Aileen Lee Quotes
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I work with tiny companies, so I don't really live in unicorn world, to be honest.
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History suggests the 2010s will give rise to a super-unicorn or two that reflect the key tech wave of the decade, the mobile web.
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A lot of the entrepreneurs and founders have big dreams and are on a mission to build things that the world has never seen before.
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Top creative and innovative talent wants to live in a vibrant, transit-friendly, global city that offers access to not only great jobs but also great food, entertainment and culture.
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I grew up in New Jersey and played sports and rode my bike around. It was a really nice time - kids didn't have cellphones then - and you knew everyone in the town.
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From a pretty early age, I developed an interest in travel. I told my parents I wanted to live abroad, and they said, 'Well, you have to have money to do those things.'
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I was ringside for Amazon and Google.
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Seed stage is an investment area that is really important for early stage startups. It feels like there is a need for trusted, experienced people to work with and to guide startups at this level.
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I am committed to ensuring San Francisco remains a center for tech and the innovation capital of the world.
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You can't get into the trap of paying for customer acquisition.
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Having been a venture-backed CEO, and having an established background in working with consumer-focused companies, I've built a strong network of entrepreneurs and people who can help startups.
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The reality is that in a tech environment that is 90 percent to 100 percent male, it's not super-encouraging for females to be successful. It's just a lot of things that contribute to that: things that people do or things that people say that they may not realize have unintended consequences.
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I did not grow up thinking that I wanted to be an engineer. I had read some articles about girls becoming increasingly scientifically illiterate and that girls lacked confidence in their capabilities when it came to quantitative skills. And I just thought that was kind of wrong.
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When I was growing up, I had lots of smart classmates that were girls, but none of us were really pushed into math or computers or anything like that. Girls took AP history and AP English and AP European history. And boys took calculus and physics.
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I'm a first-born child of a Chinese immigrant family, I grew up on the East Coast. And I have to admit, I did not grow up around technology.
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The question for Dropbox is whether, when they run out of private sources for funding, they will be able to maintain that valuation when they go to public sources for funding and their valuation is set on the public markets.
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There needs to be more deliberate effort on the part of folks at VC firms to bring in a more diverse team of talent. You have to make a more concerted effort to bring in people who are different and who may not be in your network.
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Some companies are worth paying for up front.
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I played with different words like 'home run,' 'megahit,' and they just all sounded kind of 'blah.' So I put in 'unicorn' because they are - these are very rare companies in the sense that there are thousands of startups in tech every year, and only a handful will wind up becoming a unicorn company. They're really rare.
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In the future, the best retail sites will know you much better and show you things that are much more relevant.
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When I go visit my mom in the retirement community where my parents live, she has a bunch of friends, and she will say, 'These neighbors I play bridge with have a son with an idea,' and it goes from there.
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I appreciate the sacrifices my dad made. I went to a great public high school.
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You have to get under the hood and spend some quality time with someone to understand what they're really good at.
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Some investors may grumble about entrepreneurs wanting 'unicorn valuations.' But let's be honest: most investors want them, too, and are supporting the massive capitalization of these companies.