Michael S. Malone > Quotes

“The greatness of Intel is not that it is smarter than other companies (though it may well be) or that it is too clever and competent to make a false move (we’ve just seen a stunning example of the very opposite) but that it has consistently done better than any company, perhaps ever, at recovering from its mistakes.”
― Michael S. Malone, The Intel Trinity: How Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore, and Andy Grove Built the World's Most Important Company

“Here, in the thick of the Baby Boom, the best Valley companies understood the importance of family.”
― Michael S. Malone, The Intel Trinity: How Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore, and Andy Grove Built the World's Most Important Company

“for”
― Michael S. Malone, Charlie's Place: The Saga of an American Frontier Homestead

“Then came the 1982 recession. The promises and prizes quickly disappeared and once again employers had a buyers’ market and the upper hand. By then, the game had changed.”
― Michael S. Malone, The Big Score: The Billion Dollar Story of Silicon Valley

“I remember having to do a monthly progress report when I worked under Andy. I used the word ‘corroborate’ and he sent me a note, saying there’s no such word. ‘You mean “collaborate,” ’ he wrote. I responded with my own note and told him, ‘ “Corroborate” is a legitimate word.’ “He sent back one final note that said, ‘ “Bastard” is a legitimate word, too.”
― Michael S. Malone, The Intel Trinity: How Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore, and Andy Grove Built the World's Most Important Company

“the Inventing merit badge, which required a Scout to not only invent a new device or mechanism but also to obtain a U.S. patent for it. Needless to say, not many Scouts ever attempted this badge during its four-year existence and it is something of a miracle that nine Scouts managed to earn it.”
― Michael S. Malone, FOUR PERCENT: The Extraordinary Story of Exceptional American Youth

“There still weren’t enough warm bodies in the area to meet demand. So companies went to extreme measures: three 12-hour-day workweeks, promises of extended holidays, biplanes towing employment ads over Stanford football games, bonuses to employees who brought in friends, open houses in which job offers were made on the spot”
― Michael S. Malone, The Big Score: The Billion Dollar Story of Silicon Valley

“Rarely discussed in studies of entrepreneurial startups is just how lonely it can be out there with a revolutionary new product, no competition, and a market that doesn't seem to get what you are doing.

You can try to hide in an echo chamber of your own team but eventually, you have to go outside and deal with investors, analysts and potential customers.

And when all of them are skeptical, even dismissive, it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain the supreme confidence you need to keep going.

That's why many of the great entrepreneurs are arrogant and obsessive to the point of megalomania.

They sometimes have to be able to take their solitary vision and make it real.”
― Michael S. Malone, The Intel Trinity: How Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore, and Andy Grove Built the World's Most Important Company – A Biography from Unprecedented Archives of the Digital Age Founders

“A miserable Noyce told a friend, “For a few goddamned points on Wall Street, we have to ruin people’s lives.”
― Michael S. Malone, The Intel Trinity: How Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore, and Andy Grove Built the World's Most Important Company

“It was important for Bob Noyce to be liked, which paralyzed his ability to fire people or reposition them downward, even when the company and those who worked for it were at risk.”
― Michael S. Malone, The Big Score: The Billion Dollar Story of Silicon Valley

“Fairchild Parent rewarded Fairchild Child’s success the way all East Coast companies of the era did: it kept a sizable chunk of the profits to fund other company operations, and it promoted the people at the top of the division to a fancier position and a better salary for a job well done. Back in New Jersey, it didn’t cross anyone’s mind that this was exactly the wrong response to an egalitarian company that shared both risk and reward among all of its employees, whose executives had moved to California precisely to get away from the Old World of business, and which needed to plow most of its profits back into product development to stay ahead of the competition in a fast-moving take-no-prisoners industry.”
― Michael S. Malone, The Intel Trinity: How Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore, and Andy Grove Built the World's Most Important Company