Max Levchin

"The very first company I started failed. The second one failed. The third one failed. Then PayPal succeeded."

"Building something from nothing is the most rewarding thing you can do."

"At PayPal, we hired for intelligence, not experience. A smart person can learn anything."

"The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes."

"The best way to predict the future is to implement it."

"A lot of people think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas."

"Fraud is the thing that makes payments hard. It's the thing that keeps everybody honest and everybody frustrated."

"Starting a company is like throwing yourself off a cliff and assembling an airplane on the way down."

"I've learned that there is no substitute for sweat equity."

"The things I've done well, I've been obsessive about. The things I've done poorly, I've not been obsessive about."