HUMOR

Go for a business that any idiot can run — because sooner or later, any idiot probably is going to run it.

I'm not Robin Hood. I don't take from the rich to give to the poor. I take from the rich.

Some people get rich studying artificial intelligence. Me, I make money studying natural stupidity.

The most important thing is... well, actually there are many important things.

SAFU.

I would like to die on Mars. Just not on impact.

I'm a developer who accidentally became a CEO. Snowboards were the gateway drug.

Adobe paying a billion-dollar breakup fee and Figma keeping the money is the most expensive compliment anyone has ever received.

The energy of We — greater than any one of us, but inside each of us.

We sold 20,000 flamethrowers in four days. The merchandise business has a better margin than the tunnel business right now.

A snail is currently faster than a tunnel boring machine. We intend to defeat the snail in a race.

Traffic is driving me nuts. Am going to build a tunnel boring machine and just start digging.

I got kicked out of Facebook and decided to build autonomous weapons for the Pentagon. I'm not sure which job my parents were more confused about.

Our first delivery was pad thai. I drove it myself. The customer tipped $5 and I thought we were rich.

I ordered a six-pack of beer through the app and delivered it to the YC partner's house during my application. Sometimes the demo IS the pitch.

We invented Stories. Then Instagram copied it. Then Facebook. Then LinkedIn. Then every app with a camera. You're welcome.

Our co-founder lawsuit settled for $157.5 million. Most expensive fraternity argument in history.

I studied Marxist philosophy under Habermas in Frankfurt. Now I build tools for the Pentagon. Life is full of plot twists.

We named the company after the seeing stones in Lord of the Rings. Tolkien nerds building surveillance technology for the CIA. Sounds about right.

Our professor gave us a B on the business plan for Cloudflare. Most expensive B in Harvard Business School history.

RPA sounds boring. It IS boring. That's the whole point — we automate the boring stuff so humans can do the interesting stuff.

ADP was founded in 1949. Their software looks like it. We were founded in 2011 and we build for people who expect software to actually be pleasant to use.

Companies hate us until they win a Best Places to Work award. Then they put the badge on their careers page and love us again.

We named our flavors Severed Lime and Mango Chainsaw because if you're going to sell flavored water, you might as well have fun with it. Every other brand in the category takes itself way too seriously.

We started in France because the French are cheap. I say that with love — they care about value. That was the perfect test market.

My first company was the Million Dollar Homepage. I sold pixels on a webpage for a dollar each. It worked. Calm is slightly more sophisticated.

We're a British guy who sold pixels and a British guy who made video games, running America's biggest mental health app. Nobody saw that coming, least of all us.

Attention Is All You Need — that was the title of our paper. Turns out it was also the business model.

The Transformer paper had eight authors. Three of us started AI companies. That might be the highest founder-per-paper ratio in history.

The name is Groq with a Q. Not Grok with a K. We were here first. Our chip was in development before Elon named his chatbot. Just to be clear.

I taught meditation to 70 million people through a phone screen. My teachers in the monastery would find that either hilarious or deeply concerning. Probably both.

The name Hugging Face comes from the emoji. We were a chatbot startup, remember? The name stuck even when the product completely changed. Sometimes the silliest names age the best.

I compared myself to Steve Jobs in an interview. I called juice "the internet of food." I understand now that those statements did not help.

We shut down 16 months after launch. The machine cost $400. The juice packs cost $7 each. And you could get the same result by squeezing them with your hands. I understand why people laughed.

We went public on NASDAQ at $6.8 billion. An Israeli company, built in Tel Aviv, with a name based on the worst day of the week. The irony writes itself.

They burned through $150 million of investor money subsidizing movie tickets. That's not a business model. That's a charity for people who like Marvel movies.

We started this in Oulu, Finland. Population 200,000. Middle of nowhere. The coldest city in the EU. Turns out that's a great place to build a sleep company — what else are you going to do in Finnish winter?

The sock puppet is in the Smithsonian now. Our mascot outlived our company by 25 years. At least something survived.

We spent $1.75 billion and got 500,000 subscribers. Netflix spends that on three movies. For $1.75 billion, we should have just bought a small country. It would have had more users.

My ex-wife got a billion dollars and a Giacometti sculpture. I got Patricia and 432 Park. I think I did fine.

Forbes said I was worth $20 billion. I said I was worth $30 billion. We argued about it for a decade. The truth is, neither of us really knew — and that's the nature of private wealth.

We named it after Solana Beach because that's where we surfed. Naming your blockchain after a surf spot is either charming or ridiculous. I'll let the market cap decide.

I invented CAPTCHA and reCAPTCHA before Duolingo. I have accidentally wasted more human time than almost anyone alive. Duolingo is my redemption.

I pinned my Facebook rejection letter to the door of WhatsApp the day we signed the acquisition deal.

My children — in many dimensions they're as poorly behaved as many other children, but at least on this dimension I've got my kids brainwashed: You don't use Google, and you don't use an iPod.

If someone's picture ends up in the newspaper with a Cerberus connection, we will kill them — figuratively.

Investing is the only business I know where you can be wrong three years in a row and still be considered competent.

Celebrate your successes. Find some humor in your failures. Don't take yourself so seriously.

Work eight hours and sleep eight hours, and make sure they're not the same hours.

Prison taught me patience. Five years of patience. I wouldn't recommend the method.

If someone at Cerberus has their picture in the paper and a gun, we will kill them.

I put my elbow through a Picasso. Then I sold it for more than I paid. That's a metaphor for something.

When asked what the stock market would do, Morgan replied: It will fluctuate.

Our mascot is a bear named Dave because we bear with you through tough financial times. Yes, that's really why.

Ireland produced two of the richest self-made people under 30 in history. Both of them are in this room.

I lasted 11 days in the White House, but I've lasted 20 years on Wall Street. One of those is harder.

Our ticker symbol is literally AI. Sometimes the universe gives you a sign.

Fusion has been 30 years away for 70 years. We're trying to break that joke.

I named the company after my bulldog. She deserved an empire.

My brother ran the White House. I run Hollywood. My mom would say neither of us has a real job.

I've been investing from Omaha for 40 years. A few miles from Buffett. The water here must be good for returns.

I named my daughter Olympia Lightning Bolt. When you're the fastest man alive, you earn the right to name your kids whatever you want.

If I seem unduly clear to you, you must have misunderstood what I said.

I spent £100 million on wine, women, drugs, and fast cars. The rest I wasted.

Golf is the most fun you can have without taking your clothes off.

Politics and boxing are not so different. You have opponents. You prepare. You fight. The difference is boxing has a referee.

People call us a poor man’s Berkshire. I’d rather be a rich man’s anything.

A farm kid from Arkansas owning Liverpool FC is proof that America is a genuinely insane country.

My dad thinks about the Singularity. I think about restaurant point-of-sale systems. Both are trying to improve the human condition.

A Google product manager and a finance guy walk into a cornfield. That's not a joke. That's how FBN started.

If I only had a little humility, I'd be perfect.

My son is now an entrepreneur. That's what you're called when you don't have a job.

I became a millionaire by dancing and a multi-millionaire by buying stocks. The dancing was harder.

The main purpose of the stock market is to make fools of as many men as possible.

I raise bison and llamas on a ranch in Wyoming. If that makes me weird by crypto standards, crypto has a problem.

I wear the same flannel shirt in every photo because I have better things to think about.

I founded Freshworks because my cable company gave me terrible customer service. Best complaint I ever filed.