Quotes About Risk-taking

I admire bull riders for their passion and the uniqueness each one of them has.

Long story short, right after my twelfth grade, the six months between school and university, and that is the time when I came to Delhi and I said that let me try and build a company of my own.

You do not travel if you are afraid of the unknown, you travel for the unknown, that reveals you with yourself.

I love diving into the unknown. That's been my M.O. ever since I was a kid.

When I was a lad in my 20s, as carefree and debonair as any other underpaid newspaperman, I happened to be a golfer who could flirt with par fairly often, and I was adventurous enough in those days to play any known or unknown thief who showed up at Goat Hills for whatever amount he fancied.

I like to be on the edge, on the cutting edge, or be into the unknown, into the territory where I have to depend on being in the moment and depending on my instincts.

When I started doing things on my own, I was figuring - remember, it was a very nascent market. And there was a lot that was unknown about the renewable marketplace in 2004, early 2003, when I was planning on it.

If you do it with passion - you just have to have passion for what you're doing - and sometimes you've gotta go into these unknown territories and just see what happens. And don't be scared of it, don't be afraid - just go for it.

One thing I always think about in making a market, and it again is something I have learned from Sam [Palmisano] as well, he always says, "Be first and be lonely."

I've been very much intrigued by and impressed with women. But I've never been intimidated. Even if I make a fool of myself, it's better to have tried.

All adventurous women do.

You don't know that you're not a solo artist or standup comedian or drag cabaret artist until you try it.

Even as a college professor at Carnegie Mellon and Stanford, I saw myself as an entrepreneur, and I went out, took risks, and tried to invent new things, such as participating in the DARPA Grand Challenge and working on self-driving cars.

When you're 25, it's a little bit easier to be daring, especially if you are a pop star, because eccentric behavior is expected from you.

If I'm going to be a leader then I have to go places that other people are afraid to go to. That's what makes a leader. To be not afraid to step out and go over the frontline. To stare darkness right in the face.

Entrepreneurship is not only about starting businesses but is an attitude to life.

At age 28, I had no retail experience, no consumer marketing experience and no real Internet experience. But I decided I wanted to work for myself. I felt starting a company would enable me to get the responsibility I deserved and that I couldn't do that within the confines of a bigger company.

Everyone starts out desperately trying to make a hit, but some people are just more mistake-prone than others. I happened to be fairly mistake-prone. Of the 40 shows I made, I'd say ten were hits, which is a pretty good average.

Entrepreneurship works on the apprenticeship model. The best way to learn how to be an entrepreneur is to start a company and seek the advice of a successful entrepreneur in the area in which you are interested. Or work at a startup for a few years to learn the ropes.

Decades before we were able to articulate the value of 'getting out of the building' and the Lean Startup, the value in having skunk works controlling their own distribution was starkly evident.

The main thing to know about me is that I'm a champion of entrepreneurs and the startups they build. They are my rock stars. If in doubt, I side with them, and that's clear from my writing.

Doing startups is all about making mistakes.

There's no way to really mock up or simulate what I'm doing until I'm there. An exhibition for me is not a statement but an experiment.

At the end of drama school, I made a contract with myself: I'd try acting for five years. I was 26. I had already spent eight years working in restaurants and gas stations. So I had seen enough small businesses to understand that that's what acting is: a small business.