Jose Ferreira

If your business had no risk, you could go get a bank loan and call it a day. VCs like risks - without them, venture capital wouldn't exist. But they need to be risks that VCs are good at assessing and managing.

Venture capitalists certainly create value for themselves, but they also singularly create value for the rest of the world.

It is intellectually dishonest to lump venture investors with hedge fund and buy-out investors.

Venture capitalists buy minority positions in young companies they think will grow quickly; buy-out investors buy most or all of companies they think can be turned around by fixing a few basic things.

Big data in education has huge potential to improve learning materials.

I had started teaching because I love brainteasers. At some point, I had taken every standardized test out there - the SATs, the GREs, the GMATs, the MCATs. I just took them for fun.

Education is among the most important problems we face because it's the ultimate 'gateway' problem. That is, it drives virtually every global problem that we face as a species. But there's a flip-side: if we can fix education, then we'll dramatically improve the other problems, too.

I started Knewton to do my bit to fix the world's education system.

Data adds concrete information to a teacher's observations and intuition, but it will never replace experience, personal relationships, and cultural understanding.

It's not enough to have a value-adding product in a big market. You also need the right conditions. Will you be able to scale revenues within a 5-10 year time frame? Is the timing right? YouTube wouldn't have worked pre-broadband.

The best programmers and internet entrepreneurs are in the Bay Area. Don't kid yourself about that, not even for a second.

I spent most of my career in education and technology. I worked at Kaplan, and I was one of the first people trying to bring innovation into for-profit education.