Michael S. Malone

To be a successful businessman requires the periodic administration of suffering to others.

Equity is more than just money; in fact, it is sometimes never money, just paper. Equity is power, the ability to direct your own life, to be your own boss, to never have to take shit off of anyone ever again.

Entrepreneurs weren't just engineers turned executives, but just as often the other way around. This odd cross-fertilization between two species rarely found together in the same environment produced an odd sort of hybrid that is Silicon Valley's most famous creature.

It takes very special individuals to write best selling games or word processing programs—and most seem to be as much born as made. This means that good software engineers operate in a sellers' market, able to write their own tickets.

Any true fad needs its core of fanatics as well as a large population of curious participants. It is the fanatics, with their metronomelike steady clip of quarters, who pay the overhead, set the standards, and serve as examples for others to follow.

Entrepreneurs, whether they are home builders or chipmakers, rarely think too far into the future, certainly not to the ultimate ramifications of their activities.

At night, as a sad voyeur, one can drive past the open windows of the Valley's large apartment complex and in hundreds of living rooms never see a bookshelf, only the blue glow of televisions and personal computer screens.

Like a true entrepreneur, Bushnell was only convinced by failure that he was on the right track.

The founders of a technological revolution are often such queer ducks or vicious bastards that they can't get along with anybody—and it is precisely those character flaws that made them strike off into the unknown and stake their fortunes and careers on the outcome.

Silicon Valley must be competitive to survive, coming up with new innovative products and companies that can only be built by the aggressive, paranoid, maverick minds of entrepreneurs.

As history repeatedly shows, those responsible for a new cultural force often have a little idea at first of the magnitude of their achievement—and sometimes end up not among the beneficiaries.

With little at home waiting for them and a barren cultural life, many Valley workers turn to their employers to give meaning to their lives.

Founding a successful new high technology firm is one of the most complex and demanding—and rewarding—jobs in all of American business.

Riding a business boom is like surfing: you have to see the next wave coming in on the horizon, get out, and be turned around to meet it, and then, as the swell "feels" the bottom and rises, you have to paddle like hell to get up to speed to be caught in the arching crest.

The secular faiths of Silicon Valley target human perfection and try to achieve it, as one would the design of a new integrated circuit, through logic and analysis.

The more unsophisticated the operator the more ingenious the software required.

At least since Edison, perhaps even since Franklin, the public has come to expect the name of a single individual ("the inventor") to be inextricably and singularly tied to a landmark product or design or theory ("the invention").

Business leaders, instead of complaining about the federal government's incompetence or ignorance, should become involved, donating their considerable expertise in management and decision-making.

Unions would mean the death of Silicon Valley, because for an entrepreneurial environment to work, it must be a meritocracy, an anathema to seniority-oriented unions.

Getting rich is not the only reason entrepreneurs build companies... control is far more important—and control is measured in percentage ownership of the company's outstanding shares of stock. Thus, every sale of stock signals a commensurate erosion in control.