Harper Reed Quotes
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When I called people and said, 'Hey! Do you want to work for the president?' they usually said yes. I had 2 people say no. One person said no because they were a Republican; one person said no because they're a Libertarian.
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Oftentimes in tech, people think, 'I'm the only one that has this.' I call them the Atlas People. They're like, 'The weight of the world is on the shoulders. I'm the only person who can solve this problem.' But you can't do that.
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Let's not project our fears onto others.
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In technology startups, there's a lot of winging it.
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Ten Internets ago, when PayPal was started, it was all these tools that no one had built yet to bring commerce to the Internet. My first startup used PayPal.
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In the U.S., it's all about turnout, which means you have to appeal to every single Democrat to get them to vote.
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The digital team who were running Twitter, they weren't just going to put out a tweet for fun. They're going to try and figure out how do we measure the impact. Then they'd tweet it, and if it worked, great.
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The team that I had built was all white dudes with the same perspective on things that was at times comfortable and easy, but we weren't as innovative as our competitors.
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There is the egoism of technologists. We do it because we can create. I can handle all of the parameters going into the machine, and I know what is going to come out of it.
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Not every time you open Messenger do you want an Uber, but when you do want an Uber, it appears. That is the goal.
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I never would wish technology failing on any sort of opponent or enemy.
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When you have a good vision and a very large capability of impact, that's very powerful.
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Data scientist, as a profession, is largely a fad.
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I spent a lot of time hacking, doing all this stuff, building websites, building communities, working all the time, and then a lot of time drinking, partying, and hanging out. And I had to choose when to do which.
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I would say Silicon Valley and New York have inflated salaries.
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Myself, I have a philosophy degree and a fake computer-science degree. I say fake because I really didn't learn anything.
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I usually hire people who have very exemplary work experience. Where they went to school, or what degree they have, really has no play into the hiring decision.
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When I give talks, I often quote from a button I received at a Google event: Always Be Creative. I use it to illustrate how important creativity is in technology and business.
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We see these wonderful apps that really have changed our world in many good ways such as Uber or Airbnb, but at the same time, they're drastically changing the workforce. And they're changing them so much that the industries themselves are not able to keep up.
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I would still describe myself as a hacker. I still remember feeling the magic, the sense of discovery, when I first connected to a bulletin board. It seemed like the world was somehow brighter, the greens were greener. Like I'd stepped through a portal to the other side. I knew back then that things would never be the same again for me.
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When you go from building T-shirts to software for a presidential campaign used by a cast of millions, it's pretty easy to think, OK, we can build something pretty big.
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My entire career has been based around commerce. The Obama campaign was famous for raising boatloads of money online. My question is how do you make conversions better through mobile and e-mail.
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If you want to go and build a company that exists in Silicon Valley, then you should go and do it there. But if you want to build a company that is Australian, that represents your culture and your being, then you should do it in Sydney.
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I love books that stand the test of time.