David Cheriton is a Stanford computer science professor who built and sold several companies and, with Andy Bechtolsheim, staked Google's founders with seed money. This collection gathers his own words from interviews. — David Cheriton: “The goal is to get students to think like experts” (Stanford Engineering).

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On Investing and Value Creation

  1. On needing more than one reason: David Cheriton: "I look for more than one reason to do things." — How to Pick the Game Changers (NetEvents keynote 2018; David Cheriton's quoted words).
  2. On technical challenge: David Cheriton: "I like the startups where there’s a technological challenge so that, you know, not every idiot can do this." — The frugal life of Stanford’s ‘professor billionaire’ David Cheriton (VnExpress International).
  3. On how few smart people there are: David Cheriton: "There’s just not that many smart people in the world, in my humble opinion." — The frugal life of Stanford’s ‘professor billionaire’ David Cheriton (VnExpress International).
  4. On philanthropy as investment: David Cheriton: "I look at philanthropy from an investment standpoint: What do you put in and what do you get back?" — David Cheriton: “The goal is to get students to think like experts” (Stanford Engineering, his answers).
  5. On first movers: David Cheriton: "A lot of the first movers are often the first losers." — How to Pick the Game Changers (NetEvents keynote 2018; David Cheriton's quoted words).
  6. On luck: David Cheriton: "I’d rather be lucky than smart and I think I have been pretty lucky." — How David Cheriton Beats Everyone at Tech Investing (Futuriom, his quoted words).
  7. On adding real technical value: David Cheriton: "I look for opportunities where I can add real technical value." — How David Cheriton Beats Everyone at Tech Investing (Futuriom, his quoted words).
  8. On investing time rather than spraying and praying: David Cheriton: "Rather than spray and pray I invest time and money in the company to make sure it’s successful." — How David Cheriton Beats Everyone at Tech Investing (Futuriom, his quoted words).
  9. On when the founders came back: David Cheriton: "I think it was approximately a year later that they came back to me and said they weren’t getting anyplace with the licensing, and I didn’t say, “I told you so,” but I think I felt a little bit smug inside." — Google Was Not a Normal Place (oral history excerpt; David Cheriton's remarks).
  10. On education as an investment: David Cheriton: "If you look at all the options for using one’s financial resources, I think education is the best investment." — David Cheriton: “The goal is to get students to think like experts” (Stanford Engineering, his answers).

On Entrepreneurship and Building Companies

  1. On the one reason going away: David Cheriton: "I’ve seen so many cases where the one reason goes away." — How to Pick the Game Changers (NetEvents keynote 2018; David Cheriton's quoted words).
  2. On good people: David Cheriton: "You can’t do things without good people that have the right background." — How to Pick the Game Changers (NetEvents keynote 2018; David Cheriton's quoted words).
  3. On growing a company quickly: David Cheriton: "It's an enormous challenge to grow a company that quickly and not go off into the weeds, so to speak." — From The Front Porch: David Cheriton Shares His Thoughts On Google, Page And Investing (Forbes, his quoted words).
  4. On execution: David Cheriton: "So the important thing is how well you execute." — How to Pick the Game Changers (NetEvents keynote 2018; David Cheriton's quoted words).
  5. On friends: David Cheriton: "I’ve benefited enormously from the friends that I’ve developed over the years in Silicon Valley." — How to Pick the Game Changers (NetEvents keynote 2018; David Cheriton's quoted words).
  6. On transformative times: David Cheriton: "We live in incredibly transformative times which is great because there are enormous opportunities." — How to Pick the Game Changers (NetEvents keynote 2018; David Cheriton's quoted words).
  7. On explaining an idea to a non-technical person: David Cheriton: "People come to me with ideas for a companies and I can’t figure out how you’d ever explain it to a non-technical person." — How to Pick the Game Changers (NetEvents keynote 2018; David Cheriton's quoted words).
  8. On lock-in: David Cheriton: "It’s very hard to move that application because it’s highly dependent on that service." — How to Pick the Game Changers (NetEvents keynote 2018; David Cheriton's quoted words).
  9. On missed investments: David Cheriton: "I’ve missed out on a lot of great investments because of this thinking." — How to Pick the Game Changers (NetEvents keynote 2018; David Cheriton's quoted words).

On Technology and Innovation

  1. On teaching too much: David Cheriton: "We teach too much, so the students learn too little." — David Cheriton: “The goal is to get students to think like experts” (Stanford Engineering, his answers).
  2. On the plumbing level of computers: David Cheriton: "My research interest is in the plumbing level of computers, helping to run complex applications better." — David Cheriton: “The goal is to get students to think like experts” (Stanford Engineering, his answers).
  3. On thinking like a plumber: David Cheriton: "A good plumber walks into a situation and goes through a thought process to say, what is the root cause, where is it leaking and why is it leaking, before he starts pulling things apart." — David Cheriton: “The goal is to get students to think like experts” (Stanford Engineering, his answers).
  4. On in-memory processing: David Cheriton: "In-memory processing leads to dramatically faster computers—in some cases speeding up applications by a factor of 100,000." — David Cheriton: “The goal is to get students to think like experts” (Stanford Engineering, his answers).
  5. On pervasive automation: David Cheriton: "I was going to call the third wave human automation." — How to Pick the Game Changers (NetEvents keynote 2018; David Cheriton's quoted words).
  6. On writing a book and start-ups: David Cheriton: "Now I’m a little gun-shy saying I’m working on a book." — Arista hopes to be next big thing in ‘cloud computing’ (Mercury News, his quoted words).
  7. On cutting his own hair: David Cheriton: "It’s not that I can’t fathom a haircut." — The frugal life of Stanford’s ‘professor billionaire’ David Cheriton (VnExpress International).
  8. On the network: David Cheriton: "Your whole company runs on the network." — How to Pick the Game Changers (NetEvents keynote 2018; David Cheriton's quoted words).
  9. On efficiency: David Cheriton: "You can get the same efficiencies as Jeff Bezos, more or less, buying your own hardware except for how you operate it." — How to Pick the Game Changers (NetEvents keynote 2018; David Cheriton's quoted words).

