Mitch Kapor Quotes

Mitch Kapor

Profession : Businessman

Birth : November 1, 1950

The Internet, the network of networks, is growing at an exponential pace. It's growing so fast, in fact, nobody really knows how many people use the Internet.

Mitch Kapor

In an economy where more and more value is in information - is in the bits, not the atoms, where bits can be copied essentially for free - any time you have that situation, economic schemes that rely on existing models of intellectual property laws for protection are going to do less and less well.

Mitch Kapor

No, my family is Russian, Georgian, via Ellis Island.

Mitch Kapor

I actually built a tiny computer as a junior high school project.

Mitch Kapor

The culmination of all of that was the decision to start a company, which became Lotus, to do a product, which became 1-2-3. By the time I reached that point it had been four years, and it felt like a lifetime, but really it was kind of evolutionary.

Mitch Kapor

I was trying to figure out what to do next, I'd been accumulating ideas for productivity tools - software people could use every day, particularly to help organize their lives.

Mitch Kapor

We've already gotten a significant grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and a university consortium. I think the whole sector of Foundations, potentially with government support, is promising - more than promising, I think, it's substantial.

Mitch Kapor

That's why it has to be a nonprofit, because a nonprofit is required to take monies it receives and use them for the purposes for which it's chartered by the government. It can't be pocketed.

Mitch Kapor

I was not a student of Wall Street, but I was a quick study.

Mitch Kapor

Startups, in some sense, have gotten so easy to start that we are confusing two things. And what we are confusing, often, is, 'How far can you get in your first day of travel?' with, 'How long it is going to take to get up to the top of the mountain?'

Mitch Kapor

I'm an inveterate note taker - I scribble all these things down on pieces of paper. I wanted to create some way of organizing all of them.

Mitch Kapor

Oakland's time is coming. In fact, Oakland's time is already here. Tech is coming to Oakland, and it's terribly exciting.

Mitch Kapor

If you go back to the '50s and '60s... there was zero tech in S.F. It was all in the Valley... and it crept northward in early 2000s.

Mitch Kapor

I had no fear of speaking to large audiences.

Mitch Kapor

Today, in the Internet gold rush, so many people go into dot-com jobs right from school or even before finishing. Their motivation is understandable, but sometimes they just lack experience.

Mitch Kapor

In my case, having knocked around at different jobs helped me get a sense of what the world is actually like and also helped me get out of a cocoon.

Mitch Kapor

I'd been a great angel investor, but professional venture capital was clearly not the right thing for me.

Mitch Kapor

I'd always wanted to live in San Francisco, and my circumstances never permitted it. I'm so happy I made the move.

Mitch Kapor

Beware angel investors: they can be disruptive.

Mitch Kapor

People are hungry for community. They're hungry for meaning in a society that is oriented around the production and consumption of consumer goods.

Mitch Kapor