Running a start-up is like eating glass. You just start to like the taste of your own blood.
Sean Parker
I've been doing a hybrid of investing and entrepreneurship, which I think initially I wasn't set out to do. But I realized it fit my personality.
At every point I am besieged by people who would like me to conform to some social norm of whatever sort of social group they expect me to be a part of. I never have any identification with these social groups.
Gray hats are the ones who think they're doing good, but they're not. You learn that when the FBI shows up on your doorstep.
I definitely wanted to earn my freedom. But the primary motivation wasn't making money, but making an impact.
There's a lot of artists whose contracts are written in such a way that they do not get paid for what's happening on streaming services.
At the end of the day, money is just a proxy for votes. That is what makes politics so vulnerable to social media.
It seems like the right thing to do is tackle problems other people aren't working on.
Look - There's good creepy and there's bad creepy. Today's creepy is tomorrow's necessity.
I suffer from the delusion that every product of my imagination is not only possible, but always on the cusp of becoming real.
Start-up teams are always in flux, so, like all start-ups, we're always talking to candidates for various key roles.
You start to accumulate your library of music. You want that music everywhere - that's the point where we monetize. If you want portability, mobility, and access, then you buy it.
Solving specific problems is what drives me. I am not interested in having a career. I never have been.
You can now be a master of your own destiny. I'm not sure why you would sign up with a record label.
I had a desire to prove to myself that I was actually in control - that I wasn't a puppet.
You actually don't want people thinking your product is cool, because then you're a fad.
You want people using your product because it's a part of your life, then they can't stop using it.
I think Facebook's biggest problem is the glut of information that Facebook's power users are overwhelmed with.
There came a time when these two incompatible notions of who I was, well, something had to give. Either that 'something' is where you acquiesce to the world around you and you conform, or you sort of defiantly break whatever remaining bonds connect you to that world and create for yourself a different set of values.
What comes after the revolution is inevitably bureaucracy. Whoever wins the revolution builds a bureaucracy.
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.
I think the perception of wealth and power is that things just become easier and easier when in reality as you raise the stakes things become more stressful.
One of the difficulties in living the lifestyle I lead is that it is hard to get my friends in one place.
I lived on couches for something like six months. I had no home. I was totally broke. I would stay at a friend's house for two weeks, then move because I didn't want to become this permanent mooch.
If there's some triumphant end of the story, I guess in a roundabout way I've gotten what I wanted, which is the ability to do interesting things and the wealth to be free.
I can sort of do what I want. Maybe I have to work harder to prove myself in some new relationship because they've heard some wacky stories about me. But at least I can get the meeting.
Part of the challenge of being an entrepreneur, if you're going for a really huge opportunity, is trying to find problems that aren't quite on the radar yet and try to solve those.
There is no simple answer to what I think.
My interactions with Sorkin were agonisingly weird. He is by far the weirdest person I have ever met. I had dinner with him and a few hours before I got an e-mail from his assistant saying, 'Sean, this does not need to be a long conversation. Aaron is only going to use it to win your trust.'
I've never been much of a joiner.
Facebook is such a basic utility. It's something that is such a part of peoples' lives, I think it's hard to imagine it going away.
I think being a wealthy member of the establishment is the antithesis of cool. Being a countercultural revolutionary is cool. So to the extent that you've made a billion dollars, you've probably become uncool.
Facebook isn't helping you make new connections, Facebook doesn't develop new relationships, Facebook is just trying to be the most accurate model of your social graph. There's a part of me that feels somewhat bored by all of this.
Little startups are ridiculously overfunded.
It would be incredibly presumptuous and self-serving of me to believe that Facebook was the end of history. The only way it could possibly be the end of history is if it becomes some sort of artificial super intelligence that takes over the world.
It's never the end game. Facebook is now a platform upon which all kinds of applications are being built it's definitely not it.
Spotify is returning a huge amount of money. We'll overtake iTunes in terms of what we bring to the record industry in under two years.
There's definitely some sort of dissent brewing between labels, publishing companies and artists. A lot of it has to do with older licensing schemes.
You just keep pushing yourself harder and harder to achieve more and more - I don't think it's ever quite as glamorous as it appears on the outside.
In truth the social media elements of the Obama campaign, while extremely innovative, did not produce a lot of results.