On Life and Learning

  1. On owning your education: David Cheriton: "I tell students: You should own your education." — David Cheriton: “The goal is to get students to think like experts” (Stanford Engineering, his answers).
  2. On frugality: David Cheriton: "I feel like I’ve been very fortunate in investing, but I still have the brain of a scrounger in terms of spending money." — The frugal life of Stanford’s ‘professor billionaire’ David Cheriton (VnExpress International).
  3. On being a computing bigot: David Cheriton: "And, of course, I’m a computing bigot—I just think this department is absolutely essential to society and to Stanford in general." — David Cheriton: “The goal is to get students to think like experts” (Stanford Engineering, his answers).
  4. On challenging the education system: David Cheriton: "Students have to challenge the education system." — David Cheriton: “The goal is to get students to think like experts” (Stanford Engineering, his answers).
  5. On thinking like experts: David Cheriton: "Improving education starts with two objectives: one is to recognize that the goal is to get students to think like experts, to analyze situations and find new ways to solve problems; and two, each course needs to have constructive goals—a vision of what you expect that they can do when they’ve completed the course." — David Cheriton: “The goal is to get students to think like experts” (Stanford Engineering, his answers).
  6. On people making a university tick: David Cheriton: "The bottom line is that people are what make a university tick and good people create opportunities." — David Cheriton: “The goal is to get students to think like experts” (Stanford Engineering, his answers).
  7. On mentoring across generations: David Cheriton: "Yesterday’s entrepreneurs mentor today’s entrepreneurs who mentor tomorrow’s entrepreneurs." — David Cheriton: “The goal is to get students to think like experts” (Stanford Engineering, his answers).
  8. On what makes Stanford special: David Cheriton: "I have been here for 35 years and my first thought is: I don’t know." — David Cheriton: “The goal is to get students to think like experts” (Stanford Engineering, his answers).
  9. On reality checks for research ideas: David Cheriton: "Beyond that there are also a lot of reality checks." — David Cheriton: “The goal is to get students to think like experts” (Stanford Engineering, his answers).
  10. On what thinking like an expert means: David Cheriton: "I think it’s the way an expert approaches a situation to fully understand it, and if you’re trying to solve a problem, how do you go about solving that problem?" — David Cheriton: “The goal is to get students to think like experts” (Stanford Engineering, his answers).

On Google and its Founders

  1. On raising money: David Cheriton: "They thought they had a big challenge of raising money, I thought that money wasn’t the big problem, and so I kind of put myself in the spot of having to prove this, so I contacted Andy Bechtolsheim." — Google Was Not a Normal Place (oral history excerpt; David Cheriton's remarks).
  2. On who the obvious Google CEO would have been: David Cheriton: "If you'd ask me even a few years back, I would have thought Sergey [Brin] would have been the more obvious CEO than Larry." — From The Front Porch: David Cheriton Shares His Thoughts On Google, Page And Investing (Forbes, his quoted words).
  3. On licensing: David Cheriton: "They went off on that particular venture of trying to license it, and I think some of the interesting early stories of Google date from then—who could have bought the whole thing for $2 million or something of that flavor—if they had decided to pounce on it." — Google Was Not a Normal Place (oral history excerpt; David Cheriton's remarks).
  4. On search engines: David Cheriton: "Google wasn’t the first search engine but all the other search engines had been compromised by becoming Internet portals, and also the results were terrible." — How to Pick the Game Changers (NetEvents keynote 2018; David Cheriton's quoted words).
  5. On the check: David Cheriton: "Andy just got up and walked back to his Porsche, if not ran, from the porch to the Porsche, that is, got the checkbook, came back, and wrote them this check." — Google Was Not a Normal Place (oral history excerpt; David Cheriton's remarks).
  6. On advice from the Google founders: David Cheriton: "I must admit, I'd be more inclined to go to them for advice at this stage." — From The Front Porch: David Cheriton Shares His Thoughts On Google, Page And Investing (Forbes, his quoted words).
  7. On early Sun workstations: David Cheriton: "I then bought a bunch of the early Sun workstations for my research project." — How to Pick the Game Changers (NetEvents keynote 2018; David Cheriton's quoted words).
  8. On Ethernet: David Cheriton: "We thought Ethernet was the right way to go." — How to Pick the Game Changers (NetEvents keynote 2018; David Cheriton's quoted words).
  9. On Cisco: David Cheriton: "I spent seven years at Cisco as a technical advisor." — How to Pick the Game Changers (NetEvents keynote 2018; David Cheriton's quoted words).
  10. On why search needed fixing: David Cheriton: "It was getting harder and harder to find this, partly because nobody was focusing on search." — From The Front Porch: David Cheriton Shares His Thoughts On Google, Page And Investing (Forbes, his quoted words).
  1. How David Cheriton Beats Everyone at Tech Investing - Futuriom
  2. David Cheriton: “The goal is to get students to think like experts” - Stanford Engineering
  3. From The Front Porch: David Cheriton Shares His Thoughts On Google, Page And Investing