, and there's no company, no VC that has, you know, created such value as Sequoia. It's two people creating the product that they want to use. They …”

“Many times when, if you face, like, rigid recommendations for, I need your internal rate of return, I need your return on capital, I need this kind of projection. In a sense, the investor is telling you no, and is trying to put these fences up in front of you,…”

“If an investor is truly interested in your business, they're not going to throw these fences up in front of you. What they're going to be thinking is they do not have a world-class team, but I at Kleiner Perkins or Sequoia, I can tap the greatest talent in the…”

“To me, AI is, is a bigger deal than personal computers, chips, social media, internet, all combined.”

“Yeah, I mean, he's the closest thing we have to Steve Jobs right now, so.”

“I would think that pretty soon you'll just be able to stick a PowerPoint or business plan into an AI model, and 30 seconds later, it'll give you a thumbs up or thumbs down.”

“Like today, if I had to explain to someone when to use ChatGPT, when to use Bard, when to use Perplexity, when to use Claude, when to use all this, you know, I don't know if I could, I can't. I mean, I use all fives kind of at random, and it's like, in the car…”

“So first of all, you will need an egomaniac leader because this egomaniac leader has to withstand a lot of pressure from the existing infrastructure of the company.”

“A second thing you need is you need a separate physical building. I don't think you can do intrapreneurship inside physically a company that is already existing and, you know, going forward and maybe even successful because you're going to be matrix to death.”

“Guy's golden touch is whatever is gold, guy touches. So I touch Macintosh, and I touch Canva, I would touch Liquid Death. It's because it's easy to evangelize great stuff, and it's hard to evangelize crap.”

“Yeah, no, I, I'm leaning towards Apple, and it's because Apple has made multiple changes, right? So they changed the face of computing, and they changed the face of phones, and then they invented the face of tablets, and you can't, you know, Google has definit…”

“When I use Apple Mail, it feels like somebody at Apple who gets 10 emails a day has designed it.”

“I believe it is, but I also believe, so what if it is or it isn't, you know, what really matters is your one company. Not the big picture.”

“These companies that do achieve, you know, quote, worldwide domination, they often start or almost always start with very simple questions. And I think from the outside looking in, if you look at an apple or something that has acquired this lofty status, you t…”

“Because I don't know about you, but I've met many entrepreneurs and they always say that, you know, No one else is doing what we're doing, and no one else is capable of doing what we're doing. And I'll tell you that my initial reaction to anyone who says that …”

“I think selling jewelry was harder because jewelry is, it's made of commodities, albeit valuable commodities like gold and diamonds, but you can stick that on a scale. Whereas with Macintosh, you know, we really had magic”

“Let's just say that the Apple HR mechanism is not geared towards people writing 16 books or conducting a podcast”

“If we don't cannibalize our business, Two guys or two gals in a garage are. So isn't it better that we create a Macintosh that kills an Apple II, or we create an iPhone, iPod, iPad that kills a Macintosh? Isn't it better we kill it than somebody else kills it?”

“One of the very good investment thesis, or even job Search thesis is go work for places that you love their products, that you use their products. Not, not that you know that there's this theoretical baby boomer who's gonna use this product. But be the cust…”

“If there's a skill that is necessary for entrepreneurs to succeed, you know, this dancing in the field stage, it is, you have to do a great demo. A demo counts for a thousand slides.”

“In the first third of your life, you're underpaid. In the second third of your life, you're overpaid. And in the third third of your life, you pay back.”

“Michael Moritz. The Michael Moritz of Sequoia. He called me after I left Apple, and he said, guy, I have a company down here by Stanford. I want you to interview for the CEO position. And I said, Mike, what's the company's name? And he told me the name. I look…”

“One of the lessons that I learned from quitting Apple and all that is that, you know, sometimes the grass is not greener, and the optimal decision is to stay on the grass you're on and fertilize it And water it. And make it greener. Not jump ship.”

“Yeah, yeah, but in terms of changing the world, there's not too many people who come close to Steve Jobs.”

“Well, one thing that drives me nuts is that they always, always are so wrong in their forecasts. I've never seen one that undershot his projections.”

“The last person in the world who underplayed it is Steve jobs. Trust me.”

“Well, it's kind of simple, you know, somebody's got to make it, and somebody's got to sell it. That's it in a nutshell. And so this is about the guy or gal who's selling it, and then we have to find, you know, something else for the guy who is making it. So th…”

“Because Amazon is a killing machine, and I use it as a, as someplace I buy from. Also, I publish through as a self-publisher, and I resell through using a traditional publisher, so I know how freaking awesome that company is.”

“You are talking to a person who quit Apple twice and turned down Steve for a third position. So, the receipts indicate that I obviously did not think that Apple was going to be the most valuable company in the world because I left there twice and turned down t…”