Top 75 Andrew Yang Quotes

I spent five years running Manhattan GMAT helping young people get into business school.

I’ve always believed that talking about something is not the same as doing something about it.

Every parent pursues the best possible opportunities for their child while climbing over obstacles and limitations each day. So in a way, all parents are entrepreneurs.

People can grow from adversity as much as they do from prosperity.

Technology companies tend to operate in winner-take-all spaces and thus adopt a very high-commitment culture.

All of us, and particularly young people, have a tendency to view ourselves and our natures as static: you‘ll choose to do something for a few years, and you’ll still be the same you.

Unfortunately, hardworking, academically gifted young people are kind of lazy when it comes to determining direction.

We need to provide all areas of the country with access to high-quality medical care.

Starting a successful company is one of the hardest things anyone does.

If I need a pick-me-up, I pull up a memo file on my phone and type in three things I’m grateful for. The things I’ve typed on other days are still there. It’s a long list. Always helps.

When I was first thinking about what would become Venture for America, I was trying to figure out how to solve a problem – that our top young people were being driven to roles that did not, to me, address the needs of our time. That VFA would be a non-profit just seemed like the most efficient way to solve the problem.

Automation is no longer just a problem for those working in manufacturing. Physical labor was replaced by robots; mental labor is going to be replaced by AI and software.

The reason Donald Trump was elected was that we automated away four million manufacturing jobs in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. If you look at the voter data, it shows that the higher the level of concentration of manufacturing robots in a district, the more that district voted for Trump.

Online education and technology are doubtless going to change how we learn in the years ahead. Remote learning is inexpensive and brings down the cost of near-universal access.

Millennials get a bad rap sometimes about their grit and perseverance.

Income taxes are very poor at generating income from automation because the gains are realized by technology companies that are experts at not paying taxes.

Starting a business is similar to an athletic endeavor, like serving a tennis ball. Telling you how to do it is useless. You actually get better through a combination of practice, coaching, and repetitions with money on the line.

Overnight successes are generally years in the making. And most progress is made in isolation, far from the public eye.

Before Starbucks, there wasn’t as much of a coffeehouse routine; we generally drank really cruddy diner coffee.

Silicon Valley is like Wall Street in that it will fill and pursue market opportunities to their logical extremes.

Venture for America operates in communities that could generally use more innovation: Detroit, New Orleans, Baltimore, and other U.S. cities. So I’m obviously a big believer in innovation and progress as key drivers of economic growth and prosperity.

The vast majority of companies don’t go public and mint dozens of millionaires. And most companies don’t go around doling out stock options; private companies tend to be very tight about ownership.

Every entrepreneur doesn’t need to be technical – there are plenty of opportunities out there for people who aren’t coders.

There is, happily, a non-redistributive approach to address income inequality – one that doesn’t rely upon government. It’s to grow the pie. That is, create more decent jobs that pay more.

If we create enough new companies, there will be additional opportunities for people at every rung of the educational ladder.

A company can set off in one direction, figures out that it’s not the right way to go, and then go in an entirely new direction. Over time, the product or service improves, and the company gets better at executing and delivering.

I grew up a skinny Asian kid who was often ignored or picked on. It stuck with me and branded my soul. As I grew up, I tried to stick up for whoever seemed excluded or marginalized.

Technology can create needs even as it addresses them.

We need more women solving different problems, starting companies, and creating jobs to drive our economy and society forward.

One thing I disliked about being a lawyer was billing for my time.

For most students at universities around the country, studying entrepreneurship is a pleasant intellectual diversion, not a professional choice, path, or commitment.

Zoning laws making housing more expensive? That’s less of a problem with a universal basic income and more of a reason to put money directly into people’s hands.

The first thing I do when I wake up in the morning is push my dog off of me. He likes to sleep on top of me. I think it’s because I’m warm and breathing.

At Manhattan GMAT, I had done my best to create a positive work environment and culture, and I further believed in rewarding people financially at or above the market rate for a job well done.

Our young people desperately want the chance to participate in and lead our nation‘s economic and cultural revival. They’re up for the challenges that they’re going to inherit. It only remains for us to present the path to address them.

In 2011, I started a nonprofit organization, Venture for America, to help bring talented young entrepreneurs to create thousands of jobs in Detroit, Cleveland, St. Louis, Birmingham, Baltimore and other cities around the country.

Freelancers generally want as friction-free an engagement as possible.

I had very little going for me as a kid except for the fact that I had demanding parents and was very good at filling out bubbles on standardized tests. I went to the Center for Talented Youth at Johns Hopkins University because I did well on the SAT. I went to Exeter because I did well on the SAT.

