Scott Cook

“Even some of the greatest technology-led revolutions, or allegedly technology-led, really were only made possible because of trends already present.”

“I spent some time studying Toyota, because how could a loom maker - they made looms. That was their business for 50 years, 35 years - and then they decided to go into the car business after everyone else was in the car business.”

“Technology is similarly just a catalyst at times for fundamental forces already present.”

“Even the once simple home mortgage now has so many flavors and styles and variations that it is difficult for people to make a decision.”

“Mutual funds were created to make investing easy, so consumers wouldn't have to be burdened with picking individual stocks.”

“People pitch me all the time. But hopefully, you'll just go ahead and do it. We are trying to eliminate the need for pitches. I'd rather sit there and applaud. Customers buy products, not Powerpoint presentations.”

“If you give the boss all the decision-making power, they see the world through their eyes. The big innovations are generally such a shift that they won't see it. For a long time, it looked like it was just inevitable that you would get slow and bureaucratic.”

“Well, today people have to be self-reliant if they want a secure retirement income.”

“People don't place their trust in government or company pension plans; they have to be self-reliant.”

“We make it easy for anyone to get free resources. Anyone can launch an idea for five minutes. Anyone can comment on, add, and enhance the idea. Need a designer? We provide an entrepreneurial matching system without the bosses getting involved. And in terms of unstructured time, we have a permission for that.”

“In my view, product/market fit is the most important thing to get right as a startup entrepreneur. There's a variety of ways to do it, but without solving some pain point that the customer gets so excited about they tell their friends, it's really hard in the modern age to get any liftoff.”

“As you grow as a company, you get layers and hierarchy that, in theory, should make your decisions a lot better. They get reviewed, and thoughtful people look at decision.”

“Spend time with the customers, immersing yourselves, watching. Spend time at their homes. Hear what they say, but most importantly, watch their behaviors as the indication of where the pain is. And then go solve that pain.”

“Now we teach our leaders that it's your job to put in the systems that enable your people to run your experiments fast and cheap and to keep making them faster and cheaper. Yield as many of your decisions off to the experiment as possible.”

“We're still in the first minutes of the first day of the Internet revolution.”