Marissa Mayer Quotes & Sayings

The turning point for me was realizing that I would learn more at Google, trying to build a company, regardless of whether we failed or succeeded, than I would at any of the other companies I had offers from. — Marissa Mayer

I always did something I was a little not ready to do. I think that's how you grow. When there's that moment of 'Wow, I'm not really sure I can do this,' and you push through those moments, that's when you have a breakthrough. — Marissa Mayer

Our theory is, if you need the user to tell you what you're selling, then you don't know what you're selling, and it's probably not going to be a good experience. — Marissa Mayer

It was a very well-rounded childhood with lots of different opportunities. My mom will say she set out to overstimulate me - surround me with way too many things and let me pick. As a result, I've always been a multitasker; I've always liked a lot of variety. — Marissa Mayer

Do something youre not ready to do. In the worst case, youll learn your limitations. — Marissa Mayer

It's really wonderful to work in an environment with a lot of smart people. — Marissa Mayer

I'm not a pro, but I know enough to be dangerous. — Marissa Mayer

Yahoo!, over the years, had been the king of the banner ad. — Marissa Mayer

That's how we're going to stay innovative. We're going to continue to attract entrepreneurs who say, 'I found an idea, and I can go to Google and have a demo in a month and be launched in six.' — Marissa Mayer

I think, you know, a fellow CEO said to me that the interesting thing about being CEO that's really striking is that you have very few decisions that you need to make, and you need to make them absolutely perfectly. — Marissa Mayer

The interesting thing is when you look at what people want to do on their phone, it's mail, weather, check stock quotes and news. That's Yahoo's business. This is a huge opportunity for us because we have the content and all the information people want on their phones. — Marissa Mayer

Well, I think the social networking is really interesting. — Marissa Mayer

Creativity thrives best when constrained. — Marissa Mayer

I think that burnout happens because of resentment. That notion that, 'Wow, I worked 100 hours last week, and I couldn't even have this thing that I really wanted.' — Marissa Mayer

What is clear is that users own their data and should have control of how their data is used. — Marissa Mayer

Theres no such thing as Flickr Pro because today, with cameras as pervasive as they are, theres no such thing, really, as professional photographers when theres everything thats professional photographers. Certainly theres varying levels of skills but we didnt want to have a Flickr Pro anymore. We wanted everyone to have professional quality photo space and sharing. — Marissa Mayer

I didn't set out to be at the top of technology companies. I'm just geeky and shy, and I like to code. — Marissa Mayer

When you're coming into a company and, you know, have to do a transformation, what you really want to do is look at the company and say, 'Okay, here are the parts that the company does well. How do we get those genes to hyper-express? The genes that are getting in the way, how do you turn those off?' — Marissa Mayer

Good students are good at all things. — Marissa Mayer

I refuse to be stereotyped. — Marissa Mayer

I was Google's first woman engineer. — Marissa Mayer

People are more productive when they're alone, but they're more collaborative and innovative when they're together. — Marissa Mayer

You can be good at technology and like fashion and art. You can be good at technology and be a jock. You can be good at technology and be a mom. You can do it your way, on your terms. — Marissa Mayer

Right now is a great time to be a woman in tech, but there's not enough women in tech, — Marissa Mayer

To me, speed is really about convenience. — Marissa Mayer

I like to do matrices. One option per line, different facets for each column. Salary, location, happiness index, failure index, and all that. — Marissa Mayer

I took a computer-science course to fill a prerequisite at Stanford, and I realized that every day was a new problem, and every day you got to think about how to solve something new, how to reason through something new, how to develop an algorithm to solve for something you hadn't worked on before. — Marissa Mayer

I think what's really amazing is that given the scale of the web and getting the compute power we have today, we're starting to see things that appear intelligent but actually aren't semantically intelligent. — Marissa Mayer

I came in as an engineer and worked on artificial intelligence at Google. I worked on related sites and matching advertising to queries with some of our earliest ads. — Marissa Mayer

When you need to innovate, you need collaboration. — Marissa Mayer

I was always good at math and science, and I never realized that that was unusual or somehow undesirable. — Marissa Mayer

I love technology, and I don't think it's something that should divide along gender lines. — Marissa Mayer

