Startups Quotes

While Indian CEOs in Non-Indian companies are getting all the praise and admiration from the Indians, startups born on Indian soil remain unrecognized - this is not a matter of pride, it's a matter of shame, especially for a population whose history is replete with mathematical, scientific and philosophical achievements. ~ Abhijit Naskar

Learning is the essential unit of progress for startups. ~ Eric Ries

My best ideas come in the shower, where I'm showered with water, but also ideas. ~ Ryan Lilly

Even though you read much Zen literature, you must read each sentence with a fresh mind. You should not say, "I know what Zen is," or "I have attained enlightenment." This is also the real secret of the arts: always be a beginner."
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"When you are sitting in the middle of your own problem, which is more real to you: your problem or you yourself? The awareness that you are here, right now, is the ultimate fact. "
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"Knowing that your life is short, to enjoy it day after day, moment after moment, is the life of "form is form and emptiness is emptiness."
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"You may feel as if you are doing something special, but actually it is only the expression of your true nature; it is the activity which appeases your inmost desire. But as long as you think you are practicing zazen for the sake of something, that is not true practice."
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"The most important thing is to forget all gaining ideas, all dualistic ideas. In other words, just practice zazen in a certain posture. ~ Shunryu Suzuki

I've always had a passion for technology, photography, startups, and connecting people. Bringing those aspects together made me successful. ~ Kevin Systrom

Until you become so passionate about you and your business no one will. You are your first cheerleader and business promoter. ~ Bernard Kelvin Clive

In 2007, Stanford Business School Advisory committee asserted that self awareness was the most important attribute a leader should develop. The challenge for the modern entrepreneur is to take that path. ~ Kevin Kelly DO The Pursuit Of Xceptional Execution

Not many venture firms have people whose job is to read academic research - on startups, ventures, and entrepreneurs - and gather knowledge from that. ~ Bill Maris

When we're considering investing in a startup, we first want to know that the entrepreneur has a clear understanding of the market. Who are the major players? What about this market is ripe for disruption? What is this startup's unfair advantage to disrupt this market? In the first conversation we have with a company, these are questions that we're looking for clear answers to. ~ Mike Belsito

The goal - at least the way I think about entrepreneurship - is you realize one day that you can't really work anyone else. You have to start your won thing. It almost doesn't matter what the thing is. We had six different business plan changes, and then the last one was PayPal.
If that one didn't work out, if we still had the money and the people, obviously we would not have given up. We would have iterated on the business model and done something else. I don't think there was ever clarity as to who we were until we knew it was working. By then, we'd figured out our PR pitch and told everyone what we do and who we are. But between the founding and the actual PayPal, it was just like this tug-of-war where it was like, "We're trying this, this week." Every week you go to investors and say, "We're doing this, exactly this. We're really focused. We're going to be huge." The next week you're like, "That was a lie. ~ Jessica Livingston

At the end of the day, it's just grape juice. No one needs anything that I make. The last thing we need is another wine on the shelf. So that just makes me grateful for the people who do enjoy it. ~ Andre Hueston Mack

Philanthropreneurship can be described as the emerging practice of bringing social change in new and creative ways. This practice includes the financial aspect as well as the social aspect. The core idea of philanthropreneurship is about the skills which enable people to make others fortunes by working with startups and giving back. These are often the ones required to solve almost all the intractable problems. ~ Aman Mehndiratta

people then products then traffic then revenue." The people are supposed to come for the coolness: Yahoo! demonstrated design awareness by overhauling its logo, it asserted youthful relevance by acquiring hot startups like Tumblr, and it has gained media attention for Mayer's own star power. But the big question is what products Yahoo! will actually create. ~ Peter Thiel

Every year, thousands of startups are founded - not only in technology, but increasingly also in health care, education, and energy. ~ Mike Krieger

Customers don't care about your solution. They care about their problems. - Dave McClure, 500 Startups ~ Ash Maurya

Each year about 600,000 start-ups are launched. Less than 0.5 percent attract VC. Of Inc. magazine's annual list of the 500 fastest growing companies in the United States assessed over a decade (1997–2007), less than 20 percent of companies were venture backed"
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"62.4 percent of VC investments were completely lost while 3.1 percent of the investments accounted for 53 percent of the profits for roughly 600 investments ~ Mahendra Ramsinghani

