Jose Ferreira

“If your business had no risk, you could go get a bank loan and call it a day. VCs like risks - without them, venture capital wouldn't exist. But they need to be risks that VCs are good at assessing and managing.”

“It is intellectually dishonest to lump venture investors with hedge fund and buy-out investors.”

“Google, Facebook, and other consumer web companies violate our privacy. But that's only because they have an ad-based business model. They can only make money by selling your data - and degrading the product experience with ads.”

“Education has always produced an incredible amount of data; that's always been obvious to me. But technology had to catch up.”

“Jeff Bezos was one of those best and brightest who came to N.Y. to work in finance. He didn't need to know anything about retail bookselling to start Amazon.”

“Anyone who sincerely wanted to use policy to reduce illegal immigration should start by crafting legislation based on changing actual behavior.”

“Many venture capitalists say they're looking for the next big idea. But they aren't, really; they're looking for something derivative, because derivative is safe.”

“If I had to give one piece of advice to a budding entrepreneur, I would say: 'Aim big.'”

“I started Knewton to do my bit to fix the world's education system.”

“Data adds concrete information to a teacher's observations and intuition, but it will never replace experience, personal relationships, and cultural understanding.”

“Education is among the most important problems we face because it's the ultimate 'gateway' problem. That is, it drives virtually every global problem that we face as a species. But there's a flip-side: if we can fix education, then we'll dramatically improve the other problems, too.”

“I found school very boring and frustrating.”

“In a crisis, markets always look to see who is the next-worst off and proactively begin shying away from them.”