Quotes from Harper Reed

The information diet of a senior campaign staffer is insane. We were all addicted to our chosen email delivery devices and were aggressively tethered to them. It made sense and wasn't an issue during the campaign because of the importance of the situation. However, once the campaign was over and we were successful, the information flow dried up.

Donald Trump won the election. I think that's true. I also think there was interference. If this was another country, I think we'd be demanding another election.

I am patiently waiting for the singularity.

Chicago's a flyover city. I don't think we should try to change that. But it would be really cool if we had a little more opportunity for investors to come hang out.

I've had a lot of bosses that I didn't agree with, but the worst boss was very much me myself. So, I can't let myself slack off, and if I do slacking off, I'm the one that's yelling at myself. I've worked with a lot of different employers, and none of them have been as aggressive as I have been.

This idea of, there's a locked door; how do you open it? You don't necessarily care what's behind it; you're just more excited about opening the lock... It's not about finding the treasure; it's more about defeating the puzzle.

Let's say we were a peacekeeping force in some small country that most people had never heard of. And we were there to host a peaceful election, and we then found out a bunch of stuff was hacked. We probably would push to have another election to make sure that would be fair.

I can only speak to the Democrat side, but for the Democrats, everything is aggressively measured, and what that means is if you're going to use Snapchat, you're going to use it for a reason, not just for fun.

When you walk into a field office, you have many opportunities. We'll hand you a call sheet. You can make calls. You can knock on doors, and they'll have these stacks there for you. They'll say: 'Harper, you've knocked on 50 doors. That's great. Here's how you compare to the rest of them.' But it's all very offline.

The thing about Snapchat is it is ephemeral, so you don't - it's not like a video that you post to YouTube and then everyone can see it. It's this video that you get to share this kind of very intimate experience again, this very kind of genuine experience with another person in a more one-on-one sort of way. And I really appreciate that.

We make interesting companies and real businesses. It's not social networks for cats.

Photo management software is terrible. Mylio is pretty good - but disrupts the 'natural' flow of things: i.e. Apple Photos.

When you go from building T-shirts to software for a presidential campaign used by a cast of millions, it's pretty easy to think, 'OK, we can build something pretty big.'

Our goal is to solve a problem for the retailer, not to solve a problem for my ego - which is big.

PayPal's been around forever. How do we use that platform to solve the future of commerce?

Not every time you open Messenger do you want an Uber, but when you do want an Uber, it appears. That is the goal.

In the U.S., it's all about turnout, which means you have to appeal to every single Democrat to get them to vote.

I programmed computers every day. And one of my favourite apps we built was this thing called Awesome Updater, that all it did is send you a tweet randomly that was like, 'Yo, you're awesome.'

The digital team who were running Twitter, they weren't just going to put out a tweet for fun. They're going to try and figure out how do we measure the impact. Then they'd tweet it, and if it worked, great.

When you read Trump's tweets or see candidates interact online like Jeb did with Hillary, you're like, 'Yes, it's just like my friends.' That's the magic.

There are a lot of people who are unable to take a break to clear their minds. I imagine they are the ones who need it the most.

The main ideas for us are scale, stability, and audience.

Don't eat the pizza; get lots of sleep - you have to take care of yourself. It's about being your tip top self at all times, and if you are unhealthy, or you're sick, or you don't feel good, even it's just because you're sluggish, you're not going to make it because you're not going to be able to react to things.

Campaigns are crazy things. They're half startup, half enterprise.