Jay Samit Quotes

Every product you have ever loved was a compromise from the ideal vision of its creators to the realities of shipping on time, on budget, and on price point. Anyone who has ever manufactured a physical product that had to be on the shelves for Christmas shopping knows how painful these choices can be.

A free and open Internet is a despot's worst enemy.

Crowdsourcing is the ultimate disruptor of distribution because in a most Zen-like fashion, the content is controlled by everyone and no one at the same time.

Just as the music industry couldn't combat the financial impact of digital piracy, major corporations will have to rethink how to maintain margins when many of their most profitable items can be easily manufactured at home.

Valuations are actually quite simple to grasp. A company is only worth what two acquirers are willing to pay for it. Don't you just need to find that one buyer? If there is only one potential company interested in buying your startup, chances are you won't be hearing the word 'billion' in the offer.

To stay relevant, you must keep your career in permanent beta. That means committing to a lifetime of learning and professional growth, a lifetime of strategic

As every entrepreneur and investor sifts through year-end data to predict the next trend or opportunity for financial success, there is a much easier way to accurately predict the future: hang out with those who are creating it.

Be the best at what you do or the only one doing it.

To effectively reach consumers in the new social environment, brand managers need to learn how to translate their budgets into the digital realm, which also means understanding the advantages that digital can provide over television advertising.

The answers to all a startup's challenges are out there. By setting up the right mechanisms for gathering feedback, the road to success can be a less bumpy ride.

Digital products are, for the most part, services that empower consumers to achieve something that they couldn't do before. Every screen must reflect your value proposition.

Historically, more media has been consumed sitting in front of the television than any other device. Controlling this screen has been the goal of major technology, consumer electronic, and telecommunications companies.

Big ideas developed in a vacuum are doomed from the start. Feedback is the essential tool for building and growing a successful company.

Too many startups get in the habit of continually raising more and more money, which has the deleterious effect of both pushing out profitability and limiting your exit options. The less rounds of capital you need to raise, the more of your company you get to own.

State funds, private equity, venture capital, and institutional lending all have their role in the lifecycle of a high tech startup, but angel capital is crucial for first-time entrepreneurs. Angel investors provide more than just cash; they bring years of expertise as both founders of businesses and as seasoned investors.

YouTube began as a failed video-dating site. Twitter was a failed music service. In each case, the founders continued to try new concepts when their big ideas failed. They often worked around the clock to try to overcome their failure before all their capital was spent. Speed to fail gives a startup more runway to pivot and ultimately succeed.

No matter how much we tweet, blog and post, nothing in business is as powerful as actual face time with prospective business partners and customers.

Microsoft first entered the living room with Ultimate TV way back in 2000 - a year before Apple's first iPod was announced. Ultimate TV offered consumers a DVR and supporting online services, including 14 days of programming and the ability to record 35 hours of programming. Microsoft's reach was then thwarted when Echostar acquired DIRECTV.

From the very first inkling of a concept, founders need to gather a target group of five to ten potential users to begin the feedback loop. We all think we know how the market will react to new ideas, but actual users live with the pros and cons of the existing market conditions every day. They are the market experts.

The secret to fundraising comes down to three magic words: before, more, and strategic.

I tell people: walk around for one month and write down three problems in your life every day. At first it's easy - you got stuck in traffic, you missed your alarm - but by the end of the month you're looking really hard to get your 90 problems. The most common things on your list are now billion-dollar businesses.

Every company, regardless of size, is competing for the same pool of talent, which is why top recruiters can even command equity for finding key hires. Internships give startups a chance to hire the best and brightest from our universities at a fraction of the cost that these same minds will command when they receive their degrees.

Many first-time founders fail to understand the difference between the potential of the Total Addressable Market (TAM) and the very finite subsection they can hope to capture. No company ever captures the entire market they pioneer. Innovation doesn't happen in a vacuum, and others will jump in from the moment you've identified the potential.

