Reggie Fils-Aime Quotes

By definition, startups are not constrained by the limits of established company culture. And so they push boundaries and develop new technologies and ways of doing things.

Oracle has grown and advanced because we've been consistently willing to cannibalize ourselves.

The way you advance a technological society is to try things - to be controversial and contrarian in your thinking in order to get to something that eventually people say, 'I told you it was a great idea.'

Management must take the lead in making obsolete its own products and services rather than waiting for a competitor to do so.

You've got to figure out how you're going to come in and significantly impact and redefine a market such that you become a market share leader in it.

One of the greatest things that Apple and Jobs were very good at doing was daring to do the very different thing. It's what I did with my cookbook, frankly.

I've been fortunate to come on places where the question isn't why did I do it? The question to me is always, why didn't anybody else do it before me? Those are the ones that I scratch my head about.

I didn't expect such a huge reaction, but I knew I was doing something different to everything else that was happening at the time.

I'd rather Apple cannibalize Apple than somebody else cannibalize Apple.

Pushing the boundaries of what's acceptable - to me, that's something I'm definitely interested in and want to pursue.

It took the madmen of yesterday for us to be able to act with extreme clarity today. I want to be one of those madmen. We must dare to invent the future.

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

I think when you're doing something cutting edge like 'The Matrix,' it might mean when everybody's saying 'no' that you're really on the right track.

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.

A lot of technologies in the world were unusual in the beginning, and became standard. That's the beauty of bottom-up entrepreneurship and innovations.

Unless you are breaking stuff, you are not moving fast enough.

I think it's a competitive advantage that both Amazon and Google and other tech companies have over a lot of their counterparts. They take big risks and are pioneering new markets with the promise of big rewards. It's why Amazon is kind of reliably starting new businesses and opening kind of new frontiers.

I like companies that try and break away from the norm.

Leaders must go ahead even when moving ahead is controversial. You must be ahead of time, because if you want to represent the status quo, what do you need leaders for?

If I knew what the next big thing was, I'd be doing it now.

In a startup car company, everything you do has to be done in a different way than a traditional car company. And the main reason is that all of these big car companies are operating like giant well-oiled machines - you could put a very seasoned executive in, and all he has to do is make sure the machine keeps running.

Competition is one of the most important drivers of innovation because you have to stay in the race. You have to think of something new, and if you don't, well, of course you should leave the market.

I like risk takers. They're the ones that end up changing the world.

I want to create new value by doing something people haven't done before.

I like new products, I like when YouTube changes, I like when people have big ideas and try things out.