on building things

My job is not to think about what exists but rather what I want that does not yet exist.

Anna Wintour’s biography turned into maxims:

1. Hire talented people as found, not as needed.

2. Taste is as rare as a unicorn.

3.Your employees should describe you as “easy to understand.”

4.Pretend to be completely in control and people will assume that you are.

5.Have a sharp eye for the weaknesses of others.

6.Combine ruthless efficiency with hyp... See more

How do you get from starting small to doing something great? By making successive versions. Great things are almost always made in successive versions. You start with something small and evolve it, and the final version is both cleverer and more ambitious than anything you could have planned.

Every “overnight success” is the result of years of thankless work. Success comes not from great acts of genius but from doing lots of small things consistently

In the most simple terms possible: a good quest makes the future better than our world today, while a bad quest doesn't improve the world much at all, or even makes it worse.