[MUSIC PLAYING]
Stanford University.
President Obama has
a deep understanding
of the importance of innovation
and entrepreneurship,
two characteristics that have
distinguished this university
since its founding
125 years ago.
Please join me in
warmly welcoming
the 44th President of the
United States, Barack Obama.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.
Hello, everybody.
Thank you so much.
We're gathered here at Stanford
in the heart of Silicon Valley,
which is one of the
great hubs of innovation
and entrepreneurship, not just
for America, but for the world.
This is a place that celebrates
our ability as human beings
to discover and learn and
to build, to question,
to re-imagine, to create
new ways to connect and work
with each other.
To me, entrepreneurship is
about creating change, not just
creating companies.
And the most effective
entrepreneurs who I've met
care deeply about some
mission and some change
that they're trying to create.
And often they don't even
start because they're
trying to create a company.
All of you are expressing
what Mark said, which
is it starts with a passion.
If you start off just
saying I want to make money,
but there's no clear
mission behind it,
then when you start hitting
some of these barriers,
sometimes it's very hard
to push through them.
I think it's crucial
for entrepreneurs
to work hand in hand with big
companies and with government.
I think that we entrepreneurs
have the amazing advantage
of being able to take huge,
sometimes irresponsible, risks.
So I think we have
a role to play there
in building new things,
in creating new things.
And I think when it comes
to scaling up those things,
these partnerships are
essential to enable
us to take what we've built and
created and tested and tried
to a larger scale.
Give our panelists a
big round of applause.
Congratulations for the
great work you're doing.
Thank you, everybody.
[APPLAUSE]
For more, please visit
us at stanford.edu.
