Travis Kalanick Quotes

Taking risks, breaking the rules, and being a maverick have always been important but today they are more crucial than ever.

Entrepreneurs are all a little crazy. There is a fine line between an entrepreneur and a crazy person. Crazy people see and feel things that others don't. An entrepreneur's dream is often a kind of madness, and it is almost as isolating. What differentiates the entrepreneur from the crazy person is that the former gets other people to believe in his vision.

Entrepreneurs are misfits to the core. They forge ahead, making their own path and always, always, question the status quo.

When I came into the mobile phone business, I was really the upstart who pretty much took the business, not quite by storm, but really made an impact on it quite early on. But it was from a position, really, of feeling that I was a last mover.

Breaking the rules and challenging convention is in the DNA of every successful entrepreneur.

Successful people are the ones who are breaking the rules.

My favorite quote about entrepreneurship is that to understand an entrepreneur, you should study a juvenile delinquent. They're both saying: "This sucks and I'm going to do it another way." You have to want to break the rules and prove that your way works.

I'm also a big believer of being a scrappy entrepreneur. To be successful you don't have to have all this crazy start-up capital or a ton of knowledge. I think it's actually helpful sometimes to not know all the rules because that way it's easier to break them. And that's why it's so much easier for younger people, I think, to start companies that are challenging more traditional business models than older people. Especially if you're trying to do something good.

I always follow the same idea: Start small and disrupt to create something big.

Imagine the world of mobile based on Nokia and Motorola if Apple had not been restarted by a missionary entrepreneur named Steve Jobs who cared more for his vision than being tactical and financial.

There's no single right place to be an entrepreneur, but certainly there's something about Silicon Valley.

An entrepreneur is someone who brings a pattern change.

When we started Skype, if you look at analyst reports, no one forecasted it as a big business. Also when Google started, it was not fashionable to be in search. It's not trying to do the obvious - that's the hard part.

Silicon Valley is a mindset, not a location.

I'm not a pirate. I'm an innovator.

Remember: you cannot build a better mouse trap by fixing the old one - NewCo demands active ownership, and that activity is not the sum of doing multiple jobs but, instead, the sum of implementing paradigm-shifting changes that create new industries and solutions.

There's a reason why start-ups, especially disruptive start-ups - like Google or Amazon or Uber - are full of young people. That's because young people are not as wedded to the old fashioned ways of doing things.

Democracy tends to be a collaborative process, a committee, a consensus. Silicon Valley tends to believe in the individual who creates a small group and does something big.

Build a company that changes the way things get done!

The essence of my way of doing business is to not accept the traditional way things are done.

When I started Chipotle, I didn't know the fast-food rules. People told us the food was too expensive and the menu was too limited. Neither turned out to be true.

In a startup, there have to be challenges. Otherwise, someone else would have done it already. And that's almost the most exciting part.

Companies that tend to survive are the rebels.

All people are entrepreneurs, but many don't have the opportunity to find that out.

Risk taking and the drive to pursue innovative ideas are the fuel that stokes the entrepreneurial spirit.