Harley Finkelstein (President of Shopify)

• "The right entrepreneurs, the best entrepreneurs, they just simply out-care other people."

• “Most people are not willing to look stupid for some period of time. Too many people are too apprehensive. I’ve long believed that getting really really comfortable with being uncomfortable is magic. You can’t be born with that, you learn it. I don’t know anyone who I admire who’s had success and not gone through that period of looking kind of dumb.”

Bret Taylor (founder of Sierra AI, prior creator of Google Maps, CTO Facebook, co-CEO Salesforce, chairman Twitter, board member OpenAI)

• “What will the role of software engineering become as we go from authors of code to operators of code generating machines?”
• “AI is causing really rapid transformation (software engineering, the law, marketing, customer service, etc). If you’re not responding to the facts in front of you and thinking from first principles then the likelihood you’ll make the right decision is almost zero. For example in our AI customer service business, our pricing model only charges our customers for the outcomes (rather than use) given AI can complete a task rather than just help you be more productive. And we work with our customers to deliver more fully configured software for them, because in a world where making software is easier than it ever was before, the delivery model of software probably should change as well.”

Ron Shaich (Panera co-founder, Au Bon Pain co-founder, investor it Cava and Tatte)

• Category design beats competition: Panera didn’t try to out-execute fast food companies, but helped invent the new category of "fast casual". Re-defining the game was more important than playing harder (“If you’re competing head-to-head, you’re already losing.”)
• “The job of a leader is to see what others don’t - yet.”