A startup's job is to (1) rigorously measure where it is right now, confronting the hard truths that assessment reveals, and then (2) devise experiments to learn how to move the real numbers closer to the ideal reflected in the business plan. ~ Eric Ries

Startups need to focus on building a foundation for their company culture early, and then they need to revisit it often. Every time a hire is made, a feature is launched, a Facebook status is updated, a press interview is given, a round of financing is raised, or a meeting is held, culture should be part of the decision-making process. ~ Leah Busque

In the last years of the nineteen-eighties, I worked not at startups but at what might be called finish-downs. Tech companies that were dying would hire temps - college students and new graduates - to do what little was left of the work of the employees they'd laid off. ~ Jill Lepore

Paranoia is acceptable in the new friendship paradigm. Worrying that your best employees or customers might leave is ok, as long as you put in place an active strategy to offset any possibility of that scenario. ~ Kevin Kelly

At Andreessen Horowitz, we talk about the notion of being 'too hungry to eat.' That's to say, we often see startups that are so entrenched in the product that the founders forget they need muscle to grow. ~ Scott Weiss

Even in zazen you will lose yourself. When you become sleepy, or when your mind starts to wander about, you lose yourself. When your legs become painful - "Why are my legs so painful?" - you lose yourself. "
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"You just sit in the midst of the problem; when you are a part of the problem, or when the problem is a part of you, there is no problem, because you are the problem itself. The problem is you yourself. If this is so, there is no problem."
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"When you start to wander about in some delusion which is something apart from you yourself, then your surroundings are not real anymore, and your mind is not real anymore. If you yourself are deluded, then your surroundings are also a misty, foggy delusion. Once you are in the midst of delusion, there is no end to delusion. You will be involved in deluded ideas one after another. Most people live in delusion, involved in their problem, trying to solve their problem. But just to live is actually to live in problems. And to solve the problem is to be a part of it, to be one with it. ~ Shunryu Suzuki

It's hard to tell with these Internet startups if they're really interested in building companies or if they're just interested in the money. I can tell you, though: If they don't really want to build a company, they won't luck into it. That's because it's so hard that if you don't have a passion, you'll give up. ~ Steve Jobs

We've all been in positions where we felt out of place or not accepted for whatever reason. For me, that's been my life. I've always been that person that stood out. And what makes you an outcast is what makes you unique, and you should harness that. Being a black sheep gives you creative license to do sh*t differently. ~ Andre Hueston Mack

When it's about your life, it's time to be selfish. ~ Dee Dee Artner

The biggest problem is startups in search of a problem. Chase what you're passionate about; you'll probably already have knowledge in the space. ~ Mike Krieger

Applying scientific principles and validated learning to identify and eliminate sources of waste Adapting company vision to reflect customer insight Emphasizing fast iterations to stay ahead of uncertainty Effectively evaluating progress using a new set of benchmarks designed for startups ~ Vocreo Publishing

Because startups often accidentally build something nobody wants, it doesn't matter much if they do it on time and on budget. The goal of a startup is to figure out the right thing to build - the thing customers want and will pay for - as quickly as possible. ~ Eric Ries

Investors are people with more money than time.
Employees are people with more time than money.
Entrepreneurs are simply the seductive go-betweens.
Startups are business experiments performed with other people's money.
Marketing is like sex: only losers pay for it."
"Company culture is what goes without saying.
There are no real rules, only laws.
Success forgives all sins.
People who leak to you, leak about you.
Meritocracy is the propaganda we use to bless the charade.
Greed and vanity are the twin engines of bourgeois society.
Most managers are incompetent and maintain their jobs via inertia and politics.
Lawsuits are merely expensive feints in a well-scripted conflict narrative between corporate entities.
Capitalism is an amoral farce in which every player - investor, employee, entrepreneur, consumer - is complicit. ~ Antonio García Martínez

If everything you do needs to work on a three-year time horizon, then you're competing against a lot of people. But if you're willing to invest on a seven-year time horizon, you're now competing against a fraction of those people ... Just by lengthening the time horizon, you can engage in endeavors that you could never otherwise pursue ~ Jeff Bezos

Startups Are Hard. So Work More, Cry Less, And Quit All The Whining ~ Michael Arrington

