John Doerr Quotes

“Long before Gmail or Android or Chrome, Google brimmed with big ideas. The founders were quintessential visionaries, with extreme entrepreneurial energy. What they lacked was management experience.”

“But the marriage of Google and OKRs was anything but random. It was a great impedance match, a seamless gene transcription into Google’s messenger RNA.”

“For Google to have real impact, or even to reach liftoff, they would have to learn to make tough choices and keep their team on track. Given their healthy appetite for risk, they’d need to pull the plug on losers—to fail fast. Not least, they would need timely, relevant data. To track their progress. To measure what mattered.”

“But I’d also watched too many start-ups struggle with growth and scale and getting the right things done. So I’d come to a philosophy, my mantra: Ideas are easy. Execution is everything.”