Jim Goetz Quotes

Silicon Valley has some of the smartest engineers and technology business people in the world.

There's a new generation of entrepreneurs in the Valley who have arrived since 2000, after the dotcom bust. They're completely fearless.

I do think there are more and more entrepreneurs all the time that think big. Those are the people we should be finding and funding. Most of them will fail, but the ones who succeed will change the world, and that is progress.

America demands invention and innovation to succeed.

Many entrepreneurs that made their fortunes by founding successful technology companies want to give back and solve the world's biggest problems on a grand scale. There is tremendous opportunity in this approach.

I often have said to people that there are really two cities in the country where the outlook is always forward-looking - there is never really a backward-looking tendency. My banking work has taken me out to Palo Alto, what is commonly called Silicon Valley. And you sense out there is always a forward-looking outlook. And New York City.

My creative side is identifying all these great entrepreneurial creative people that come up with great ideas, whether they are in fashion or technology or a new tool to improve ourselves.

Before I started Code for America, I spent my career around startups. First it was game developers, small teams trying to make hits in a tough business. Then, when I started working on the Web 2.0 events, it was web startups during times of enormous opportunity and investment.

The 1920s and 1930s were a period of sensational productivity growth: new products were springing up all over the place, and most of those new products and new methods were developed by people who started their own companies.

For a first-time entrepreneur, there's nothing better than being in Silicon Valley because there is so much going on, and there's such a large number of inventors, that even a B level idea or a C level idea could be nurtured and be given venture capital there.

Entrepreneurs see the thing they want or need, then try to figure out a process of how to get it. People who shouldn't be entrepreneurs see the standard process they need to go through to get the thing they want or need then decide if they want to go through that process.

The American economy has been built and sustained by risk-taking entrepreneurs whose pioneering ideas and hard work gave birth to flourishing businesses.

I didn't know anything about Silicon Valley.

It's almost a cliche that great Silicon Valley entrepreneurs don't go sit on a beach when they make a lot of money; they get back to work building another company or at least investing in other people's companies.

I believe in entrepreneurs. I believe in their ability to make positive change in the world.

So we went to Atari and said, 'Hey, we've got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we'll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we'll come work for you.' And they said, 'No.' So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, 'Hey, we don't need you. You haven't got through college yet.'

For decades, technology entrepreneurship has been revered, and people like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk were heroes.

Entrepreneurship is the key to emerging technologies.

Silicon Valley has been this global engine of innovation and economic growth over the last few decades, but a tidal wave of innovation that has been focused very much in the digital realm.

ChicagoNEXT is focused on making Chicago the best possible place for technology entrepreneurs.

We try and reflect that there's a lot of optimism, there's a lot of positive things that are happening in 'Silicon Valley'.

The phrase 'change the world' is tossed around Silicon Valley conversations and business plans as freely as talk of 'early-stage investing' and 'beta tests.'

To spend time in Silicon Valley in a year of political upheaval is, on one level, soothing. It is pleasant to hear talk of wearables, walled gardens, and disruptive beverages in between updates about mass deportation.

People tend to pay too little attention to history - the history of Silicon Valley and American business - and think they're the first people to come across a problem.

I think the Indian AI ecosystem is growing rapidly. A lot of Indian entrepreneurs reach out to me seeking feedback about startups and products. And some of them have very interesting business ideas.