I like to get myself in over my head. — Marissa Mayer

People ask me all the time: 'What is it like to be a woman at Google?' I'm not a woman at Google, I'm a geek at Google. And being a geek is just great. I'm a geek, I like to code, I even like to use spreadsheets when I cook. — Marissa Mayer

I really wanted to be a doctor, until my freshman year of college when I realized that while I was good at chemistry and biology, I really wasn't feeling challenged by it. — Marissa Mayer

With data collection, 'The sooner the better' is always the best answer. — Marissa Mayer

There are probably industries where gender is more of an issue, but our industry is not one where I think that's relevant. — Marissa Mayer

I pace myself by taking a week-long vacation every four months. — Marissa Mayer

Straight lines don't exist in the human form and are extremely rare in nature, so the human touch in the logo is that all the lines and forms have at least a slight curve. — Marissa Mayer

I've come to realize that being a mother makes me a better executive, because motherhood forces prioritization. Being a mom gives you so much more clarity on what is important. — Marissa Mayer

The prime reason the Google homepage is so bare is due to the fact that the founders didn't know HTML and just wanted a quick interface. In fact, it was noted that the SUBMIT button was a long time coming and hitting the RETURN key was the only way to burst Google into life. — Marissa Mayer

I really love color. — Marissa Mayer

I don't feel overwhelmed with information. I really like it. — Marissa Mayer

You can't have everything you want, but you can have the things that really matter to you. — Marissa Mayer

There are amazing opportunities all over the world for women, and I think that there's more good that comes out of positive energy around that than negative energy. — Marissa Mayer

Success is never getting to the bottom of your to-do list. — Marissa Mayer

My first week at Stanford, I bought a computer, and it was the first computer I ever owned. I had to be taught how to turn it on and even how to use a mouse, even though, for a lot of people, a mouse is very intuitive. — Marissa Mayer

I don't need much sleep. — Marissa Mayer

I had no idea how to eat sensibly. — Marissa Mayer

Today, only about 1% of the World Wide Web is written in Arabic. — Marissa Mayer

You have to ruthlessly prioritize. — Marissa Mayer

When people think about computer science, they imagine people with pocket protectors and thick glasses who code all night. — Marissa Mayer

Management is defense. You basically say, 'This is the direction; this is where we're heading,' and then it's my job to get everything else out of the way. All the other things that can become a distraction keep us from executing well. Get those out of the way, because the team ultimately needs to run in that direction and execute well. — Marissa Mayer

Talent is what drives technology companies, — Marissa Mayer

I think the most interesting thing is what happens next. — Marissa Mayer

When I came to Yahoo! in 2012, I came because I really wanted to work hard. I thought it was a great challenge. — Marissa Mayer

I want Yahoo to be the absolute best place to work, to have a fantastic culture. — Marissa Mayer

Search is an unsolved problem. — Marissa Mayer

We were very focused on becoming profitable from a very early time, which was not true of most companies in the bubble — Marissa Mayer

I like to stay in the rhythm of things. — Marissa Mayer

Well, I have one of the best jobs in the world. — Marissa Mayer

It is wonderful to work in an environment with a lot of smart people. It challenges you to think and work on a different level. If you play with better players, you learn a lot: perspectives, intellectual arguments, new ways of thinking about things. — Marissa Mayer

If you push through that feeling of being scared, that feeling of taking risk, really amazing things can happen. — Marissa Mayer

Your rhythm is what matters to you so much that when you miss it you're resentful of your work ... So find your rhythm, understand what makes you resentful, and protect it.. — Marissa Mayer

The internet creates more of an appetite for media - it doesn't replace physical books, radio or TV. — Marissa Mayer

The thing that surprised me and really puzzled me is that the job is really fun. Yahoo is a really fun place to work. — Marissa Mayer

To me, the future is personalization . — Marissa Mayer

The Googly thing is to launch products early on Google Labs and then iterate, learning what the market wants - and making it great. The beauty of experimenting in this way is that you never get too far from what the market wants. The market pulls you back. — Marissa Mayer

