The best entrepreneurs know when to ignore sage advice. Sarah Lacy More Quotes by Sarah Lacy More Quotes From Sarah Lacy The biggest barrier to starting a company isn't ideas, funding or experiences. It's excuses. Sarah Lacy starting excuse ideas Everything about Mark Zuckerberg is pure hacker. Hackers don't take realities of the world for granted; they seek to break and rebuild what they don't like. They seek to outsmart the world. Sarah Lacy zuckerberg reality world One of the great ironies of the social media era is that some of the least social people in the world created it. Sarah Lacy media people world One of the nice things about being a private company is operating without the intensity of public glare. It's hard to grow a company under a microscope of constant second guessing. Sarah Lacy intensity guessing nice If Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t understand something, it’s not defeat. It’s not even something he has to accept. It’s merely a challenge he needs to engineer his way out of, and that includes human emotions and relationships. Sarah Lacy zuckerberg challenges needs This 'oh let's hug it out' without taking any responsibility is exactly the problem. ... We are not silly irrational little girls. We are running a serious business with investments from the biggest VCs in the Valley. Sarah Lacy girl silly running Stop looking at the Web as merely a display opportunity and not a way to interact. That does not create a new business model, it just shifts one that isn't growing and is outdated. The reason sites like Google are stealing advertisers from daily newspapers is not because Google has more eyeballs. It's because Google used the interactivity of the Web to deliver a new, better way to advertise. Sarah Lacy google doe opportunity To me, the last mile of the Internet that very few people have successfully really done. And this is like micro local. Things that really impact your life. And noone's leveraging that yet. Sarah Lacy impact done people I did interviews with most of the TechCrunch50 experts backstage and there was a common gripe about the companies launching there: Not enough passion, not enough swinging for the fences, not enough trying to change the world... One big exception was CitySourced - a company that excited Kevin Rose precisely because it was trying to build something that doesn't really exist today and would make a huge difference in people's lives. It was the most excited I saw an expert about anything over the two-day event. Sarah Lacy swinging-for-the-fences passion two I physically need to make art. Art isn't just a hobby for me. It's not something that I like. It's an intense passion, an ecstatic love affair, with as much turmoil, frustration, exasperation and need as a forbidden liaison. Sarah Lacy frustration passion art I am honest enough with myself to admit it. I rarely offer strong opinions, I have a backbone like a pair of bifold doors, and I am terrified of not being approved of. Sarah Lacy pairs strong doors I've got a whole lotta questions, and not so many answers. Sarah Lacy whole answers Art is the most important thing to me in the entire world. It is my passion. Nothing else. End of story. Sarah Lacy passion important art You can keep your privacy in the world by keeping your product, not your personality, the star. Sarah Lacy stars personality world It may be easier than ever to start a product, but building a company is just as hard as its ever been. Sarah Lacy easier building may Lesson to would-be fame seekers: It's not really a new world when it comes to celebrity. There are no shortcuts. It's still talent, perseverance and hard work. Even the speed and reach of the Net can't create lasting value and income overnight. Sarah Lacy perseverance talent hard-work work It's happening: Lou Dobbs' dream come true and Silicon Valley's worst nightmare. We're already seeing the reverse brain drain as smart immigrants take their U.S. educations and experience building companies and creating technology back to their home countries. Sarah Lacy experience technology brain home A lot of Americans desperately want to believe that China is full of poor people who can't innovate, and the only goods they make are cheap, toxic rip-offs our Western brands. They want to believe the only reason the Chinese economy is surging is because the West wants cheap goods and China knows how to make them that way. Sarah Lacy poor believe people way Unions inherently create an 'us versus them' dynamic that makes winning against a company's management the top goal, not serving customers, innovating, or in the case of education, teaching kids. Sarah Lacy company management winning education Sometimes the hardest thing about committing the perfect crime can be keeping your genius to yourself. Sarah Lacy yourself genius perfect sometimes
