Any time you make more than a couple of friends at an event, I think that you actually made no friends.
— Naveen Jain
In life, we all struggle and strive to make progress. When will you know you've reached success? A billion dollars is a good sign, but there's a better one - humility.
I have absolutely no idea about space exploration. I'm a software guy. But because I'm a non-expert, I've been able to bring the software concept of modularity into the space sector, which was never done before.
As an entrepreneur, you tend to see the opportunities where others see none.
As an entrepreneur, you only fail when you give up.
If you think something is impossible, then it certainly is... for you.
Successful ventures in business or philanthropy are built around great teams who can help us overcome tremendous challenges - and have the right experiences and relationships to do so.
By understanding and harnessing the forces that drive human behavior, you can create a self-sustaining philanthropic effort that reaches millions of people. It begins with an entrepreneurial attitude: take an idea and execute on that idea. If it doesn't work, learn why and build on what you've learned.
There is no longer a doubt that women are just as competent as men. Gender differences are guided by nurture, as society treats boys and girls differently from an early age.
I think it's time we all agree that gender stereotypes are simply the confabulation of our own mind.
I've given a lot of talks over the years on the subject of entrepreneurship. The first thing I find I have to do is to dispel the persistent myth that entrepreneurial success is all about innovative thinking and breakthrough ideas.
The goal must be to expand ourselves beyond one field of focus and use our improved access to information to solve the very real and extreme economic, environmental, and resource challenges we face as an interconnected, global society.
The entrepreneurial bug had already bitten my son Ankur by the time he got to college. As a lifelong entrepreneur, I certainly didn't want to dampen his enthusiasm by telling him he couldn't do it, but I also wanted to make sure it was balanced with the proper attention to his studies.
As fathers, we all have great lessons to teach our children.
Unfettered, creative, and enthusiastic entrepreneurship is one of the hallmarks of American life, and it has allowed us to attract the best and brightest to this country.
A person who sees a problem is a human being; a person who finds a solution is visionary; and the person who goes out and does something about it is an entrepreneur.
The capital goes wherever the opportunities are.
To nurture the sort of relationships that will truly help propel you towards accomplishing great things, you need to forget transactional networking and focus on having in-depth conversations with fewer people about subjects you really care about.
If you don't know much about the field, you're able to ask a set of questions that an expert would never ask, and that allows you a very different thought process and a fresh approach.
Don't let expertise fool you into seeing false boundaries or underestimating those with wild dreams.
I'm very, very used to hearing no - repeatedly! - and through my experience founding startups, I've learned to view those two little letters not as a final roadblock but as a problem to be solved.
Your initial idea may or may not work, but you have to remember that a failed idea is nothing but a stepping stone to a bigger success.
Investors are right to demand a clear path to self-sustainability from every business they invest in, and I believe we should ask for the same from philanthropy.
While most philanthropists tend to flock together and build their teams around friends, family, or others who happen to be retired or with a lot of free time on their hands, a great entrepreneur knows that success is directly related to the quality and talents of their team.
Philanthropists can learn important lessons from business entrepreneurs. They both spend their time solving problems. And to be successful, they both must overcome physical challenges and create self-sustaining operations. And ultimately, they must allow people to take action for their own benefit.
Clearly, we are not programmed at birth to behave a certain way based on our gender. Instead, we are trained throughout our lives to conform to our gender norms.
If you know you are giving your best effort, you'll never have any reason for regrets.
I've found that entrepreneurial success usually comes through great execution, simply by doing a superior job of doing the blocking and tackling.
Open-source encyclopedias such as Wikipedia and search engines such as Google and Bing, which people can tap into anytime and anywhere via computers and smart phones, put a world of knowledge at our fingertips at a lower cost than ever before.
If you are passionate about entrepreneurship like I am, you too can instill this passion in your children.
I am really happy to see the number of entrepreneurs in India - not only because of the ideas they have but also because of the passion at which their ideas are put across.
If we want to impact hundreds - or millions - of people, we have to do things differently. If we look at the problem as an infrastructural problem, we cannot make an impact because it requires a lot of effort. But when we convert this problem into a knowledge problem, suddenly the problem is manageable.
An entrepreneur is not a person who starts a company, but he is the person who actually solves a problem.
Technology itself is neither good nor bad. People are good or bad.
You know you've reached true success the day you become truly humble. That's the day you stop needing to prove to the world - and yourself - that you've accomplished something meaningful.
When you're starting a new business, you don't need to know much about it. A lot of the work is blocking and tackling - it's the same type of stuff no matter what sector you're in.
When your child comes to you at a young age and declares he or she is passionate about this or that, the natural tendency for many parents, out of love, is to simply support that decision. That's the path of least resistance, but it's not necessarily the best path, in my opinion.
I may have managed to build a successful technology startup that had gone public by the time my three kids hit their 13th birthdays, but don't think that bought my wife and me any special respect from our teenagers.
In my view, the first requirement for success for an entrepreneur is to dream big. The second aspect that prevents entrepreneurs from succeeding is fear of failure.
Entrepreneurial Philanthropy is not just a philosophy or a dream. It is a promise that philanthropy is at its best when it is founded on entrepreneurial zest and agility.
Many of the problems of poverty and need are really problems of physical infrastructure: not enough hospitals, too few schools, insufficient roads, bridges, and a lack of tools. This is what makes traditional philanthropy so daunting. You could build a thousand new hospitals in some parts of the world and barely make a difference.
I am convinced that only by applying the values of an entrepreneur to philanthropy will you ever be able to meet the needs of the greatest number of people.
It is always great to see technology leaders like Ginni Rometty, Marissa Mayer, and Meg Whitman breaking through as a new generation of leaders.
Successful entrepreneurs always give 100% of their efforts to everything they do.
Experts are able to identify patterns related to a specific problem relevant to their area of knowledge. But because nonexperts lack that base of knowledge, they are forced to rely more on their brain's ability for abstraction rather than specificity.
The digital revolution has also meant a revolution in access to information. This puts more power and knowledge into the hands of nonexperts.
I am proud of my kids and happy to brag about their achievements. Their success has been an immense source of happiness for me.
I absolutely believe in the power of innovative entrepreneurship on every level. That's why I am exploring ways to improve our education system by making it as effective as a private tutor and as engaging as video games.
Sometimes we never see what failure is and often fail to recognize it.
If you create great opportunities, people around the world will come support your dream.