Companies with significant revenue (more than $100 million) have, by definition, significant traction. They have proven out their thesis and can scale up or down as investment capital becomes available.

Get your product into users' hands as quickly as possible and incorporate the crowd's feedback to iterate. Your customers will provide the data you need to chart the best course for your company and bury any competitor that goes it alone.

The majority of people are not willing to risk what they have built for the opportunity to have something better.

Consumers value their personal time and are loyal to those companies that make their lives more productive. Brands gaining some of the biggest successes in social media are engaging with millions of consumers through value exchange.

For a startup to overcome obstacles and succeed, it must foster limitless thinking. By hiring students into their first career job, you get to set their framework for how a company functions and instill them with your values for your company's culture.

Whether by design or circumstance, every startup will eventually get disrupted.

Instead of focusing the traditional planning cycles where companies benchmark their businesses against existing competition, teams need to be developed to foster internal change and disruption. Self-disruption is akin to undergoing major surgery, but you are the one holding the scalpel.

At the heart of all sales and marketing is the ability to create demand even in the absence of logic.

Most startup entrepreneurs unnecessarily spend half their time and give up half their equity in search of funding from angel investors and venture capitalists. Tens of millions of dollars are available to them for free from partners who not only don't want their equity, they don't even want to be paid back.

Creating something that builds lasting value and changes the lives of millions of people requires forging a team that will work hard to overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles, stand up to the pressures of fame and fortune, and stay true to the original vision long after others stop believing.

I have realized that businesses - whether they make dog food or software - don't sell products; they sell solutions.

Silicon Valley's long-running track record of creating globally disruptive startups is the envy of the world.

By maintaining an active feedback system at every stage of a startup, founders can reduce their burn rate, increase their virality coefficient, and retain key hires.

In order to protect against being disrupted, startups also need to recruit employees that are committed to life-long learning. The skills that made your team members valuable may not be the skills needed to take your company to the next level or to compete in emerging markets.

Today's entrepreneur is creating opportunities for connections around the content without ever being tied to the cost of creating that content.

As a serial investor who has raised hundreds of millions of dollars for startups, I know that the business plans coming out of incubators tend to be vetted and more thoroughly validated. The incubator's input into your business plan will make you look far more polished and experienced - even if you have never run a business before.

The possibilities of migrating from an economy based on owning to one based on sharing are limitless.

Targeted marketing delivers a lower customer acquisition cost and gets you to profitable growth faster. The goal is to quickly identify the costs associated with acquiring your most profitable segment of customers and the incremental value - if any - of going beyond your core.

Too many investors overvalue companies in the near term while undervaluing them in the long term.

For all founders, going public is a momentous milestone that has to be experienced to be fully understood. It is the culmination of years of hard work and personal sacrifice.

Building a great team is the lifeblood of any startup, and finding great talent is one of the hardest and costliest tasks any CEO will ever face.

When Thomas and John Knoll launched Photoshop 1.0 in 1990, the software couldn't even handle color images. But their offerings got the startup noticed by Apple and Adobe, both of whom became key to the fledgling company's later success.

Disruption causes vast sums of money to flow from existing businesses and business models to new entrants.

Distributers don't need massive amounts of square feet to stock digital products. Retailers don't need brick-and-mortar stores to sell them. The entire supply chain for these select items has been permanently dematerialized. The marketplace has been blown to bits.

I'd been on the Internet since the 1970s when it was just for nerds. I started saying, 'Who would benefit from this?' I started imagining a world where young people could have their own email address, back in the days of family AOL accounts.

To truly launch a great product, you need partners. Channel and marketing partners share in your success and share in the costs of reaching your target audience.

Pivoting is not the end of the disruption process, but the beginning of the next leg of your journey.

Success doesn't teach as many lessons as failure

Accepting that the odds are against you is the same as accepting defeat before you begin.

It is not incumbent on the world to conform to your vision of change. It is up to you to explain the future in terms that those living in the past and present can follow.

