Bill Maris

“The reality is if you were going to die tomorrow, and someone offered you another 10 years, most people would take those 10 years.”

“CEOs who can hire properly, that's the most important part of the job. The CEO's job is really to hire the right team and execute the vision second.”

“I'm not bothered when other VCs start hiring great designers or start recruiting. That's the direction I'd like it to go.”

“Government is really successful when it's willing to make big, bold objectives, like, 'We're going to get to the moon.' But without leaders with big ideas, we get stuck.”

“There are a number of start-ups in Europe that are able to reach beyond their own country. Take Spotify - Spotify just in Sweden isn't that interesting compared to Spotify all over the world.”

“During the 2000 bubble, many companies rushed to go public before they had any revenue.”

“As computer intelligence gets better, what will be possible when we interface our brains with computers? It might sound scary, but early evidence suggests otherwise: interfacing brains with machines can be helpful in treating traumatic brain injury, repairing spinal cord damage, and countless other applications.”

“There are a lot of billionaires in Silicon Valley, but in the end, we are all heading to the same place. If given the choice between making a lot of money or finding a way to make people live longer, what do you choose?”

“If you want to invest in early-stage technologies, putting a timeframe on it does behold you to Silicon Valley economics. You've got a certain time period where you have to make the money. And you have to invest that money whether you find good companies or not.”

“There are environmental threats to health; there are internal threats to health - genetic conditions, viral threats, diseases like cancer and Parkinson's. And then there are societal and global ones, like poverty and lack of nutrition. And unknown viral threats - everything from a new kind of influenza to hemorrhagic fever.”

“We are looking for highly technical, enthusiastic and capable entrepreneurs who have a healthy disregard for the impossible, and that's not always easy to find.”

“I used to be a health-care investor a long time ago in the public markets. One thing I learned that we tried to apply here is that investing in small molecules, trying to invest in the next treatment, there's an element of gambling to that.”

“I sign off not only every investment, but every dollar that goes out the door - I'm aware of it.”

“All the information in the world has been pretty dispersed, but Google's mission has been to organize it and make it universally accessible.”

“We're looking for people who are working on things that seem out of reach, uncomfortably difficult.”

“I'm interested in the ideas that sound a little crazy, such as radical life extension, curing cancer, being able to create a simulation of the human brain and map every neuron.”

“As life expectancy extends beyond 80 years in some parts of the world, more people are struggling with brain diseases. For older people, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and other conditions become a major impediment to quality of life.”

“Time is the one thing I can't get back and can't give back to you.”

“Antibiotics are so pervasive that they are often prescribed preemptively, as soon as patients report symptoms, before a diagnosis is made.”

“Not many venture firms have people whose job is to read academic research - on startups, ventures, and entrepreneurs - and gather knowledge from that.”