Quotes from Alan Schaaf

Being bootstrapped is great. You own 100 percent of it. But the downside is that you aren't able to move as fast as you want.

The successful entrepreneurs that I see have two characteristics: self-awareness and persistence. They're able to see problems in their companies through their self-awareness and be persistent enough to solve them.

In the early days, it was enough for Imgur to have a team that was focused on building product and engineering. But I realized early on if we were going to be successful, we needed someone who would be a bridge between the company and community.

Over the years, the Internet has been going down the path of becoming a more personalized experience.

'Change' is seen as a dirty word, but personally, I'm searching for it.

Imgur is all about images, some of which may be photos but don't have to be.

The office has a really fun 'community' feel, kind of like Imgur itself. The things that you see that are on the walls and on our desks came directly from our users.

My favorite interview question is, 'If you could have a superpower, what would it be?'

I've found that instability from growth comes in waves.

There are so many easier ways to live your life than to start a company.

I'm against the SOPA act, and Imgur, as a company, is against it.

Imgur has always been profitable right from the very beginning, and the only time I ever had to spend money on it was for the initial domain name because as soon as I released it, people liked it so much that they were donating, and so Imgur survived for the first six months just purely on donations.

Let's get real: the .GIF format is outdated and is not really that great for the modern web anymore. It was created in 1989, and it wasn't even created for the purpose of animation.

GIFs work because the punch line is instantaneous. It's entirely different from almost any other form of content on the Internet, which takes time to consume.

We've talked with over a dozen VCs and angel investors over the years. But we've never clicked with any of them until Andreessen. During our initial meeting, we were bouncing ideas around about where Imgur could go.

Imgurians increasingly live on their mobile devices, and we wanted to make it as easy as possible for them to browse and discuss Imgur's content wherever and whenever they want.

When I was in high school and college, I'd always been into websites, and when you'd read about sites and the companies and people behind them, they were always in Silicon Valley. This one's in Mountain View, this one's in Palo Alto. They're all right here. I knew I wanted to move out here, whether it was to work at Google or some other company.

When I look at other products, I naturally think of ways to improve upon what already exists.

I don't think display advertising is the future of advertising.

It's not always about 'Can you do the job?' It's about 'Can you fit in with the team?'

Revenue is not where the focus of the company is at. We are focused on pushing out cool products like our analytics.

When I come into the office, the first thing I do is I plan out what I want to accomplish that day. I write it down in my notebook and make sure I accomplish it before I leave that day.

The only thing that matters on Imgur is the quality of the content.

We want to become the best place on the Internet for self-expression and entertainment. If we have to raise money to achieve that goal and maybe move faster, we'll do it.