Drew Houston

Co-founder and chief executive of Dropbox

Recorded said elsewhere, not written here
I was going to say work on what you love, but that's not really it. It's so easy to convince yourself that you love what you're doing — who wants to admit that they don't? When I think about it, the happiest and most successful people I know don't just love what they do, they're obsessed with solving an important problem, something that matters to them.

MIT 147th Commencement, MIT News (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), 7 June 2013 source ↗

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Terence Tao Mathematician; Fields Medallist, 2006
AI without validation is too unreliable to be of use in any serious application.
Recorded Quanta Magazine reporter, Reported interview, Quanta Magazine, 13 April 2026 source ↗
John Banville Novelist; winner of the Booker Prize, 2005
But my own mottos are, “Don’t imagine for a moment that you’re going to be able to express yourself.” ... And most aspiring artists think, “I have something to say.”
Recorded Academy of Achievement interview, 18 October 2017 source ↗
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala Director-General of the World Trade Organization from 2021; Finance Minister of Nigeria, 2003–2006 and 2011–2015
And it brings us to the debate that has been going on here: aid versus private sector, aid versus trade, etc. And someone stood up to say that one of the frustrating things is that it's been a simplistic debate. And that's not what the debate should be about. That's engaging in the wrong debate. The issue here is how do we get a partnership that involves government donors, the private sector and ordinary African people taking charge of their own lives? How do we combine all this?
Recorded TEDGlobal 2007, Arusha, 7 June 2007 source ↗
Dan Pallotta Founder of Pallotta TeamWorks; founder of the Charity Defense Council
This is what happens when we confuse morality with frugality. We've all been taught that the bake sale with five percent overhead is morally superior to the professional fundraising enterprise with 40 percent overhead, but we're missing the most important piece of information, which is: What is the actual size of these pies? Who cares if the bake sale only has five percent overhead if it's tiny?
Recorded TED2013, 1 March 2013 source ↗

More from Drew Houston

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Question In the last five years, what new belief, behaviour, or habit has most improved your life? Daily life
That night, I realized there are no warmups, no practice rounds, no reset buttons. Every day we're writing a few more words of a story. And when you die, it's not like “here lies Drew, he came in 174th place.” So from then on, I stopped trying to make my life perfect, and instead tried to make it interesting. I wanted my story to be an adventure — and that's made all the difference.
Recorded MIT 147th Commencement, MIT News (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), 7 June 2013 source ↗
Question How has a setback or failure set you up for later success? Failure & regret
No one has a 5.0 in real life. In fact, when you finish school, the whole notion of a GPA just goes away. When you're in school, every little mistake is a permanent crack in your windshield. But in the real world, if you're not swerving around and hitting the guard rails every now and then, you're not going fast enough. Your biggest risk isn't failing, it's getting too comfortable.
Recorded MIT 147th Commencement, MIT News (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), 7 June 2013 source ↗

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