Ecstasy is almost never discussed anymore, but leaving the earth is one way of attaining it. To exchange ecstasy for death is often the bargain.
— Caterina Fake
Dream, struggle, create, prevail. Be daring. Be brave. Be loving. Be compassionate. Be strong. Be brilliant. Be beautiful.
Our successes have been so great and so rapid that, within 20 years, we've gotten a third of the world's population online, shrunk our computers to the size of our hands, and connected each to each.
I first got online in the late '80s when I was an eccentric teenager in suburban New Jersey, in a town mostly interested in sports, popularity, and clothes. I was a reader, into Jorge Luis Borges, and I found, connected to, and delighted in a group of Borges scholars from Aarhus, Denmark, that I met online.
Good parents, who are able to maintain the affection and respect of their children and whose offspring admire them and value their good opinion, can be reasonably certain that their values and ways of socialized behaving will be adopted by the next generation.
One of the issues we face here in San Francisco and Silicon Valley is a sense that the people all around us are as conversant in startup and tech culture as we are. But we need to remember, and remind ourselves repeatedly, that we're a small minority in a larger population.
As a child, I learned hundreds of poems by heart, which I can recite to this day.
I approached Yahoo as a learning experience. Everything at every stage of the game affects what you do next. At Yahoo, I learned a lot about social search and met a lot of amazing people - some are now entrepreneurs with companies I subsequently invested in.
I go to bed early - around 9 P.M. or 10 P.M. - and wake up between 2 A.M. and 5 A.M. and get an extra three hours of work done. Then I have a regular work day. It's very effective.
It's fairly easy to know when you've succeeded because you're kind of hanging on for dear life. It's such an unstoppable juggernaut; you're trying to stay with your head above water because things are moving so fast.
Do not seek prizes that aren't worth getting.
I've had two IPOs: with Etsy in 2015 and Cloudera in 2016. There have also been a ton of trade sales in my portfolio.
'You, too, can be the President,' every American kid is told. But one unintended consequence of this belief, it is that, as a result of our being a meritocracy, if you have not succeeded, you are of lesser merit. It is shameful to be a failure in this country.
There is great work to be done, and the women will lead us. So I say, Astonish us with your genius. Inspire us with your creation. Work with one another. Endure the tribulations.
A lot of things have changed since the days of Flickr. Facebook has concentrated the sociality of the Internet within its blue borders, like a Walmart siphoning off the mom-and-pop shops that formerly comprised the Internet's gathering places. Communication, in the age of mobile dominance, has become, of necessity, shorter and snack-sized.
The Internet is full of strangers, generous strangers who want to help you for no reason at all. Strangers post poetry and discographies and advice and essays and photos and art and diatribes. None of them are known to you, in the old-fashioned sense. But they give the Internet its life and meaning.
I wish we didn't have to be nude to be noticed... But given the game as it exists, women make decisions. For instance, the Miss America contest is, in all of its states... the single greatest source of scholarship money for women in the United States.
College is an environment designed to encourage openness - the ability to think of things in novel ways and entertain unconventional beliefs.
The single thing I've found it valuable to memorize is poetry.
I stay up on current events. I read 'The New Yorker' and 'The Economist.' I go to community meetings to see what concerns the people in my neighborhood. I studied literature in college, so I also continue to read poetry, literature, and novels.
I work really hard. My daughter asks me what I do, and it's mostly calls, emails, and meetings. We have our office in Hayes Valley, a nice part of town, because we're all about place being important.
If the business were a play, Act One is, 'Woohoo, bright and bushy-tailed. We're going to make something great!' Act Two is, 'We're six months behind on back-end development.'
Trade sales are the bulk of exits, and there's no shame in that. Sometimes, it's exactly the right thing to do.
I joined the board of Etsy when it was just three founders, and I helped recruit the COO and CTO, Chad Dickerson, who later became the CEO.
If there is a national, secular religion in the United States, it is the belief that America is the Land of Opportunity, that we are a meritocracy, that any kid, no matter who they are, or where they come from, can work hard and move up in the world: that their effort matters.
Because the Internet is a medium, it doesn't care whether it transmits love or hate. It is what we build and who we are that make it what it is. We can build things that diminish our humanity or build things that bring us to human flourishing.
I learned most of what I knew about online communities on The Well, and it was a good place to learn. The group of people in Sausalito and Bolinas who'd gotten the Whole Earth Catalog off the ground - a bunch of boomer hippies, intellectuals and nerds - established the 'Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link', and showed us what online communities were.
The children of less effective, less competent parents will be more likely to adopt the customs and values of the peer group.
I had never understood why the farmlands of the U.S. had been settled in such a sparse and isolated way, whereas the farming communities in Europe seemed closer, more convivial, centered around village life.
I wanted to become a writer and felt that poetry was perfected language, so having it in my subconscious mind would make the music of language always available to me.
If you built a successful company the first time, it's really important not to fall into the trap of resting on your laurels and doing the same thing the next time. It's stepping into the unknown that enables you to create something fresh, new, and innovative.
A co-founder is like being somebody's parent: You want to make sure your offspring thrive.
If you look at all the companies I've been involved with - Flickr, Etsy, Findery - communities are a significant part of them. Connecting people to each other, user-generated content, building interactions. That's what I've cared about most.
Facebook is a powerful company, yes, but so was IBM.
When you have a failed pitch, you meet many more venture capitalists than you really want to.
A lot of the reason I wanted to become an entrepreneur and avoid working for others is that you get to create the world you want to live in and the company you want to work for, and I've loved that. It's a part of entrepreneurship that women should really embrace.
