Company Quotes

Where minds differ and opinions swerve, there is scant a friend in that company.

Life's too short to hang out with people who aren't resourceful.

If you only do things where you know the answer in advance, your company goes away.

A company shouldn't get addicted to being shiny, because shiny doesn't last.

My own view is that every company requires a long-term view.

As a company grows, everything needs to scale, including the size of your failed experiments. If the size of your failures isn't growing, you're not going to be inventing at a size that can actually move the needle.

As a company, one of our greatest cultural strengths is accepting the fact that if you're going to invent, you're going to disrupt.

The missionary is building the product and building the service because they love the customer, because they love the product, because they love the service. The mercenary is building the product or service so that they can flip the company and make money. Position yourself with something that captures your curiosity, something that you're missionary about.

It's always worth asking, do we own the process or does the process own us? In a Day 2 company, you might find it's the second.

I was working at a financial firm in New York City with a bunch of very smart people, and I had a brilliant boss who I much admired. I went to my boss and told him I wanted to start a company selling books on the Internet. He took me on a long walk in Central Park,listened carefully to me, and finally said, "That sounds like a really good idea, but it would be an even better idea for someone who didn't already have a good job."

I ask people to visualize the company five years from now. At that point, each of us should look around and say, "The standards are so high now-boy, I'm glad I got in when I did!"

Focusing on the customer makes a company more resilient.

The most important single thing is to focus obsessively on the customer. Our goal is to be earth's most customer-centric company.

You know, if you make a customer unhappy they won't tell five friends, they'll tell 5,000 friends. So, we are at a point now where we have all of the things we need to build an important and lasting company, and if we don't, it will be shame on us.

Your brand is formed primarily, not by what your company says about itself, but what the company does.

I think one of the things people don't understand is we can build more shareholder value by lowering product prices than we can by trying to raise margins. It's a more patient approach, but we think it leads to a stronger, healthier company. It also serves customers much, much better.

There are multiple ways to be externally focused that are very successful. You can be customer-focused or competitor-focused. Some people are internally focused, and if they reach critical mass, they can tip the whole company.

If the head man in a company is not working 12 hours a day, doing things, taking risks, but also standing with his people in the trenches at the most difficult of times, then the company loses something.

If you're trying to create a company, it's like baking a cake. You have to have all the ingredients in the right proportion.

If you don't have sustainable energy, you have unsustainable energy. The fundamental value of a company like Tesla is the degree to which it accelerates the advent of sustainable energy faster than it would otherwise occur.