"Google's motto - 'Don't be evil' - is in part a branding ploy, but it's also characteristic of a kind of business that's successful enough to take ethics seriously without jeopardizing its own existence."
"In business, money is either an important thing or it is everything."
"Then monopolies can keep innovating because profits enable them to make the long-term plans and to finance the ambitious research projects that firms locked in competition can't dream of."
"As a good rule of thumb, proprietary technology must be at least 10 times better than its closest substitute in some important dimension to lead to a real monopolistic advantage."
"Therefore, every startup should start with a very small market. Always err on the side of starting too small. The reason is simple: it's easier to dominate a small market than a large one. If you think your initial market might be too big, it almost certainly is."
"As you craft a plan to expand to adjacent markets, don't disrupt: avoid competition as much as possible."
"A business with a good definite plan will always be underrated in a world where people see the future as random."
"In 1906, economic Vilfredo Pareto discovered what became the 'Pareto principle,' or the 80-20 rule, when he noticed that 20% of the people owned 80% of the land in Italy - a phenomenon that he found just as natural as the fact that 20% of the peapods in his garden produced 80% of the peas... And monopoly businesses capture more value than millions of undifferentiated competitors."
"Anyone who prefers owning a part of your company to being paid in cash reveals a preference for the long term and a commitment to increasing your company's value in the future. Equity can't create perfect incentives, but it's the best way for a founder to keep everyone in the company broadly aligned."
"A startup is a team of people on a mission, and a good culture is just what that looks like on the inside."
"Just cover the basics like health insurance and then promise what no others can: the opportunity to do irreplaceable work on a unique problem alongside great people. You probably can't be the Google of 2014 in terms of compensation or perks, but you can be the Google of 1999 if you already have good answers about your mission and team."
"Most businesses get zero distribution channels to work: poor sales rather than bad product is the most common cause of failure."
"The most valuable businesses of coming decades will be built by entrepreneurs who seek to empower people rather than try to make them obsolete."
"Progress isn't held back by some difference between corporate greed and nonprofit goodness; instead, we're held back by the sameness of both. Just as corporations tend to copy each other, nonprofits all tend to push the same priorities."
"Doing something different is what's truly good for society - and it's also what allows a business to profit by monopolizing a new market. The best projects are likely to be overlooked, not trumpeted by a crowd; the best problems to work on are often the ones nobody else even tries to solve."
"Founders are important not because they are the only ones whose work has value, but rather because a great founder can bring out the best work from everybody at his company."
"Our task today is to find singular ways to create the new things that will make the future not just different, but better - to go from 0 to 1. The essential first step is to think for yourself. Only by seeing our world anew, as fresh and strange as it was to the ancients who saw it first, can we both re-create it and preserve it for the future."
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