Michael Moritz Quotes

“There's nothing more invigorating than being deeply involved with a small company and a young team of founders out to do something incredibly special.”

“It's obviously unfair to paint with a broad brush here, but the germ of an idea for a breakthrough in technology doesn't come out of a business school curriculum. It comes out of a laboratory or a math lecture or a physics tutorial.”

“All you need do is listen to very smart people and sift out the ideas that are unworthy or implausible, and I wouldn't pretend for a moment that I hadn't made lots of mistakes and there are companies, perhaps, that we had been investors in.”

“History shows that there is no more potent engine for reform than the passion of voters who feel betrayed by the politicians they hoped would do the right thing.”

“I think the notion of retirement is just a dreadful, dreadful idea and I hope I never have to do that.”

“My undergraduate degree was in history, and I wish I had been smart enough to really excel at maths, physics, chemistry or biology because... the voyagers and adventurers and real contributors - that's where they come from.”

“Yesterday is irrelevant. It doesn't matter whether or not you won a game last week, your stock's at a high or whatever. All of that is in the past, and it can all get swept away.”

“When we help organize one of these companies at the beginning, it never looks like the world's greatest idea. I think it's the marketing and PR department that rewrites history and tells you that it was always the world's greatest idea. What they don't say is that at the very beginning there was great uncertainty and a great lack of clarity. It was murky and confused and messy circumstances.”

“If you think of who's done more to increase prosperity in the United States — Silicon Valley or the US government — it's clearly Silicon Valley. Imagine what would happen if the lights were turned off at Alphabet and Amazon and Meta.”

“Remarkable people on a mission that is not widely recognized by others.”

“Most entities, most organizations are capable of doing it through a year, or five years, maybe ten years. Very few are able to do it over multiple decades. And I'm not saying that we're exemplary, but we've worked really, really hard on trying to perform at an extremely high level.”

“It's much like being a journalist. To be able to start on an endeavor where you know nothing; where you gather a lot of materials and facts, distill those facts, and then form a cogent opinion and make a decision. It doesn't matter whether or not you have a technical degree. But the ability to be a storyteller and a clear communicator — I think those are really very, very helpful pursuits.”

“We just love them. Particularly people who perhaps to others look unbackable. That has always been our leitmotif of doing business.”

“Once a year, when a new telephone directory landed on our doorstep, I immediately flipped the pages to the 'M' section, hoping that we would not be alone, that there would be another Moritz listed, that we would have company.”