Edwin Catmull Quotes

As soon as you know what you're doing, you're doing it wrong.

There are many people who would rather lose with what they are comfortable with than changing and doing what it takes to win.

Fix a few things here, improve a few things there, launch a new feature every so often. That's coasting. And I don't want Basecamp to coast.

I never want to get content. I never want to think that I'm at a certain spot and I'm gonna stay there, because this organization's hard to stay in, and this is the wrong place to get complacent in.

In success there's a tendency to keep on doing what you were doing.

To stand still today is to go backwards...and quickly...!

Progress and growth are impossible if you always do things the way you've always done things.

If you're doing something the same way you have been doing it for ten years, the chances are you are doing it wrong.

Mathematicians are like managers - they want improvement without change.

It's so important to adapt, think outside the box, and stay ahead if you want to grow.

There are lots of lessons to learn from Amazon. Never stop innovating or questioning the fundamentals of your business. Disrupt yourself before others do. Continually motivate employees so that they never get too complacent - see Yahoo, AOL and many other Internet companies for evidence of what happens when they do.

No matter what business you're in, you can't run in place or someone will pass you by. It doesn't matter how many games you've won.

We cannot assume that past successes will insure future successes.

Experience should be a plus as long as it doesn't become complacency. If you say, 'We're not going to change; we didn't do it that way before,' then you've become too old.

We tell prospective hires, 'If you want an environment that is never going to change, don't come here. This is not the place for you.'

With scale, there always becomes this tension of, how do you keep the start-up philosophy?

One of the difficult things in a high-growth company is that, even with the best intentions, the company moves so fast, and growth happens so regularly. When you move at that rate, you have to be willing to change, and you have to be willing to take advice.

No matter how successful you are, change is always good.

A loser says that's the way it's always been done. A winner says there ought to be a better way.

One of the big problems entrepreneurs run into is they get too comfortable.

You are either getting better or getting worse, but you are never staying the same.

One who fears failure limits his activities. Failure is only the opportunity to more intelligently begin again.

I think what I'm trying to build is a reputation for evolving and for change. Because of the rate of information that we have access to at this point, it's almost hard not to be ever-growing.

You've got to stay ahead of the game to be able to stay in it.

The first rule of survival is clear: Nothing is more dangerous than yesterday's success.