“Self-sufficiency – individuals and small teams were given fairly complex objectives and expected to figure out how to achieve them on their own. If you needed to integrate with an outside vendor, you picked up the phone yourself and called; you didn’t wait for a BD person to become available. You did (the first version of) mockups and wireframes yourself; you didn’t wait for a designer to become available. You wrote (the first draft of) site copy yourself; you didn’t wait for a content writer.”

- Yee Lee, former Product & BU GM of Paypal

I said, since these are early adopters, one of these people is going to be the mayor of Flickr–you never know. Georgina (George) Oates, an early employee of Flickr, and I greeted everyone who came into the instant messaging conversations or posted on the site. We said, “Oh you know, I notice you’re into Norwegian Metal and I noticed you live in Pittsburgh–here’s another person from Pittsburgh. Communities take on the kind of character of a party at the outset and you need to be a good host.

- From an interview with Adam Peneberg in Fast Company

Yeah, that is correct. I actually initially used the word PROGRESS. I felt like if Obama were elected, then he would shift what was the status quo, and then that would be progress. I did the poster without any input from the campaign—I just did it as a grassroots thing. I figured the campaign wouldn’t want my help because I’m too controversial, kind of like the [Louis] Farrakhan endorsement, where they said, “Thanks, but no thanks.” But when I heard that they did like the image, my friend who was sort of the liaison said, “They love the image, but they really like the word HOPE or CHANGE better. . . .” I was told that progress leads to progressive, which leads to socialism. So I chose hope as the word, because the more I thought about it, the more I realized that people are complacent and apathetic when they’re hopeless, and so hope leads to action. It’s also hard to be anti-hope. It’s one of those bulletproof things.

From an interview with Shepard and Iggy Pop in Interview Magazine

“Can we do the job of those 6 parts with just one?” – Objectified

I spent many years in college studying English literature. I was on the verge of attending grad school to get a Ph.D. in Renaissance poetry – my lost careers were being a writer, artist or academic. Do I regret spending all that time poring over Shakespeare when I could have been getting a jump start on the competition? Not at all. There’s no money in poetry, but then again, there’s no poetry in money either.

- Caterina Fake