In the past, there hasn't been much reliable information about startups and small businesses available online. It's information that's really valuable, and it's information that people want to share. ~ Adam D'Angelo

For almost the first year of The Muse's life, I would do 5 to 8 networking events a week. And I don't necessarily think that's the right path for everyone, but I realized that as an entrepreneur, one of my strengths was finding the right people who could help us. I didn't come into startups with any network. ~ Kathryn Minshew

Define your own success: If you're going after a million bucks with your own startup, you've already failed yourself. Instead, do something because it's interesting, challenging, it offers you the chance to learn something new or gives you the chance to work with really interesting people. Most startups that are designed to make money, especially in this environment, don't. ~ Tara Hunt

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. ~ Jay Samit

I will eliminate capital-gains taxes for the small businesses and the startups that will create the high-wage, high-tech jobs of tomorrow ~ Barack Obama

The world's most deadly fluff is: "I would definitely buy that." It just sounds so concrete. As a founder, you desperately want to believe it's money in the bank. But folks are wildly optimistic about what they would do in the future. They're always more positive, excited, and willing to pay in the imagined future than they are once it arrives. ~ Rob Fitzpatrick

Little startups are ridiculously overfunded. ~ Sean Parker

Startups and small businesses that do not invest at least 10% of their profits into R&D will have the privilege of remaining a startup and/or a small business. ~ Mark Anthony Peterson

We only hear success stories. You don't hear about the hundreds and hundreds - the overwhelming majority that don't go anywhere. This is a more realistic portrayal of what happens in startups. ~ Kumail Nanjiani

All throughout my life I have been deeply immersed in startups, either because I was running one or investing in them or helping them. ~ Sam Altman

World-changing startups need to be premised on accurate contrarian theories. ~ Reid Hoffman

Every day is full of opportunities, but an opportunity is full of only so many days. ~ Ryan Lilly

Startups are often very undercapitalised, but I found that to be very beneficial because it forces you not to throw money at problems. Instead, you learn all the nuts and bolts of what you're doing and become an expert. ~ Jerry Greenfield

Best startups generally come from somebody needing to scratch an itch. ~ Michael Arrington

It is best to be the CEO; it is satisfactory to be an early employee, maybe the fifth or sixth or perhaps the tenth. Alternately, one may become an engineer devising precious algorithms in the cloisters of Google and its like. Otherwise, one becomes a mere employee. A coder of websites at Facebook is no one in particular. A manager at Microsoft is no one. A person (think woman) working in customer relations is a particular type of no one, banished to the bottom, as always, for having spoken directly to a non-technical human being. All these and others are ways for strivers to fall by the wayside - as the startup culture sees it - while their betters race ahead of them. Those left behind may see themselves as ordinary, even failures. ~ Ellen Ullman

Don't let a lack of big company names on your resume get you down, but also, don't let it feed a Silicon Valley ego. Oftentimes, the best candidates come from startups or smaller companies. It shows they are open to risk and can keep up with the long hours and occasional harsh demands. ~ Brit Morin

The thing about startups is you can make it, and if it's wrong you can remake it, and you can build a team that you want to have, a product that you want to have. You're utterly focused on your users or your customers and their needs, and trying to figure out how to meet those needs. ~ John Katzman

Landing a million-dollar investment for your startup is exhilarating. But as big as that number sounds, it doesn't go far. Many startups just getting off the ground won't have a CFO to monitor finances. It doesn't take much for spending to spiral out of control. ~ Ryan Holmes

Word-of-mouth marketing is a crucial component of organic growth for startups and one of the primary ways that Weebly has grown to over 15 million customers. ~ David Rusenko

9/10 startups fail, which is a harsh reality in the world of entrepreneurship. However, I believe that such a high number of startups fail because they do not take the right steps necessary when building their business. The biggest challenge people have is building something that their target audience or niche really wants. ~ Jeet Banerjee

We are not creators; only combiners of the created. Invention isn't about new ingredients, but new recipes. And innovations taste the best. ~ Ryan Lilly

Part of the reward of entrepreneurship lies in having the courage to believe in yourself and take action. ~ Timothy Freriks

Never fear starting. Fear never starting. ~ Ryan Lilly

The thing that kills startups at some level, is the founders giving up. ~ Sam Altman

