My ultimate legacy would be to retire from Atlassian one day and see it going on to bigger and better things in twenty, fourty, or fifty years after me!
— Scott FarquharCo-Founder of Atlassian & Technology Entrepreneur
“Only relatively recently in our own culture, five hundred years or so ago, did a distinction arise that cut society in two, forming separate classes of music performers and music listeners.”— Hans Zimmer
Acclaimed film composer known for scores like The Lion King and Inception
The quote archive
Business
A growing archive of 3,000+ moments, drawn from every interview.
It's hard to create a very successful company, not many people do that. It's even harder to create a company that is durable. Our aim is to create a company that outlasts its founders, and to build a hundred year company you need to provide great customer value, have great employees and great processes.
— Scott FarquharCo-Founder of Atlassian & Technology Entrepreneur
I started my entrepreneurship journey straight out of college, and at the time my goal was simple. I didn't want a real job, and I didn't want to wear a suit…. Anything more than that was a bonus.
— Scott FarquharCo-Founder of Atlassian & Technology Entrepreneur
The systems we now use exist at a scale that's actually hard to comprehend as human beings. On Facebook, you are one of several billion people and at that scale, it's easy to become a number, or simply a wallet. At that scale, it's very hard to make any meaningful change as an individual.
— Mitchell BakerCEO and Chairwoman of Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla Corporation
Another hugely common mistake is optimising your business for investors, and not customers and employees. If you don't believe me, look at the fact that consulting businesses have a 5 year survival rate of 60% and venture backed businesses, less than 10%.
— Rand FishkinFounder of Moz, SEO software company and industry thought leader
One of the biggest myths in startup-land is this idea that the pinnacle of startups is building a venture-scale company, backed by venture capital, growing exceptionally fast and being OK with high failure rates as a result; in other words, returning a significant amount of capital to an investor rather than any other outcome.
— Rand FishkinFounder of Moz, SEO software company and industry thought leader
If you are able to share the things you're scared people will find out? That's real transparency, and that's how you earn the trust that transparency can bring, but if it doesn't feel uncomfortable, it's just marketing.
— Rand FishkinFounder of Moz, SEO software company and industry thought leader
When you're not in a geopolitical recession, political risk still matters, but it matters largely at a country level and primarily in emerging markets. But in a geopolitical recession, suddenly the biggest macro risks are by their nature political. And you focus less on growth and more on stability and resilience, and that's a problem because the free market model tells you 'don't focus on resilience and stability, focus first and foremost on growth and everything else will take care of itself'.
— Ian BremmerFounder of Eurasia Group & Political Risk Analyst
Our apps and platforms are addictive by design. We know this both because the tech titans behind them have admitted it publicly, and because the dominant apps and social media platforms use the same suite of techniques that are well-proven to ensnare us.
— Adam AlterPsychologist & Author specializing in behavioral psychology and irrational decision-making
To my mind, the essence of capitalism is that decentralised economic decisions can be taken in firms that compete against each other in structured markets, and do so under strong incentives for growth and the increase of productivity. It's the only system we've ever hit-on that appears to be capable of driving mass prosperity.
— Paul CollierEconomist specializing in poverty, conflict, and development in Africa
The luxury industry is built on heritage, craftsmanship and relationships – we have spent a decade building those relationships and nurturing and caring for the brands' heritage.
— José NevesFounder and CEO of Farfetch, luxury fashion e-commerce platform
Technology should be leveraged to enhance the physical and human experience, not replace it. There is something magical about the physical retail experience that digital will never completely replace.
— José NevesFounder and CEO of Farfetch, luxury fashion e-commerce platform
Slowly, over the course of a decade, we built relationships by proving we weren't there to destroy luxury's heritage and its 'unspoken codes of conduct,' but actually to protect them and enable this industry to thrive. We were fashion insiders, and we just happened to be coders too!
— José NevesFounder and CEO of Farfetch, luxury fashion e-commerce platform
The mythology tells us that you come to the valley and forge your own path, but in reality young people come here and are asked to essentially create careers that are a daisy chain of gigs on mini-innovation projects within large corporations.
— Cary McClellandElizabeth Holmes is the product of a culture that has brought up young entrepreneurs to say, and believe, that 'moving fast and breaking things' is cool, that disrupting now and worrying about the consequences later is fine and that breaking laws and regulations is something to be proud of.
— John CarreyrouInvestigative journalist who exposed Theranos fraud through Wall Street Journal reporting
She channelled that culture, and felt entitled to do the same thing – only her device wasn't a computer, or software, it was a medical device that patients and doctors relied on to make important health decisions, some of them life-or-death decisions. With medicine, you simply can't fake it till you make it. Otherwise, you jeopardize lives.
— John CarreyrouInvestigative journalist who exposed Theranos fraud through Wall Street Journal reporting