Best Advice 7 Tech Idols Ever Received

The most successful people in every industry, including technology have received a piece of precious advice, at some point in their life from someone, which turned the course of their life and made them what they are today.

 
Richard Parsons, Former chairman of Citigroup considers the advice from Steve Ross, former CEO of Time Warner as his life changing one: "Just remember, it's a small business and a long life. You are going to see all these people again."

 
Business Insider compiled a list of such best tips the executives ever received and shared over the years. Here are some of the lessons received by the tech icons like Bill Gates to new world tech stars like Ben Silberman of Pinterest.

 

Marissa Mayer, VP,Google

 
“My friend Andre said to me, ‘you know, Marissa, you are putting a lot of pressure on yourself to pick the right choice, and I have got to be honest: That is not what I see here. I see a bunch of good choices, and there is the one that you pick and make great’. I think that is one of the best pieces of advice I have ever gotten.”

 
-From an interview with Social Times

 

Eric Schmidt, Google -->

Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman, Google

“Find a way to say yes to things. Say yes to invitations to a new country, say yes to meet new friends, say yes to learn something new. Yes is how you get your first job, and your next job, and your spouse, and even your kids."

-From the book “The Best Advice I Ever Got” by Katie Couric.

Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook -->

Sheryl Sandberg, COO, Facebook

When Sandberg was thinking she would not accept an offer to be Google’s general manager, Eric Schmidt told her, “Stop being an idiot; all that matters is growth.” She says that is the best advice she ever got.

Larry Page, Google -->

Larry Page, Co-founder, Google

"In graduate school at Stanford University, I had about ten different ideas of things I wanted to do, and one of them was to look at the link structure of the web. My advisor, Terry Winograd, picked that one out and said, 'Well, that one seems like a really good idea.' So I give him credit for that."

-From an interview with CNN Money

Bill Gates, Microsoft -->

Bill Gates, Chairman, Microsoft

"Warren Buffett has taught me a lot of things, but he got me thinking very early on that at some point I'd have the opportunity and responsibility to give the wealth back. And so, literally decades before the foundation got started I was reading about philanthropists from the past … what they'd done and how it worked."

Ben Silberman, Pinterest -->

Ben Silberman, Co-founder, Pinterest

"Don't take too much advice. Most people who have a lot of advice to give - with a few exceptions - generalize whatever they did. ...Every company carves its own path, and (founders) are under pressure to make their startups look like the last successful company everyone remembers."

Richard Branson, Virgin Group -->

Richard Branson, founder and chairman, Virgin Group

 
"My mother always taught me never to look back in regret but to move on to the next thing. The amount of time people waste dwelling on failures rather than putting that energy into another project, always amazes me. I have fun running ALL the Virgin businesses — so a setback is never a bad experience, just a learning curve."

 
-Taken from an interview with The Good Entrepreneur.

Warren Buffett, Chairman and CEO, Berkshire Hathaway

 
Berkshire Hathaway director Thomas Murphy once told “the legendary investor”:

 
"Never forget Warren, you can tell a guy to go to hell tomorrow - you don't give up the right. So just keep your mouth shut today, and see if you feel the same way tomorrow."

 
-From an interview with Yahoo

Facebook‘s Acquisition of Face.com Gives a New Look to Search

With Facebook’s acquisition of Face.com reportedly a done deal, all of the focus is on what the merger will do for Facebook’s mobile efforts. But there may be more to the deal than just mobile.

“Give us 14 images of you,” Google’s Eric Schmidt famously told the Technology Conference in 2010, “and we can find other images of you with 95% accuracy.”

That was impressive at the time, and that 95% is probably much higher now. But what was more impressive is that the feature, which isn’t available on Google Image Search, is expected to be offered first by Face.com. As the Web becomes increasingly visual, image search is going to become increasingly important, and an acquisition of Face.com may be the strongest signal yet thatFacebook is positioning itself to go toe-to-toe with Google in search.

The inevitable implications of enhanced image search are huge. One of the biggest reasons it hasn’t been launched on Google Image Search and has only been launched on a limited basis on Facebook is that the computing power hasn’t quite caught up to allow for quick searches based on facial recognition algorithms. But that is rapidly changing.

PCWorld has a comprehensive look at the good and bad of facial recognition technology, with plenty of space devoted to the increased privacy concerns. As Eli Pariser noted in The Filter Bubble, “The ability to search by face will shatter many of our cultural illusions about privacy and anonymity... [it will be] as if the whole Internet has been tagged on Facebook.”

Neither company is commenting on the deal, but there are widespread reports that Facebook would pay between $80 million and $100 million for the Israeli startup.

The rumor, coupled with recent acquisitions of photosharing apps Instagram and Lightbox and the release of its own Facebook Camera app, make it clear that Facebook is betting on a visual Web for its future growth. But it also shows that Facebook is putting the money it raised in its initial public offering to work, acquiring companies instead of going through the process of developing new products, features and services in-house.