One of the most critical decisions made in life is choosing with whom to spend your time. For it is those close relationships that gradually mold our character until we become a reflection of the company we keep.
I founded Netflix. I've built it steadily over 12 years now, first with DVD becoming profitable in 2002, a head-to-head ferocious battle with Blockbuster and evolving the company toward streaming.
If you are a big company, a big website, and lots of users come to your website, you will have attacks, and you have to deal with that. It just cannot be a reason to take actions to exit certain markets.
I did do some Shakespeare on film, it's really difficult. It's really interesting, because I was doing a series in Canada called 'Slings and Arrows' and it was about a company based around the Stratford Festival.
There is no country on Earth where Internet and telecommunications companies do not face at least some pressure from governments to do things that would potentially infringe on users' rights to free expression and privacy.
Compliance with the Stop Online Piracy Act would require huge overhead spending by Internet companies for staff and technologies dedicated to monitoring users and censoring any infringing material from being posted or transmitted.
If you hire only those people you understand, the company will never get people better than you are. Always remember that you often find outstanding people among those you don't particularly like.
Go out and collect data and, instead of having the answer, just look at the data and see if the data tells you anything. When we're allowed to do this with companies, it's almost magical.
Nobody adores fertilizer. Nobody devotes their life to fertilizer (unless they own a fertilizer company). But, shit, you need it to grow the crops. The land is arid and dry without it, and trying to grow things is likely to be futile.
Nothing, to my way of thinking, is a better proof of a well ordered mind than a man’s ability to stop just where he is and pass some time in his own company.
I've probably done more venture capital deals and expansion financings than I have done private equity deals. But both are the same. Private equity companies have also built jobs.
China also has moved away from its original status of purely producing basic, what you call, consumer commodities and Chinese companies are moving beyond China to various parts of the world.
The ad industry thinks their clients are their customers. They think the companies who pay for the production are the ones they are supposed to serve. So the ads they produce make their clients happy... but infuriate the rest of us.
To operate based on conviction and belief requires an acceptance that your actions could get you fired. This is different from pig-headed bravado, and it is different from putting the company at risk.
I never imagined working with CEOs, congressmen or the military, yet I make regular visits to the Pentagon, stop by the Capitol now and then and sit down with leaders of all kinds of companies.
I myself feel that it is very important that my ISP supplies internet to my house like the water company supplies water to my house. It supplies connectivity with no strings attached.
When I started my company, many people said I shouldn't launch it as a retail concept because it was too big a risk. They told me to launch as a wholesaler to test the waters - because that was the traditional way.
The increase in salaries at private companies has exploded, and Romania also faces a labor shortage, especially in construction. We believe that the Romanian market will remain an incentive, so that migration will not be an issue.
Unbeknownst to a lot of us, our children actually listen to just about everything we say and, even more so, watch everything we do. They notice the choices we make and the company we keep.
In AirAsia, we consider ourselves basically a dream factory. We deliberately decided that we wanted a company where people can pursue their passion, and we wanted to make use of all the talent that we have in-house.
We found that the most exciting environments, that treated people very well, are also tough as nails. There is no bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo... excellent companies provide two things simultaneously: tough environments and very supportive environments.