I think that for me, it's God, family and Yahoo - in that order. — Marissa Mayer

If you took the entire internet and laid it end to end, it would weigh more than the other thing. It would weigh more than it would if it wasn't laid end to end. Like, if it was a ball of rolled up internet it would weigh less. I'm pretty sure. It depends on the size of the scale, I think. — Marissa Mayer

This is one of my favorites. People think of creativity as this sort of unbridled thing, but engineers thrive on constraints. They love to think their way out of that little box: 'We know you said it was impossible, but we're going to do this, this, and that to get us there.' — Marissa Mayer

I've always liked simplicity. — Marissa Mayer

I love Google. I was there for 13 years, and if you told me I'd be as happy anywhere else, I would've probably doubted it. But I am as happy, if not happier, at Yahoo. — Marissa Mayer

Search occupies this wonderful moment in a user's day where it doesn't even really break along demographics, right? — Marissa Mayer

Eric Schmidt from Google is one of my favorite mentors. And Eric would always say this very humbling thing that's really true, which is, he would say, 'Good executives confuse themselves when they convince themselves that they actually do things.' — Marissa Mayer

For me the core principles of privacy online are transparency, choice and control. — Marissa Mayer

I think like my dad, but I have a huge kinship with my mom. — Marissa Mayer

I didn't want to lose my sense of myself in my profession. — Marissa Mayer

Google has the functionality of a really complicated Swiss Army knife, but the home page is our of approaching it closed ... It's simple, it's elegant you can slip it in your pocket, but it's got the great doodad when you need it — Marissa Mayer

The utmost thing is the user experience, to have the most useful experience. — Marissa Mayer

I really believe that the virtual world mirrors the physical world. — Marissa Mayer

I don't think that I would consider myself a feminist. I think that I certainly believe in equal rights, I believe that women are just as capable, if not more so in a lot of different dimensions, but I don't, I think have, sort of, the militant drive and the sort of, the chip on the shoulder that sometimes comes with that. — Marissa Mayer

Communications is the biggest driver of frequency of use of anything. Think about how many times a day you check your email on your phone or text someone or message someone. — Marissa Mayer

I don't believe in balance, not in the classic way. — Marissa Mayer

I think that there is a generational change, where new generations that have grown up always having access to the internet have a somewhat different view in terms of personal information and what needs to be kept private. — Marissa Mayer

Innovation is born from the interaction between constraint and vision. — Marissa Mayer

I think that ultimately over time we really should strive for a place where most information is available online and is searchable. — Marissa Mayer

For some people, what really matters to them is sleep. — Marissa Mayer

Our mission is making the world's daily habits inspiring and entertaining. Which people come to work at Yahoo to build on that mission? Those who are inspired by that, and you can feel that passion in the products. — Marissa Mayer

I loved Stanford and symbolic systems. For me, I came to Stanford assuming I would be a doctor and got really deep into chemistry and biology, but I noticed everyone who was on the same track as me was taking the exact same classes. I wanted to do something more unique. — Marissa Mayer

I think Google should be like a Swiss Army knife: clean, simple, the tool you want to take everywhere. — Marissa Mayer

Beyond basic mathematical aptitude, the difference between good programmers and great programmers is verbal ability. — Marissa Mayer

I had to think really hard about how to choose between job offers. — Marissa Mayer

I realized in all the cases where I was happy with the decision I made, there were two common threads: Surround myself with the smartest people who challenge you to think about things in new ways, and do something you are not ready to do so you can learn the most. — Marissa Mayer

Blackberry is a great product and really useful. But I think that Yahoo!'s future is going to be rooted in mobile apps. And we know that we need to have apps on some of the core platforms, and so iOS and Android, probably the two most important platforms for us. — Marissa Mayer

For many people, Google is the most important tool on the Web. — Marissa Mayer

I have a theory that burnout is about resentment. And you beat it by knowing what it is you're giving up that makes you resentful. — Marissa Mayer

You can wear ruffles; you can be a jock, and you can still be a great computer scientist, or a great technologist, or a great product designer. — Marissa Mayer

Really in technology, it's about the people, getting the best people, retaining them, nurturing a creative environment and helping to find a way to innovate. — Marissa Mayer

Shifting toward management meant greater responsibility and influence, but it also meant giving up programming day-to-day in my role, which was hard because it took me out of my comfort zone. — Marissa Mayer