Glenn Kelman

“Everybody who's been fired has heard before about the problems they have. They just don't know it's that serious. Once you know what the stakes are, you become more serious.”

“When my brother and I were 11, our father designed a 17-foot boat for sailing around the world. He'd never ventured more than a few miles from the U.S. He'd never sailed - or designed a boat before.”

“When I was 28, running products for a company I'd co-founded, the CEO called to say that I had a problem with the board, that I probably couldn't overcome it, that I'd have to leave the company.”

“I wish I was as smart as Jeff Bezos. He's just a large-brained space alien.”

“I just don't like bullies. Especially hypocritical bullies.”

“The most important question venture capitalists ask is what prevents your company from growing faster.”

“With Facebook's IPO, the world learned a new way of organizing businesses around one overriding imperative: to ship new products quickly.”

“Over the years, I just started paying a lot more attention not to whether I was right or wrong, but just to how I make people feel.”

“Growing up is mostly the process of having to acknowledge the differences between your world and the whole world.”

“I started a software company with a couple other folks. It went public. We made plenty of money. And I thought it was this incredible mission, but in fact, we sold software to Haliburton; we sold software to Frito-Lay and Pepsi and all these companies that didn't necessarily do good things.”

“Almost nothing can make you more miserable than when your company is struggling, and only then do you realize that this is exactly when it's almost impossible for a CEO to quit.”

“Folks are leaving Silicon Valley, mostly because they can't afford to stay.”

“I think the corporate world is pretty starved for personality. The reason you have comic strips like 'Dilbert' and sitcoms like 'The Office' is that people just can't be genuine human beings in a corporate environment. So if you can really be your own self, even if it's a little bit different, I think people are really drawn to that.”

“The problem for new businesses isn't corporate taxes. Anyone who has actually started a new business knows you don't make enough money for years to pay any meaningful tax on it.”

“Many of the libertarian entrepreneurs who only want the government to leave them alone have simply forgotten how important government research, public education, and immigration policy are to Silicon Valley's long-term success.”

“Slow investing can have the same impact on startups that slow food has had on cuisine: good things come to those who wait.”

“As a captain of industry, I would prefer more tax breaks to help people buy houses, but as a citizen, I realize someone has to pay.”

“Startups alternate between nostalgia for the garage and millennial longing for a lucrative exit. But what I always keep in mind is how disconnected and purposeless I felt before Redfin or my earlier startup, Plumtree. All I ever wanted was to get into a situation where I could win. Everybody has that dream.”

“I do think entrepreneurs need to be smart, but there's another scale I never evaluated myself on that is now the source of my deepest strength: Not how much brains I have, but how much love I have.”

“Employers are as sensitive to housing costs as their employees, which is why, when we build more houses, we create more jobs.”