Tim O'Reilly

Share what you do profusely, because it will be remixed by others into something new, rich and strange.

I find that creative streak I think often leads in programmers to be good predictors of where culture as a whole is going to go. And that is where I think I've tried over the years to in some ways use my customers as a filter or a predictor of where technology as a whole is going to go. Or where the world as a whole is going to go.

The Lean Startup isn't just about how to create a more successful entrepreneurial business, it's about what we can learn from those businesses to improve virtually everything we do. I imagine Lean Startup principles applied to government programs, to healthcare, and to solving the world's great problems. It's ultimately an answer to the question: How can we learn more quickly what works, and discard what doesn't?

An invention has to make sense in the world it finishes in, not in the world it started.

At O'Reilly, the way we think about our business is that we're not a publisher; we're not a conference producer; we're a company that helps change the world by spreading the knowledge of innovators.

Money is like gasoline during a road trip. You don't want to run out of gas on your trip, but you're not doing a tour of gas stations. You have to pay attention to money, but it shouldn't be about the money.

There is people who make stuff with words. There is people who make stuff with programs. And I really believe that that whole creative culture, people didn't realize how creative programming is. And anybody who's done it of course knows that not only is it creative, but it's incredibly absorbing.

I believe that the human motive to share is very powerful. The human motive to profit is also very powerful, and I think that the profit motive and the sharing motive are not exclusive.

I guess I would just say that in general, one of my weaknesses is that I love everything. There's too much of everything to keep up with it all. I get bored with Silicon Valley technology a lot. I've always had much more of a draw to the people who are doing things for love than the people who are doing things for money.

We often get blinded by the forms in which content is produced, rather than the job that the content does.

My original business model - I actually wrote this down - was 'interesting work for interesting people.'

So many technologies start out with a burst of idealism, democratization, and opportunity, and over time, they close down and become less friendly to entrepreneurship, to innovation, to new ideas. Over time, the companies that become dominant take more out of the ecosystem than they put back in.

When you have to prove the value of your ideas by persuading other people to pay for them, it clears out an awful lot of woolly thinking.

A key function of a publishing brand is the bestowal of status by who and what you pay attention to.

The problem for most artists isn't piracy, it's obscurity.

Pursue something so important that even if you fail, the world is better off with you having tried.