Xerox

“This was 1976, and at Xerox first I sent you to a sales training school in Leesburg, Virginia, and after that, for six months, all you do is make 50 cold calls a day. But I'm not talking about on a phone. You have to go make a physical cold call. Into an offic…”

“The way that I soothe myself about knockoffs is that I remember this fact that, you know, Coke needed Pepsi. Xerox needed IBM. Beauty Blender needs knockoffs in order to prove why we are the category creator and the best.”

“You want strong consonants. Google, Xerox, Kodak. Coca-Cola. So I wanted a business with a strong consonant. Once you heard the name Kinkos, you'd never forget it.”

“And overnight, my inventory rotted, my cucumbers, my corn, and I looked at the Xerox machine, and I thought, man, that, that paper does not go obsolete. That inventory stays there for months and months at a time. And I thought, I don't want to be in a business…”

“Xerox was so screwed up in their invoicing, it gave me an enormous amount of float. I wouldn't get a bill from a Xerox machine for say, 60 days, 90 days after it was installed. And I didn't have to put up any money to get it.”