Vivek Wadhwa
23 quotes
Biography
"A key to achieving success is to assemble a strong and stable management team."
"The lesson is, because there will be many lemons in life, to learn to make the proverbial lemonade - and be open and honest. That's the best way of doing damage control and positioning yourself for success."
"Entrepreneurship is like a computer game in which you have to master every level before achieving success. Startups repeatedly stumble and have to go back to the drawing board. The best way to skip some levels and to increase the odds of survival is to learn from others who have already played the game."
"Corporate executives and business owners need to realize that there can be no compromise when it comes to ethics, and there are no easy shortcuts to success. Ethics need to be carefully sown into the fabric of their companies."
"With the technology advances that are presently on the horizon, not only low-skilled jobs are at risk; so are the jobs of knowledge workers. Too much is happening too fast. It will shake up entire industries and eliminate professions. Some new jobs will surely be created, but they will be few. And we won’t be able to retrain the people who lose their jobs, because, as I said to Andreessen, you can train an Andreessen to drive a cab, but you can’t retrain a laid-off cab driver to become an Andreessen. The jobs that will be created will require very specialized skills and higher levels of education — which most people don’t have."
"Bitcoin did have great potential, but it is damaged beyond repair. ... Bitcoin was born with serious flaws. ... it has been compared to a Ponzi scheme. ... It's time to admit that the current Bitcoin needs to be scrapped ... bear in mind what it is that makes some venture capitalists Bitcoin zealots: pure greed. That is the reason clearest to me for Bitcoin's failure."
"By picking this particular fight [with the FBI], Apple is doing the technology industry a big disservice. ... Apple will very likely lose this case in the courts and suffer a public relations disaster."
"Steve Jobs was a true visionary who refused to listen to customers — believing that he knew better than they did about what they needed. He ruled with an iron fist and did not tolerate dissent of any type. ... Apple may have peaked. ... its last major innovation — the iPhone — was released in June 2007."
"The last big thing [Apple] did was nine years ago with the iPhone. And since then they made it bigger with the iPad; they made it smaller with the Watch. All they keep doing is playing with the size. ... [Apple] needs an Elon Musk or a Zuckerberg running it. ... [iPhone] is a ten-year-old device. They've done everything they can with it. And Samsung, and even BlackBerry, have similar or even better ratings than the iPhone does. That's the biggest slap in the face you could possibly have: BlackBerry almost ranking the same as an iPhone? Time to move on."
"The numbers make it clear that the future of [Apple] is no longer in its consumer products. The fix? Apple should release a version of iOS for non-Apple devices. This suggestion will seem like heresy to the brand's loyalists, but it may be necessary for the success of the company. ... Without expanding its operating system, the future looks bleak for Apple."
"Apple is repeating the mistakes it made in China. It is relying on its brand recognition to build a market and failing to understand the needs of its customers. By marketing inferior products, it may also be insulting Indian consumers."
"[BitCoin]'s the greatest scam of modern times. ... the poor, the average mom-and-pop, the truck driver and the barber, who put their life savings into this, are going to lose their money, and be told to keep holding on, trust us, the value will go up. And they're gonna go bankrupt. They're gonna lose their life savings. ... This is what happened with the dot-com boom, the grandma and grandpa lost their life savings. History is repeating itself. ... We have these scamsters, basically, hyping the heck out of it, while all it's being used for is illegal money laundering. ... It's simply gonna implode before you know it. And regular people who trust you are gonna lose their shirts. ... Would you put your life savings into digital currency? You lose a password and you've lost everything. ... They know it's gonna crash and burn. ... it crashes and it goes to zero, and people lose their life savings. Don't do it. Get out of it, rather than losing everything you have. Yes, the price might increase, but more likely than not it's gonna be zero before you know it."
"An open-minded and diverse population that readily shares information, encourages experimentation, accepts failure and dispenses with formality and hierarchy is what makes Silicon Valley the successful hub that it is."
"What you want in a mentor is someone who truly cares for you and who will look after your interests and not just their own. When you do come across the right person to mentor you, start by showing them that the time they spend with you is worthwhile."
"The natives of Silicon Valley learned long ago that when you share your knowledge with someone else, one plus one usually equals three. You both learn each other's ideas, and you come up with new ones."
"The mentor-mentee relationship is ideally like that of the guru and disciple: motivated by the desire of the guru to impart knowledge to the disciple."
"I used to have an obsession with building businesses and forgot about building health. I was focused on the destination instead of the journey. I caution you to not do the same."
"One of the biggest problems that software developers face is that technology changes rapidly. It is very hard to stay current."
"Ask any venture capitalist, and they will tell you that they consider the experience and completeness of the founding team to be a more important factor in their investment decision than the technology that is being built."
"What the tech industry often forgets is that with age comes wisdom. Older workers are usually better at following direction, mentoring, and leading."
"When I became an entrepreneur, I had the knowledge to develop and manage budgets, market products and review legal contracts."
"No matter how well things are going, failure and disaster are just around the corner. So celebrate the good, but be ready for the bad."
"In the technology world, you have to execute fast or you're out of business."