It's a lot easier to gain traction when there is such a great proliferation of Internet access. The velocity at which some of these startups are gaining traction is mind-boggling. Companies like ShoeDazzle, Stella & Dot, Gilt, Groupon - these companies are going from zero to hundreds of millions in revenue in three years.

Brian Lee

In the past, there hasn't been much reliable information about startups and small businesses available online. It's information that's really valuable, and it's information that people want to share.

Adam D'Angelo

What's really happening is that every bank in the country is experimenting with the blockchain and experimenting with bitcoin to figure out where the value is. For the first time ever, they're working hand in hand with startups. Banks are asking startups for help to build products.

Adam Draper

You want people who choose to follow because they genuinely believe in ideas, not because they're afraid to be punished if they don't. For startups, there's so much pivoting that's required that if you have a bunch of sheep, you're in bad shape.

Adam Grant

Seed stage is an investment area that is really important for early stage startups. It feels like there is a need for trusted, experienced people to work with and to guide startups at this level.

Aileen Lee

Having been a venture-backed CEO, and having an established background in working with consumer-focused companies, I've built a strong network of entrepreneurs and people who can help startups.

Aileen Lee

I played with different words like 'home run,' 'megahit,' and they just all sounded kind of 'blah.' So I put in 'unicorn' because they are - these are very rare companies in the sense that there are thousands of startups in tech every year, and only a handful will wind up becoming a unicorn company. They're really rare.

Aileen Lee

I'm probably most proud of the fact that we are bootstrapped and that we are able to do not just the typical Silicon Valley startup thing. We are basically throwing away all the typical conventions of other startups.

Alan Schaaf

In Europe, there is a lower instance of startups because there's a permanent fear of failure. Everyone fears failure because it is this permanent black mark against your name, whereas in the U.S., failure seems to be par for the course.

Alexander Gilkes

In Silicon Valley, there are a lot of startups using computer vision for agriculture or shopping - there are a lot for clothes shopping. At Baidu, for example, if you find a picture of a movie star, we actually use facial recognition to identify that movie star and then tell you things like their age and hobbies.

Andrew Ng

There are two companies that the AI Fund has invested in - Woebot and Landing AI - and the AI Fund has a number of internal teams working on new projects. We usually bring in people as employees, work with them to turn ideas into startups, then have the entrepreneurs go into the startup as founders.

Andrew Ng

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.

Andrew Ng

I think the rise of A.I. is bigger than the rise of mobile. Large companies are sometimes as worried about startups as startups are about large companies. Ultimately, it will be about who delivers the best service or product.

Andrew Ng

Baidu and Google are great companies, but there are a lot of things you can do outside them. Just as electricity and the Internet transformed the world, I think the rise of modern A.I. technology will create a lot of opportunities both for new startups and for incumbent companies to transform.

Andrew Ng

The problems that you see startups tackling are dramatically different in different cities. Silicon Valley is unlikely to produce the same set of companies as New York or Cleveland because the region has a different set of strengths and defining institutions.

Andrew Yang

You can fake a lot in a startup these days, what with Amazon Web Services and all sorts of off-the-shelf back-end components that let any even minimally competent duffer set up a Web app that does something. Intelligent planning for growth is rare among early startups, but it's the name of the game at a large, rapidly scaling tech company.

Antonio Garcia Martinez

I think Yandex is something in between two different cultures. One originated from the old Soviet culture of the scientific institute. It was a free atmosphere of scientists, maybe too free because nobody cared about making money. Another origin is something close to what you usually see in California startups.

Arkady Volozh

We are seeing a new wave of young biologists that are attacking old problems with new tools and fresh ideas, leading to new types of bio startups and creating a much-needed engine to drive Silicon Valley into the next century.

Arvind Gupta

There is a glass ceiling for the Indian startups. If I want to meet the PM, it won't be as easy as a foreign guy coming to India. I understand that dynamic, and we need to make sure government sees us as major contributors to society, which is not full there.

Bhavish Aggarwal

It's much easier for non-Indian companies to raise capital because they have profitable markets elsewhere. You might call it capital dumping, predatory pricing, or anti-WTO, but it's a very unfair playing field for Indian startups.

Bhavish Aggarwal

I have a particular relationship with Vinod Khosla because he's got a lot of very interesting science-based energy startups.

Bill Gates