You will always need more capital than you think, because it will always take you longer to reach profitability than you can imagine.

Starting each day with a positive mindset is the most important step of your journey to discovering opportunity.

On average, it takes as much as $100 million in paid media for a brand to be a household name in America. Marketing partnerships are the best form of off-balance sheet financing one can ever find. Smart startups use this technique to scale their companies and build their brand equity.

The customer is always right ... even when they're wrong.

Entrepreneurs always begin the journey believing that they have the next big idea. They dream of the fame and fortune that awaits them if only they had the funding to pursue it. But the reality is that as the product is built and shared with customers, flaws in their concept are discovered that - if not overcome - will kill the business.

Social media and personalization are providing both brand advertisers and end-users with hyper-targeted choices and opportunities for double-digit growth.

prestidigitator,

For those that fear being taken advantage of by people working from home or on flexible schedules, I can say my experience is quite the opposite. Employees are so appreciative of these accommodations that they outperform their coworkers and are less likely to be poached by the competition.

Those that recognize the inevitability of change stand to benefit the most from it.

There are riches to be found simply by capturing the value released through others' disruptive breakthroughs.

There is a difference between failing and failure. Failing is trying something that you learn doesn't work. Failure is throwing in the towel and giving up.

To be successful, innovation is not just about value creation, but value capture.

You will have more regrets for the things you didn't try than the ones you tried and didn't succeed at.

There is no better feeling than doing well while you are doing good. If you really want to meet the nicest, most caring people in your field, get involved with charity work. The thankless hours that go into planning charity dinners, running a carnival, and gathering donations for silent auctions are noticed and appreciated.

Venture-backed startups with billion dollar market caps are called 'unicorns' because they are supposed to be rare mythical creatures that few entrepreneurs will ever ride.

Instagram, Swiffer, and Nest had to compete with consumer habits and perceptions. Breakout products face competition from the formidable inertia powering the status quo.

Some of the most lasting contacts and friendships that I have developed began by just grabbing a drink or breaking bread with a stranger at an industry event.

In life, you get what you believe you deserve.

You'll never know how close you are to victory if you give up.

Pick a co-founder that communicates in the same fashion that you do. If you are a screamer, then the only way you will ever listen to a conflicting point of view is to find someone who is passionate enough to yell back at you.

In my experience, there are only two valid reasons to take a company public: access to growth capital and investor fatigue.

All too often, new hires have a different expectation of their job and responsibilities than the organization does. Any miscommunication during the recruiting process needs to be cleared up ASAP. Whenever possible, give new employees a written plan of objectives and responsibilities.

The unfortunate reality is that what holds most people back is actually their own beliefs that they are not good enough or deserving enough to be successful.

My job is to hire the best and brightest employees and empower them to do their best work. As a manager, I am not a mind reader nor an expert at every job function. Therefore, it is incumbent on all hires to feel empowered to tell me what resources they need to do their job.

The very first thing I tell every intern on the first day is that their internship exists solely on their resume. As far as I am concerned, they are a full-time member of my team. For all the negative stereotypes about millennials, you would be astounded by how hard they work when they believe their contribution matters.

The strength of brand loyalty begins with how your product makes people feel.

Onboarding starts with satisfying the most basic of Maslow's psychological needs: belonging. New hires shouldn't arrive to an empty cube and be forced to forage through corridors searching for a computer and the bare necessities of office life. A new hire isn't a surprise visitor from out of town. Plan for their arrival.

You need to begin to network with angels and VCs while you are still ideating. It is easier to ask someone you know for funding than a stranger. Build your financial network by attending as many industry functions and reaching out for advice from experts online.

There is a huge difference between failing and failure. Failing is trying something that you learn doesn't work. Failure is throwing in the towel and giving up. True success comes from failing repeatedly and as quickly as possible, before your cash or your willpower runs out.

With less and less television being watched live, consumers are enjoying the freedom to record at home or in the cloud, watch locally or on the go, and binge watch entire series that they never had the time to enjoy.