Caterina Fake: My background is in art. I was a painter and an occasio...

Working on the right thing is probably more important than working hard.

Caterina Fake

entrepreneur design business

It's about doing things that you haven't done before, where you're still kind of a beginner, and not resting on your laurels.

Caterina Fake

beginners kind done

You try a lot of things and you don't know what the hell you're doing. If you're actually inventing something you shouldn't know what you're doing.

Caterina Fake

inventing hell trying

No successful company has had ever been the product of just one person.

Caterina Fake

company persons successful

Failure is part of discovering the problem you need to be working on. If, as an entrepreneur, you are afraid to fail or to admit the failure of your efforts, then you completely lose any chance at being able to adapt and succeed at finding the problem that needs solving.

Caterina Fake

entrepreneur effort needs

A lot is gained through experience, but experience teaches some and not others. Effectiveness and excellence, whether or not they were attained by simply having the knack or through the school of hard knocks, is really what you want to reward.

Caterina Fake

effectiveness excellence school

It's the building of things that makes you happy. You have to enjoy the process whether you succeed or fail.

Caterina Fake

building succeed failing

Inspiration is really all around us. I pay attention to a lot of different fields. I stay up on current events. I go to community meetings to see what concerns the people in my neighborhood. Paying attention to social interactions offline really inform interactions online. The real world is a bottomless source of inspiration for what you can build.

Caterina Fake

inspiration real people

Entrepreneurs need to start building today. The barrier to entry in tech is low, so start designing, start coding it, launch it, build prototypes, build a working version of it. The Internet has amazing powers of distribution. You can test your ideas. You can see if it works, if it doesn't work, whether it's fun, and whether you're sufficiently motivated. People who go into entrepreneurship to get rich aren't going to be happy. It’s the building of things that makes you happy. You have to enjoy the process whether you succeed or fail.

Caterina Fake

fun people ideas

Being open and observant of people and the world around you is really important. People have the same desires and needs online as they do offline. The way that people are stays constant. You can change the format, make it easier for them to communicate or use photos instead of words but human necessities never change.

Caterina Fake

important desire people

If the business were a play, Act One is: Woohoo, bright and bushy-tailed. We're going to make something great! Act Two is: We're six months behind on back-end development. We're trying to raise venture capital. We're trying to figure out what furniture we should sell to make payroll.

Caterina Fake

business play two

Make time less precious. We are way too efficient, making use of every hour, every minute. When you were a kid, didn’t you just spend hours poking sticks in the mud, climbing trees and sitting in them, looking at shells and seaweed that washed up on the shoreline? Time was not precious then, we weren’t trying to stuff an accomplishment into every minute every day, we had time for thoughts and feelings. That was good!

Caterina Fake

climbing accomplishment kids

We don't have meetings unless absolutely necessary.

Caterina Fake

intriguing meetings

Dream, struggle, create, prevail. Be daring. Be brave. Be loving. Be compassionate. Be strong. Be brilliant. Be beautiful.

Caterina Fake

be-strong brave struggle beautiful

Sometimes you climb the mountain, and you fall and fail. Maybe there is a different path that will take you up. Sometimes a different mountain.

Caterina Fake

you mountain path sometimes

Part of why making Pinwheel is so fun, is so exploding with possibility, is that a note, like a photo, can be a container for all kinds of things. It is the perfect social object. Stories, advice, jokes, diatribes, information, memories, facts, advertisements, love letters, grocery lists, and manifestoes can all be put into a note.

Caterina Fake

fun love memories facts

If we are not given the chance to forget, we are also not given the chance to recover our memories, to alter them with time, perspective, and wisdom. Forgetting, we can be ourselves beyond what the past has told us we are; we can evolve. That is the possibility we want from the future.

Caterina Fake

future wisdom time memories

A lot of the reason I wanted to become an entrepreneur and avoid working for others is that you get to create the world you want to live in and the company you want to work for, and I've loved that. It's a part of entrepreneurship that women should really embrace.

Caterina Fake

you women work world

College is an environment designed to encourage openness - the ability to think of things in novel ways and entertain unconventional beliefs.

Caterina Fake

think ability environment college

On Etsy, you can't resell new goods you weren't involved in making, whereas on eBay and Amazon, that is more than welcome - everything from dishwashers to XBoxes, curling irons, espresso machines, and metal detectors.

Caterina Fake

new everything you welcome

My background is in art. I was a painter and an occasional sculptor, and I really like materials - you know, stuff. Physical objects. The world and the trees and the sunshine and the flowers. And all of that doesn't seem to really exist out in the ether of the Internet.