The kind of products you envision as an entrepreneur is a function of your life experience. Mitch Kapor More Quotes by Mitch Kapor More Quotes From Mitch Kapor Hackers are seen as shadowy figures with superhuman powers that threaten civilization. Mitch Kapor seenhackerssuperhumancivilization If information wants to be free, then that's true everywhere, not just in information technology. Mitch Kapor truefreeinformationtechnology Human intelligence is a marvelous, subtle, and poorly understood phenomenon. There is no danger of duplicating it anytime soon. Mitch Kapor humanintelligenceunderstooddanger You can't be in the tech community... without realizing there's a big shortage of talent. Mitch Kapor bigyoutalentcommunity Getting information off the Internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant. Mitch Kapor internetinformationtechnologyfire Before I started a company, I was an employee with a bad attitude. I was always felt like, bosses are stupid, and people weren't well treated. Mitch Kapor badstupidattitudepeople It became clear to me by 1984 that Microsoft was likely going to be the big winner in the PC software apps and operating system category, partly because of the dynamics of owning and controlling the operating system: that gave you enormous power, and I came to see Bill Gates was fierce competitor. Mitch Kapor meyouwinnerpower If you can command a lot of attention, that's what is valuable, and many in the commercial ecology would like to have a piece of that attention. Mitch Kapor likeyouvaluableattention In an economy where more and more value is in information - is in the bits, not the atoms, where bits can be copied essentially for free - any time you have that situation, economic schemes that rely on existing models of intellectual property laws for protection are going to do less and less well. Mitch Kapor valueyousituationtime Open source can propagate to fill all the nooks and crannies that people want it to fill. Mitch Kapor opensourcewantpeople I give Bill Gates an A for vision because, as a business person and a strategist, he's brilliant. His flaw is that his view is not informed by a humanistic or compassionate vision of how to make computers work for people. Mitch Kapor visionbusinessworkpeople What is design? It's where you stand with a foot in two worlds - the world of technology and the world of people and human purposes - and you try to bring the two together. Mitch Kapor youtechnologytogetherpeople The culmination of all of that was the decision to start a company, which became Lotus, to do a product, which became 1-2-3. By the time I reached that point it had been four years, and it felt like a lifetime, but really it was kind of evolutionary. Mitch Kapor startcompanydecisiontime That's why it has to be a nonprofit, because a nonprofit is required to take monies it receives and use them for the purposes for which it's chartered by the government. It can't be pocketed. Mitch Kapor whybecausegovernmentuse I was not a student of Wall Street, but I was a quick study. Mitch Kapor streetstudentwallstudy Beware angel investors: they can be disruptive. Mitch Kapor bewareinvestorsdisruptiveangel There are a lot of similarities between cyberspace and the frontier. It's pretty raw and primitive. I mean, you have to churn your own butter in cyberspace. You can't go down to the 7-Eleven and buy a stick of butter because it's not that well developed. Mitch Kapor yourdowngoyou Bulletin boards are sort of the garage bands of cyberspace. Mitch Kapor bandssortgaragecyberspace I woke up nights, worrying that Lotus was out of control - that no one would know what to do. Mitch Kapor controloutupknow I'm fascinated by management and organizations: how organizations get things done and how successful organizations are built and maintained, how they evolve as they grow from start-ups to small companies to medium companies to big companies. Mitch Kapor growsmalldonemanagement
