Simplicity is hard to build, easy to use, and hard to charge for. Complexity is easy to build, hard to use, and easy to charge for.
Chris Sacca
My biggest concern is the abundance of public doubt and misunderstanding when it comes to Twitter's vision and the near future for the service.
I spent a lot of time learning how to define myself internally rather than externally. I learned how to care less about external validation. I think that's given me a renewed confidence in speaking out loud. I kind of don't care what people think about me. I feel a lot more confident in saying what I believe.
I have learned a ton about inventory, co-packing, wholesaling, end caps. All these concepts are easy to breeze by in what I do for a living or assume that there is a marketing manager or specialist in one of our companies that handles that.
If Trump publicly commits to embrace science, stops threatening censorship of the Internet, rejects fake news and denounces hate against our diverse employees, only then it would make sense for tech leaders to visit Trump Tower.
When you see a 'Shark fight' erupt, we aggressively want to understand what we are committing our money toward.
There is no well-trodden route to where I am, no formula to replicate.
A deep appreciation for politics comes from empathy for our fellow human beings and their diverse paths through life.
I have one of the self-driving Teslas; it drives itself periodically. It's a marvel of science, but it's still frightening. I think we've got a while before regulators and the general public wrap their heads around the path that will lead to the ubiquity of driverless cars. There's no doubt Uber will be a leader in that space.
I don't have a boss or PR person, so I'm accountable to no one.
I think there wouldn't be a Net neutrality debate in this country if we really had a competitive environment for access.
I may be the only shark who hasn't been on QVC, but I have learned a lot from those folks about what it takes to get a product on store shelves.
In social settings, under the guise of joking, being collegial, flirting, or having a good time, I undoubtedly caused some women to question themselves, retreat, feel alone, and worry they can't be their authentic selves.
One of my rules for investing is, I don't invest in a deal where I don't think I have an unfair advantage and where I don't think I can personally impact the outcome.
I've learned that it's often the less obvious, yet pervasive and questionable, everyday behaviors of men in our industry that collectively make it inhospitable for women.
The day after Donald Trump was elected, Chinese business leaders, including the heads of Baidu, stood up and gave a speech saying, 'Come to China and build your company now.' The cognitive dissonance of that was amazing for some of us to think we might be losing our leadership role in building companies.
I was in the room when Sundar convinced Eric Schmidt that it would be possible to unseat Internet Explorer as the world's most popular browser.
2009 was one of the busiest, most insane, stressful periods in my entire career. I was raising a bunch of money, buying a bunch of Twitter. I saw my friend fired as CEO of Twitter. Uber was growing like a weed. As these companies get bigger and bigger, there's more and more friction. Being public was the last thing I wanted to do at the time.
The idea that there is a meritocracy where anyone from any background really might have the social and economic mobility to rise to the top in Silicon Valley, those are antithetical to a lot of the principles that the Trump administration apparently stands for.
Live Twitter can be built right into the main Twitter app, but it should certainly have its own tab so we can concentrate on the live experience free of distraction.
If you follow my tweets, you know, my attention and anxiety have been increasingly focused on the plight of our democracy.
If Twitter genuinely wants users to buy things at scale, they have to give us a chance to consider the offers and make a decision in a matter of minutes/hours/days, not just seconds.
American computer science grads often have very little exposure to the human condition. They've rarely had manual labor or service jobs. They grow up in a bubble of privilege lulled into thinking this country is a true meritocracy.
They are desperate for surrogates to get behind Trump, and they can't find anyone who has actually had genuine success who is willing to stand behind him. That is because he is all smoke and mirrors. We know he doesn't have all the money he claims he has.
I think our election proved to us that 'billionaire' is an incredibly magical word in our language in that people just defer to it. Donald Trump is not a billionaire, but he knew it was vital for him to be perceived as one.
The passive acceptance of exclusionary words and deeds is not okay.
Buckminster Fuller - he never lost faith in the goodness of humanity.
How can you build something for someone else if you don't have enough familiarity with them to imagine the world through their eyes?
All broadcasts on Periscope need to be archived for playback permanently, unless the broadcaster chooses to delete the recording. So many treasured moments have been shared on Periscope only to vanish a day later.
I don't drink coffee. Weird, I know. But I try to stay away from caffeine. That said, we are investors in Blue Bottle, which is delicious!
Silicon Valley today is populated mostly by people who would consider themselves winners of the traditional race. This causes the exclusion of the voices that are vital to a round, robust society. It's beyond gentrification.
When someone comes in with a product they want in Bed Bath & Beyond, that's way out of my comfort zone.
The Internet is not pervasive as it could be, or democratic.
In the earlier years of my career, I made my own attempts to fit in and be accepted as one of the tribe of Sand Hill Road guys.
The Sharks step right on each other's questions, and if I ever did that in Silicon Valley, I would be considered a pariah. I literally had to learn how to interrupt.
There is a greed case for diversity. Diverse perspectives bring us into markets we didn't know existed.
I had a blast. 'Shark Tank' embodies the American Dream. If you watch the show at home, you find yourself constantly hollering at the Sharks. Being able to sit next to them and call them out in real time was quite a privilege.
'Shark Tank' has been a sincere joy. As our traditional venture-backed companies get bigger, the investing side tends to get more political and complicated. 'Shark Tank' takes me back to my early days working with ambitious founders in their earliest and scrappiest days. The show reminds me of what I deeply love about this business.
Uber is a better company with better math, better predictive supply, better brand, lower pickup times, higher quality of service. They'll absolutely win.
One of the things that technology has is a direct relationship with its users. We talk about newspapers. But the biggest newspapers in the world right now are Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram.
It is very hip to be an angel investor now. There used to be a dozen, two dozen guys at these demo days writing checks. Now there are hundreds.
Work at a place like Google for awhile: if you do an interview and you say all the right things, no one really cares. But the day you say the wrong sentence, it's attributed to 'Senior Google Executive,' and the stock moves, and everybody hates you.
I really do see the sharks evolving their perspective. In the early days of the show, if you brough them an app, they would've turned their noses up. But now they know how indispensable those apps are, even to their own traditional businesses.
I have definitely refocused Lowercase Capital on later-stage deals and my existing portfolio.
I'll miss working with Mark, and all of the other Sharks. Each of them has been incredibly generous and warm to me, and I am proud of all the episodes we made together.
Uber has an information advantage, a computational advantage. There's massive structural advantages to the player who's smartest about how to deploy cars, where to deploy cars, how to adjust pricing dynamics, how to ensure supply of drivers - the party that understands best the behavior of riders.
When I was 20 years old, I was living in Ireland, going to school in Cork. There was this girl in my film class that I was kind of flirting with. We had this notebook that we passed back and forth. We would write 10 questions and then pass it back while we were supposedly paying attention.
I've yet to see an example of somebody standing up to Donald Trump and suggesting policy initiatives and him embracing them yet. It's not happening at scale.
It would be a lot cheaper for me not to have to raise tens of millions of dollars to elect progressive candidates who will raise my taxes.
One rule we have at my house is, be proud of what we invest in.
