Silicon Valley Quotes

• Silicon Valley is a mindset, not a location.

  Reid Hoffman

  Location, Valleys, Mindset

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• The real secret of Silicon Valley is that it's really all about the people

  Reid Hoffman

  Real, People, Secret

  Harvard Business Review, Michael D. Watkins, Reid Hoffman, Ben Casnocha (2015). “Leadership Transitions and Team Building: Leadership Collection (2 Books)”, Harvard Business Review Press

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• Silicon Valley tends to believe in the individual who creates a small group and does something big.

  Reid Hoffman

  Believe, Groups, Doe

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• He’s totally different from the typical jock. He has no ego. That’s unique for someone with such accolades. His strength comes from a higher power. You can’t explain Steve Largent by computer – he doesn’t belong on an NFL field. You put his size and speed in an IBM computer up in Silicon Valley, it would chew up his data card and laugh.

  Lester Hayes

  Unique, Data, Nfl

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• If you want to build a great company, get the hell out of Silicon Valley.

  Bill Gates

  Valleys, Want, Hell

  Source: www.strategy-business.com

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• At the core of Silicon Valley is a passion for 'yes.'

  Steven Levy

  Passion, Valleys, Silicon

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• I think governments will increasingly be tempted to rely on Silicon Valley to solve problems like obesity or climate change because Silicon Valley runs the information infrastructure through which we consume information.

  Evgeny Morozov

  Running, Thinking, Government

  "Op-Ed: There's An App For Everything, And That's A Problem". Interview with Ari Shapiro, www.npr.org. March 4, 2013.

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• The pressure to perform is relentless in today's workplace - regardless of where you work. We are all being asked to do more with less. I think what we could borrow from the culture of Silicon Valley is "eat your own dog food ." That is an expression used by tech types to mean using what you make or sell.

  Willow Bay

  Dog, Mean, Thinking

  Source: www.glamour.com

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• I saw that we needed to grow but our top line wasn't growing, so we had to find other ways to grow the business. We had to reshape our business and acquire share in a non conventional way. But most tech leaders don't come out of a business background. They really have a parochial point of view. All they know are the go-go years of Silicon Valley. That's the environment in which they were raised.

  Larry Ellison

  Inspirational, Views, Years

  3 Copy quote

• Apple does all of its research and development in America. It has all these brilliant people sitting in Silicon Valley. But until recently, Apple made nothing in America. Zero. And the jobs that were accessible to a good, well-trained worker that knew how to do welding or assembly, none of those jobs had stayed in America. We don't have the workforce.

  Michael Porter

  Zero, Jobs, Research And Development

  Source: www.usatoday.com

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• The problem isn't that Silicon Valley is keeping women down or not doing enough to encourage female entrepreneurs. The opposite is true. No, the problem is that not enough women want to become entrepreneurs.

  Michael Arrington

  Opposites, Entrepreneur, Female

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• In the ideology of the new Silicon Valley, work was for the owned. Play was for the owners. There was a fundamental capitalism at work: While they abhorred the idea of being a wage slave, the young men of Silicon Valley were not trying to tear down the capitalist system. They were trying to become its new masters.

  Katherine Losse

  Men, Play, Ideas

  Katherine Losse (2012). “The Boy Kings: A Journey into the Heart of the Social Network”, p.62, Simon and Schuster

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• Hollywood is in the perception business where you create layers to create mystery. In Silicon Valley it's about taking away the layers to get to the substance.

  MC Hammer

  Perception, Layers, Hollywood

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• The dissonance that I felt daily flew in the face of what Silicon Valley says about itself: that it is a meritocracy, that it values intelligence and creativity, that everyone has a fair shot if they just work hard enough. This was true only if you were technical, and even that may not always be enough: in the age of the social network, who you know and who your friends were was becoming increasingly important.

  Katherine Losse

  Hard Work, Creativity, Important

  Katherine Losse (2012). “The Boy Kings: A Journey into the Heart of the Social Network”, p.127, Simon and Schuster

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• For Silicon Valley and its idols, innovation is the new selfishness.

  Evgeny Morozov

  Idols, Innovation, Selfishness

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• Success in Silicon Valley, most would agree, is more merit-driven than almost any other place in the world. It doesn't matter how old you are, what sex you are, what politics you support or what color you are. If your idea rocks and you can execute, you can change the world and/or get really, stinking rich.

  Michael Arrington

  Sex, Rocks, Color

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• The rest of the world views the USA the way Silicon Valley views Microsoft. Except with tanks.

  Brad Templeton

  Views, Usa, Tanks

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• You want failures to be small and informational. Silicon Valley does very well. It knows how to use failure as a tool for improvement.

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  Doe, Valleys, Tools

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• The education needs in Silicon Valley versus rural Iowa versus Tennessee are very different.

  Andy Ogle

  Education, Iowa, Different

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• The new buzz word in Silicon Valley is "integration". Work-life "balance" is very 2.0. All these women share ways in which they integrate their family life and work. Facebook's head of Global Solutions, Carolyn Everson, for example, takes her children along on her business trips once a quarter. They meet her clients, visit new places and get a better understanding of what mom does when she isn't at home with them.

  Willow Bay

  Mom, Children, Home

  Source: www.glamour.com

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• I'm speaking to you from Silicon Valley, where some of the most prominent and successful companies have built their businesses by lulling their customers into complacency about their personal information. They're gobbling up everything they can learn about you and trying to monetize it. We think that's wrong. And it's not the kind of company that Apple wants to be.

  Tim Cook

  Successful, Thinking, Apples

  "Apple boss delivers strongest attack yet on Facebook and Google over privacy" by Stuart Dredge, www.theguardian.com. June 3, 2015.

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• In physics, one of the most exciting areas is in nanotech. With computers exhausting the power of silicon, Silicon Valley could become a Rust Belt, unless we can find replacements, such as quantum computers and molecular computers. To be a leader in any field, one has to have a great imagination. Sure, we have to know the basics and fundamentals. But beyond that, we have to let our imagination soar.

  Michio Kaku

  Imagination, Leader, Valleys

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• Look at what Silicon Valley has done - the advance of computers.

  Buzz Aldrin

  Valleys, Looks, Done

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• Here in Silicon Valley, I have taken part in hundreds of conversations trying to convince people to dive in and become entrepreneurs. All too often, innovators with good, safe, jobs are unwilling to put their family's access to health care at risk by walking away from company-backed medical insurance.

  Eric Ries

  Jobs, Taken, Walking Away

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• Women had been on the verge of taking over the world-the Western world, anyway. Then some sexist pig in Silicon Valley invented the cell phone and women took a sidetrack on which all four billion of them would soon be happily talking to each other twenty-four hours a day, getting nothing else done, and Men Would Be Back.

  John Sandford

  Men, Phones, Pigs

  John Sandford (2015). “Gathering Prey: Prey”, p.53, Penguin

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