Login  |  Search

Opportunity Knocks

He was destined to be great!


Sometimes the great ones will admit that luck had a lot to do with their success.

"It turns out that the early business relationship that was promoted by Steve Jobs with Apple made a really critical difference in the way that our company developed."
Charles Geschke
Founder, Adobe Systems

 

"There's a lot to be said about being at the right place at the right time, and essentially, we were there. We didn't know it at the time, but that's what happened."
David Packard
Founder, Hewlett-Packard

 

"When we started the company, we didn't realize that you could go off and build a nearly $5 billion company in 12 years. We actually had no clue that we were going to be successful. We had no idea how big the market was. We just came in every day, did the best we could, got a little lucky, worked really hard and had a little magic because we had the right group of founders, the right timing, the right marketplace, the right geography -- the stars were all lined up."
Scott McNealy
Founder, Sun Microsystems

 

"Great ideas still take a lot of hard work to turn into a reality. And in the case of hard work, a lot of hard work, a lot of money, and a lot of luck to supplement your vision."
Larry Ellison
Founder, Oracle Corporation

 

"I was hanging posters at Stanford University, advertising for:
Wanted: programmer to help on exciting new software product.

I didn't know where to put them up. So, I walked into a building that looked like an engineering building and asked a group of students who were seated in a circle. ... one of the students said, 'I might be interested in that. Let me have one of those.' Well, that was Tom Proulx, the cofounder of Intuit. So, we met totally by chance."
Scott Cook
Founder, Intuit

 

"Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them."
William Shakespeare
Twelfth-Night

 

Read about An Era of Discovery

Back to Home Page