Brianna Wu Quotes

Something new will always be the source of growth in Silicon Valley.

I think that's exactly what Silicon Valley was all about in those days. Let's do a startup in our parents' garage and try to create a business.

I think there are too many start-ups and not enough real companies.

Not everybody wants to be Mark Zuckerberg, but everybody wants to create a little piece of the American dream, the Silicon Valley version. I don't think that's a bad thing.

Every kid coming out of Harvard, every kid coming out of school now thinks he can be the next Mark Zuckerberg, and with these new technologies like cloud computing, he actually has a shot.

Over the next 10 years, I expect many more industries to be disrupted by software, with new world-beating Silicon Valley companies doing the disruption in more cases than not.

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.

There is no greater country on Earth for entrepreneurship than America. In every category, from the high-tech world of Silicon Valley, where I live, to University R&D labs, to countless Main Street small business owners, Americans are taking risks, embracing new ideas and - most importantly - creating jobs.

My friends are people who like building cool stuff. We always have this joke about people who want to just start companies without making something valuable. There's a lot of that in Silicon Valley.

I'm a creature of startups. For example, I don't want government interference in the startup ecosystem.

Silicon Valley is a mindset, not a location.

The venture industry is both quite vibrant and quite competitive.

We are shifting from a managerial society to an entrepreneurial society.

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

An open-minded and diverse population that readily shares information, encourages experimentation, accepts failure and dispenses with formality and hierarchy is what makes Silicon Valley the successful hub that it is.

Technology ventures can succeed with very little investment, unlike many other industries. A lot of the big Internet players like Google or Yahoo were started by a couple of guys with computers. Microsoft was started in Bill Gates' garage.

I want to create an environment where I can create technology, get it into the hands of someone to market it, and move on to other technologies so I can keep innovating. I want to be a serial entrepreneur: Incubate an idea, get it to a good state, and make that an enabler to get to the next state. It's every researcher's fantasy.

There are always giants out there trying to strangle the innovator and steal his innovation.

Where the rules of the road are not there, then there’s a tremendous amount of opportunity for entrepreneurs to bring in their innovation and their different way of thinking.

When I came to the United States in 2004 to attend university at Stanford, I was instantly inspired by the stories and advice from startup leaders in Silicon Valley and beyond, who had endeavoured to create new opportunities and improve lives around the world.

Did Google know much about media? Or Amazon about commerce? Tesla about cars? SpaceX about rockets? EBay about classifieds? What did I know about computing when I started Sun Microsystems? We should celebrate these entrepreneurs, not pillory them for fighting entrenched incumbent industries that have political influence and money.

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

At the end of the day, what makes Silicon Valley work is technology and the outcome of making money. Those two things have to be healthy. It has to matter a lot more than who is the celebrity and who is famous and who goes to the best parties.

As a venture capitalist, I invest in people and ideas that are fresh, vibrant, and willing to disrupt the market. As a political donor, I like to see the same energy in the people I support.

People are still very focused on the startup story: Risk-taking founders, with a bold idea, some capital and a network supportive environment, go out and take the shot on goal. But the problem is, this is no longer the truth about what makes Silicon Valley so special.