One could argue that our national university system has become a de facto talent drain for much of the country. Many states and communities send their top students away to great schools, never to hear from them again.

If you’re positioned to start your own organization, that’s great – but rare.

The impending destruction of jobs due to automation and AI technologies is definitely increasing the need for – and speed at which – we have to implement big solutions, such as a universal basic income.

We need people building companies all over the country to innovate in aviation, consumer products, education, health, cybersecurity, biotech, manufacturing, and everything in between.

Professional services industries like finance, consulting, and legal services are, by definition, meta-industries. That is, they serve to help large companies raise money, buy and sell each other, reorganize, implement new systems, conduct complex transactions, and so forth.

The image of entrepreneurship as the province of the unprivileged and un-entitled – the Horatio Alger, rags to riches myth – flies in the face of reality.

If you can’t pay your bills, it has a really tough effect on your mental state.

After graduating from Brown, I went to law school and became a corporate lawyer in New York City.

People love Twinkies, and everyone knows about them, yet Hostess went bankrupt. Attention and commercial success have an uncertain relationship in business.

If a new company is formed, it hires people and creates jobs in its community. As it grows, people’s opportunities multiply and wages rise. Inequality diminishes as more people get pulled into good jobs.

Of course, women are free to start any kind of company they want. But women sometimes identify different problems than men do and start different sorts of companies as a result.

There is a common and persistent belief out there that entrepreneurship is about creativity – that it’s about having a great idea. But it’s not, really. Entrepreneurship isn’t about creativity. It’s about organization-building – which, in turn, is about people.

In most every business, you learn by doing. The apprenticeship model is much more effective than the classroom for cultivating entrepreneurs.

The problems that you see startups tackling are dramatically different in different cities. Silicon Valley is unlikely to produce the same set of companies as New York or Cleveland because the region has a different set of strengths and defining institutions.

We need to wake up to the fact that it is not immigrants who are causing economic dislocations. It is technology and an evolving economy that is pushing more and more Americans to the sidelines.

We’re conditioned to let businesses fail, regardless of how much we like them. We believe that if the market doesn’t want that bookstore to exist, then it shouldn’t exist.

If a company is growing, then people’s roles often grow and change, and opportunities abound.

Many of the scrappy young people I meet who are the first in their family to go to college feel that they have to bring home a steady paycheck to make their family’s sacrifices worthwhile.

The monetary market is going to value people’s time less and less as time goes on, so you need another way to structure their day that rewards them.

People generally think of technology simply as a spur to start new businesses. But the Internet has also made it possible for more businesses to compete for any given opportunity.

When I was growing up, I’d study for days trying to get good grades. When I’d get an ‘A,’ I’d feel elation for about 30 seconds, and then a feeling of emptiness.

Incarceration and recidivism rates high? Providing people an incentive to stay out of jail while also providing them some level of economic security while they get back on their feet – both accomplished by a UBI – sounds like a great way to solve that problem.

I am a Medicare-for-all public option proponent.

What was a profitable business in one era can become a public utility and a recognized public good in the next.

After a couple of years in a professional setting, you’ll get used to dressing presentably, preparing for meetings, speaking appropriately, showing up on time, writing professional correspondence, etc.

Asking the government to fix our economy is like asking an editor to fix a movie, but in this case, the editor’s not even of one mind.

I sometimes compare starting a business to having a child. You have a moment of profound inspiration, followed by months of thankless hard work and waking up in the middle of the night.

In the start-up setting and in most companies, the output is action-oriented. You need to be getting things done and making decisions, often with limited information.

Very few parents keep up with who the top professors are or whose classes their kids are taking, partially because most undergraduates interact more commonly with graduate students.

I’m a capitalist, and I believe that universal basic income is necessary for capitalism to continue.

FOMO (fear of missing out) is the enemy of valuing your own time.

A universal basic income funded by a value-added tax, which is a tax placed on a product whenever value is added at each stage of the supply chain, from production to the point of sale, would spread the benefits of automation to a much wider group of people.

If you go deep into a problem, you’ll find most all of the time that there are yet more problems to be solved from the ground up.

One reason why entrepreneurs are admired is that they often take on a degree of risk in launching a new business.

Mistakes are acceptable if they’re the result of moving forward.

When I graduated from Brown, I had a very limited conception of jobs, careers, and what I wanted to do. Basically, I figured I should do some kind of thought work that paid well, but I wasn’t sure what.

If you join a growth organization, you’ll likely do different things in different roles throughout your career. It’s excellent to learn and build with others. You’ll meet people you want to work with.