Alexis Ohanian Quotes

An enterprising person is one who sees opportunity in all areas of life.

Being an entrepreneur isn’t just a job title, and it isn’t just about starting a company. It’s a state of mind. It’s about seeing connections others can’t, seizing opportunities others won’t, and forging new directions that others haven’t.

Because it's so empowering, I want people to think about being entrepreneurial regardless. They don't have to start companies, but that's what makes them great employees, that's what makes them great citizens.

Entrepreneurship is a life idea, not a strictly business one; a global idea, not a strictly American one.

Creativity and business acumen don't always go hand in hand.

We are looking for highly technical, enthusiastic and capable entrepreneurs who have a healthy disregard for the impossible, and that's not always easy to find.

In Silicon Valley, if you spend a lot of time thinking about the obstacles, you'll talk yourself out of everything, because the more you look at it, the less logical something sounds, since no one has done it yet.

When Facebook famously moved out to Palo Alto, there were people in the same house Facebook was based in working on different ideas. It is vital to remember that.

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.

Silicon Valley is a mindset, not a location.

I think entrepreneurs are born and not created, and so I think you see a lot of similarities among entrepreneurs in different parts of the world. Their backdrop may be very different, but their drive to create a business and to create jobs remains very much the same, whether it's in Silicon Valley or Kandahar or Kabul.

One of the great things about young entrepreneurs is that they don't know that something can't be done. So they try something that's so audacious and usually end up pulling it off.

Startups can be the most conservative organizations in the world. We spend so much energy nurturing our delicate egos against naysayers and self-doubt that we can hardly admit mistakes. This is especially true of first-time CEOs.

Startups, by their nature, are entrepreneurial - testing new things, launching new products, and disrupting themselves. That's why you join a startup in the first place - to create, to stretch beyond your current capabilities, and to make an outsized impact.

There are lots of people who say you are born an entrepreneur - you either have that gene or not. I really disagree with that.

Part of being the successful Pixar is that we will take risks on teams and ideas, and some of them won't work out. We only lose from this if we don't respond to the failures. If we respond, and we think it through and figure out how to move ahead, then we're learning from it. That's what Pixar is.

Once you're an entrepreneur you're always an entrepreneur, and you need that fix.

I am an entrepreneur in the entertainment industry. Somewhere early on when I couldn't get something I wanted through the system, I threw up my hands and tried to figure a way to get it done myself. A lot of it came from my upbringing. My dad was an entrepreneur.

Entrepreneurship, to me, means that you're a psychopath. The world doesn't work in the way you want it to, and you have a vision for how it should work. Unlike everyone else, this isn't OK with you. You have to go out, against every possible odd, and do something about it. That's what makes you crazy.

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

The people who built Silicon Valley were engineers. They learned business, they learned a lot of different things, but they had a real belief that humans, if they worked hard with other creative, smart people, could solve most of humankind's problems. I believe that very much.

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

A vision is something you see and others don't. Some people would say that's a pocket definition of lunacy. But it also defines entrepreneurial spirit.

The idea of becoming an entrepreneur is something that is not taught very well in school and is something that people should try to do earlier on.

Friends and family will tell you why your ideas won't work. Most are left-brained employees and specialists and NOT entrepreneurs.