Barry Diller

But I've had enough successes to balance the failures and probably have had a better average, let's call it,

of that.

But every failure in some way ought to teach you something.

And success teaches you nothing.

The most important thing and the thing that I've been reminded of continuously is to keep scrubbing my instincts clean as it were.

Every time I've made a decision out of cynicism, I wouldn't say every time because sometimes probably it does work, but there's a continual theme of cynical decision-making that is poor.

So being naive, not being cynical,

Being able to not let life experience, so to speak, infect your basic instinct, your ability to know a good idea from a bad idea.

That has been, if anything, the thing that constantly I've had to work at.

Because as you gain experience, the natural tendency is to be cynical or is to be sophisticated.

is to know things.

I think probably the best way I can say it is hold on to naivete.

Do not let the fact that you are, of course, learning things, and learning is, of course, how could you say it's anything but good?

But living in an environment where the corrosiveness of the day

grinds at you and makes you worried, least cynical.

And all of that is just something you got to fight against it.

content business into the worlds that I've been in for the last 25 or so years, which is the world of internet tech life with Expedia and dozens and dozens of other websites, commerce sites, etc.

And I was very lucky.

I got to participate in that revolution, which started really around 95 when the internet started to get used by ordinary folk.

And I was there in that period and able to have this wonderful field kind of open there just for the, so to speak, grabbing and learning.