“We didn’t really start the company to go build an enterprise software company.”

You’ll learn more in a day talking to customers than a week of brainstorming, a month of watching competitors, or a year of market research.

What happens to the Microsofts, Oracles and IBMs of the world is that when they get big enough, they don’t think they need to bring that same level of focus and energy to the end-user experience.

In an IT lead world, incumbents generally win because they have the existing relationship with the IT organization.

I think people are always able to achieve more than they think they can. While that’s cliche, I don’t know if managers think about that enough. You have to set your sights extremely high.

The 10% between 90% done to 100% done takes most of the time, causes most of the stress, but is all of the value.

Jeff Bezos is opening a retail store and owns a newspaper. Turns out everything we thought about the Internet is wrong.

Modularize, don’t customize. Build a platform as opposed to building all of the custom technology and custom vertical experiences.

We’re going from a world of customized software to standardized platforms.

Why we do what we do: that moment when you get to see the future on your computer screen before the rest of the world.

The benefit to building a startup is that customers don’t have the same kind of friction when they adopt new technology.

If you don’t go to every level of your company, you distance yourself from the marketplace and from your people.

In a user lead model, users are bringing in their own technology… and you can build software then, around the user.

You can keep ‘consumer’ DNA at the center of your product. That will always mean that adoption is easier.

The most customer-centric organizations can answer any question by deciding what’s best for the customer, without ever having to ask.

Opportunity lives at the intersection of what people need tomorrow and can be just barely built today.

I think bad politics are incredibly dangerous, so it’s important to make sure that people are communicating well. Culture and morale are super important. It’s best to not force it, but let it happen organically and genuinely.

The building of a house, the writing of a novel, the demolition of a bridge, and, eminently, the finish of a voyage.

To me, the most shocking thing about grit is how little we know, how little science knows, about building it.

The Liberal State is a mask behind which there is no face; it is a scaffolding behind which there is no building.

At least 50 times. I’ve jumped off a building, jumped off a cliff in a car. I’ve been in bedrooms when women came in with knives and guns.

I don’t measure success by how many buildings have my name on it.

Of course I lie to people. But I lie altruistically – for our mutual good. The lie is the basic building block of good manners. That may seem mildly shocking to a moralist – but then what isn’t?

Indeed there are powers in the small child that are far greater than is generally realized, because it is in this period that the construction, the building-up, of man takes place, for at birth, psychically speaking, there is nothing at all – zero!

Infrastructure sector is all about building assets for the country. It is part of nation building.