Basically the best things in your life will come from the people that you hang out with, and I mean the people that you love, and work with, that you have passionate talks all night about and that kind of stuff.
If you can find those people, sign yourself up on their ship… So today… remember that the quality of the people you work with, the people that you hire, the people on your board will determine an awful lot of your outcome. In the media there’s this fascination with founders and how brilliant they are, but corporate success is a team sport.
As much as we love and identify our founders, it is the people who worked for them everyday who worked for them 16 hours a day and who did so because they loved the founders, they loved the vision of the company and they cared a great deal about that and when they went home to see their families, exhausted, they said I was proud to go to work and I was proud to do this.
Those are the people you want to associate with, because those are the people that will change the world.
Eric Schmidt – on Village Global’s Venture Stories Podcast