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Will biofuel usage require land? Absolutely, but we think the ability to use winter cover crops, degraded land, as well as using sources such as organic waste, sewage, and forest waste means that actual land usage will be limited. Just these sources can replace most of our imported oil by 2030 without touching new land.
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As for companies invested in the space - I think its important to distinguish between a good investment and a material climate change technology - you can have the first without the second, even in the "clean tech" space.
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Innovative, bottom-up methods will solve problems that now seem intractable—from energy to poverty to disease. Science and technology, powered by the fuel of entrepreneurial energy, are the largest multipliers of resources we have to solve our many social problems.
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Entrepreneurs have the flexibility and the ability to do things that large companies simply cannot. Could a large company pull off a trick like Amyris, going from anti-malaria medicine to next-generation fuel?
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We don't need a fuel that's cleaner, we need a fuel that happens to be cleaner, but is half the price of oil.
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There are parts of the country in America, in the Midwest, where wind is a big resource, and we should absolutely use it. But to try and apply it nationally doesn't make sense. There are technologies that will work that are appropriate to certain regions.
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Climate deniers are clearly the fringe group and need to see a proctologist to find their heads.
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Where most entrepreneurs fail is on the things they don't know they don't know.
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I've probably failed more often than anybody else in Silicon Valley. Those don't matter. I don't remember the failures. You remember the big successes.
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There's no doubt in my mind over the next 25 years how we drive, how we build our houses, how we fly, how we build our buildings, will all change.
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I do not know what got me interested in technology. What was very clear to me very early on was that I was not interested in religion and that naturally increased my curiosity about science and technology, and I fundamentally believe the two are conflicting.
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In the next 10 years, data science and software will do more for medicine than all of the biological sciences together.
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It doesn't matter what your probability of failure is. If there's a 90% chance of failure, there's a 10% chance of changing the world.
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Big data will replace the need for 80% of all doctors
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You need a degree of foolishness to cause disruptive change in healthcare. Dare to dream.
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If everyone played it safe, we wouldn't get anywhere.
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I'm not a political person. I'm a techie nerd, and I enjoy the techie part. I mean, all my life, I've loved great technology.
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I believe cellulosic fuels, biofuels made from nonfood crops are the only solution that will make a difference.
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I don’t mind failing, but if I succeed it better be worth succeeding for.
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Spreadsheets are fiction. Believing in what you're doing and what you're building is what's important.
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Not thinking it's possible is a failure of imagination.
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Setting an aggressive enough carbon-reduction goal will result in an appropriate price for carbon and will help many a renewable technology. Consumer education will help. Most importantly, though, will be the continually declining cost trajectory of the real breakthrough in clean-technology costs driven by research and innovation. In the end, private capital is the real barometer of change.
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Every big problem is a big opportunity.
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If you're going to re-invent healthcare you have to start from scratch.