Aileen Lee Quotes

I can't tell you how many board meetings I've been in where the CEO is anguished over the impacts on morale that cost cutting or layoffs will bring about. You know what hurts morale even more than cost-cutting and layoffs? Going out of business.

I'm trying to construct a world that maximises the probability that SpaceX continues its mission without me.

It has always been clear that The Washington Post is a company that is set up for the purpose of protecting the long-term interests of its assets and held together as a holding company.

Strategy is about making choices, trade-offs; it's about deliberately choosing to be different.

You have to build businesses for longer term.

At Participant, I am the board. I am the sole greenlight at the company. If something happened to me, that would be a problem.

When there is more money at stake it affects the atmosphere and things become more businesslike.

One of the hardest things in politics is to convince people to do things now that will have a good effect 20 or 30 years from now because politicians tend to have a short-term view. They are more attentive to things that people care about today.

An asset allocation plan is based on your personal circumstances, goals, time-horizon, and need and willingness to take risk.

In the financial markets, hindsight is forever 20/20, but foresight is legally blind. And thus, for most investors, market timing is a practical and emotional impossibility.

The risk of a business being hit by a low probability, high impact event is far higher than most boards realize because the number of potential wild cards is so great.

Business is all about learning to balance the short-term, medium-term and long-term and I think it's when things are going well it covers up a lot of mistakes and bad decisions because you're growing so quickly.

If your fund doesn't last for the long term, how can you invest for the long term?

A company's ability to respond to an unplanned event, good or bad is a prime indicator of its ability to compete.

As long as you enjoy investing, you'll be willing to do the homework and stay in the game. That's why I try to make the show so entertaining, because if you aren't interested, you'll either miss the opportunity to make money in the market or not pay enough attention and end up losing your shirt.

The purpose of investing is not to simply optimise returns and make yourself rich. The purpose is not to die poor.

I believe the chance of any event causing Berkshire to experience financial problems is essentially zero. We will always be prepared for the thousand-year flood; in fact, if it occurswe will be selling life jackets to the unprepared.

Investing is simple, but not easy.

As an entrepreneur, you've got to protect against the company going bust. And as an adventurer, you've got to protect against losing your life. It's even more important as an adventurer to get it right.

The most serious failure of leadership is the failure to foresee

Communists should set an example in being practical as well as far-sighted. For only by being practical can they fulfil the appointed tasks, and only far-sightedness can prevent them from losing their bearings in the march forward.

You want to be an alchemist so badly? Don't wait to react to the immediate problem. Plan ahead. Look at the big picture and you won't ever have to deal with that problem. Better to save yourself from a major catastrophe than drag your feet over a bunch of little inconveniences.

Chess teaches you to control the initial excitement you feel when you see something that looks good and it trains you to think objectively when you're in trouble

No one ever won a chess game by betting on each move. Sometimes you have to move backward to get a step forward.

Being a visionary leader is not about giving speeches and inspiring the troops. How I spend my day is pretty much the same as how any executive spends his day. Being a visionary leader is about solving day-to-day problems with my vision in mind.