If everyone played it safe, we wouldn't get anywhere.
Imagine the world of mobile based on Nokia and Motorola if Apple had not been restarted by a missionary entrepreneur named Steve Jobs who cared more for his vision than being tactical and financial.
Letting the perfect be the enemy of the good is one of the reasons we have a coal-dependent infrastructure, with the resulting environmental impact that all of us can see. I suspect environmentalists, through their opposition of nuclear power, have caused more coal plants to be built than anybody. And those coal plants have emitted more radioactive material from the coal than any nuclear accident would have.
It is important in any population to have an ecosystem around start-up ideas to leverage the most out of them such an ecosystem needs developing and most of this is about giving entrepreneurs confidence.
Big data will replace the need for 80% of all doctors
Seeking an acquisition from the start is more than just bad advice for an entrepreneur. For the entrepreneur it leads to short term tactical decisions rather than company-building decisions and in my view often reduces the probability of success.
We don't need a fuel that's cleaner, we need a fuel that happens to be cleaner, but is half the price of oil.
Screw up often; but screw up ahead of everybody else, and than learn as much, and than use it to make subsequent investments.
The right way to build a company is to experiment in lots of small ways, so that you have plenty of room to make mistakes and change strategies.
The only way you multiply resources is with technology. To really affect poverty, energy, health, education, or anything else - there is no other way.
I'm not a political person. I'm a techie nerd, and I enjoy the techie part. I mean, all my life, I've loved great technology.
Startups allow technologists and scientists to take risks and change plans in a way that would be frowned upon in a big company. Having said that, big companies will play a key role in certain areas and in partnerships with little companies. Each has its strengths.
Religion asks you to believe things without questioning, and technology and science always encourage you to ask hard questions and why it is important in science and technology. So I was always interested in science and technology.
My willingness to fail gives me the ability to succeed.
I've probably failed more often than anybody else in Silicon Valley. Those don't matter. I don't remember the failures. You remember the big successes.
Oil replacements and then efficiencies in engines and housing and the way we build houses is a very interesting market.
The U.S. has fallen well behind Europe in recognizing climate change and the implications of climate change.
As for companies invested in the space - I think its important to distinguish between a good investment and a material climate change technology - you can have the first without the second, even in the "clean tech" space.
The state of healthcare today is that we are busy in the practice of medicine vs. being in the science of medicine.
For electric power generation, we are very optimistic about solar-thermal technology, and we’re intrigued by the potential of enhanced geothermal energy to replace coal-based power generation. Traditional carbon capture and sequestration-based coal power generation is somewhat unlikely to be competitive.
How would you compete against yourself?
Maybe some percentage that’s substantially larger than 95 percent of VCs add zero value. I would bet that 70-80 percent add negative value to a startup in their advising.
If I wanted to be a doctor today I'd go to math school not med school.
If I collected all the diamonds in the world, I'd have no 'income' but I'd have a lot of 'assets'. Would my company be worth nothing because I have no income? A lot of Net companies are collecting assets. They have to be measured with a new set of metrics.
Entrepreneurs have the flexibility and the ability to do things that large companies simply cannot. Could a large company pull off a trick like Amyris, going from anti-malaria medicine to next-generation fuel?
