Nick Denton Quotes

Jeremy Stoppelman started Yelp. Max Levchin started Slide. I started LinkedIn. It was a mininova explosion of folks jumping out to doing other entrepreneurial activities.

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.

Silicon Valley's long-running track record of creating globally disruptive startups is the envy of the world.

Over the last ten years, technological advances have dramatically lowered the financial bar for starting a new company, but the courage bar for building a great company remains as high as it has ever been.

Atari showed that young people could start big companies. Without that example it would have been harder for Jobs and Bill Gates, and people who came after them, to do what they did.

The market is ridiculously overcrowded with early stage investors. This results in a talent drain, where the best talent gets diffused and work for their own startups.

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

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.

In Delicious's case, it's a great brand that belongs in Silicon Valley.

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 love what the Valley does. I love company building. I love startups. I love technology companies. I love new technology. I love this process of invention. Being able to participate in that as a founder and a product creator, or as an investor or a board member, I just find that hugely satisfying.

Little startups are ridiculously overfunded.

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

In the space of three weeks, I met a fair bunch of the guys who were just starting those little programmers' co-ops, and everybody was talking about starting businesses.

There are so many startups out there raising money. I don't think this is a bad thing. It's a good thing. Entrepreneurship is in vogue. Innovators are innovating. Makers are making.

New startups embody the creativity, the innovation of young people, and for me, it was and is a very worthwhile experience to interact with them.

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.

'Silicon Valley' likes being satirized. They've all been waiting for someone to come along and make fun of it.

It's worth noting that everything - from the Internet to electric cars, genomic sequencing, mobile apps, and social media - were pioneered by startups, not existing companies.

Minority founders often feel like they are on the outside looking in when it comes to Silicon Valley and tech startups in general.

After graduating in International Relations in 2011, I turned down safe, corporate job offers and instead accepted a position at an 'incubator' in L.A. - a tech word for a team of people who are funded by investors to create apps. I knew the future was digital and that I had to take a risk.

Startups were thriving in Los Angeles when Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard were closer to the nursery than they were the garage.

If you look now, more than ever new entrants, new upstarts, are able to grow so much faster than they could before.

Startups are the engines of exponential growth, manifesting the power of innovation. Several big companies today are startups of yesterday. They were born with a spirit of enterprise and adventure kept alive due to hardwork and perseverance and today have become shining beacons of innovation.