We go through the futile process of asking for opinions and fish for compliments because we crave approval. We want to believe that the support and sign-off of someone we respect means our venture will succeed. But really, that person's opinion doesn't matter. They have no idea if the business is going to work. Only the market knows. You're searching for the truth, not trying to be right. And you want to do it as quickly and cheaply as possible. Learning that your beliefs are wrong is frustrating, but it's progress. It's bringing you ever closer to the truth of a real problem and a good market. The worst thing you can do is ignore the bad news while searching for some tiny grain of validation to celebrate. You want the truth, not a gold star. ~ Rob Fitzpatrick

The main thing to know about me is that I'm a champion of entrepreneurs and the startups they build. They are my rock stars. If in doubt, I side with them, and that's clear from my writing. ~ Michael Arrington

Momentum and growth are the lifeblood of startups. This is probably in the top three secrets of executing well. ~ Sam Altman

You need to become intimately acquainted with the value of adding value.⁣ ~ Richie Norton

Startups don't fail because they lack a product; they fail because they lack customers and a profitable business model. ~ Steve Blank

Startups are based in faith, and the ones that succeed have no fear. ~ Micah Baldwin

There is all the more reason for startups to write Web-based software now,
because writing desktop software has become a lot less fun.
If you want to write desktop software now you do it on Microsoft's terms,
calling their APIs and working around their buggy OS. And if you manage to write something
that takes off, you may find that you were merely doing market research for Microsoft. ~ Paul Graham

A recession is very bad for publicly traded companies, but it's the best time for startups. When you have massive layoffs, there's more competition for available jobs, which means that an entrepreneur can hire freelancers at a lower cost. ~ Timothy Ferriss

New startups embody the creativity, the innovation of young people, and for me, it was and is a very worthwhile experience to interact with them. ~ Ratan Tata

Startups are not the best choice for work-life balance, and that's sort of just the sad reality. ~ Sam Altman

Enterprises have customers! Ask them for feedback and you can compete with startups! ~ Colin Humphreys

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. ~ Jay Samit

A person who doesn't have a structured way of writing their goals will experience disorder, even in the comfort zone. ~ Onyi Anyado

When it comes to starting startups, in many ways, it's easier to start a hard startup than an easy startup. ~ Sam Altman

I believe there's plenty of market for each; we're talking about an ecosystem that is going to support billions of devices, so a competitive landscape is good for consumers, developers, and the platforms alike. Apple brings a smooth elegance to its devices and platform, with the best marketplace experience to boot. Google brings a higher volume of devices as well as a more diverse ecosystem to interact with. The real story here is that Microsoft is nowhere to be seen, ending a two-decade monopoly and creating biggest opportunity for software startups probably ever. ~ Aaron Levie

The fact is that the amount of money startups raise in their seed and Series A rounds is inversely correlated with success ~ Fred Wilson

Was I going to start companies outside of Shutterstock or inside? Going public kind of meant I was going to start them inside, and I kind of thought this through and decided that if I was going to do that, I was going to continue to operate Shutterstock like it was an incubator of startups. ~ Jon Oringer

Successful startups are just like jazz bands, masters of improvisation marching to syncopated beats ~ Mark Anthony Peterson

Progress in manufacturing is measured by the production of high quality goods. The unit of progress for Lean Startups is validated learning-a rigorous method for demonstrating progress when one is embedded in the soil of extreme uncertainty. ~ Eric Ries

I think Yandex is something in between two different cultures. One originated from the old Soviet culture of the scientific institute. It was a free atmosphere of scientists, maybe too free because nobody cared about making money. Another origin is something close to what you usually see in California startups. ~ Arkady Volozh

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. ~ Jay Samit

The community of developers whose work you see on the Web, who probably don't know what ADO or UML or JPA even stand for, deploy better systems at less cost in less time at lower risk than we see in the Enterprise. This is true even when you factor in the greater flexibility and velocity of startups. ~ Tim Bray

Coding and technical chops are now an essential part of being a great marketer. Growth hackers are a hybrid of marketer and coder ... ~ Ryan Holiday

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

Hold at least one all-hands meeting every quarter and, to underscore the startup's team concept, make sure at least one additional executive joins you in leading the meeting. ~ Scott Weiss

Most startups are not just built for the person who is using them. When you do that, every now and then you get really lucky and ... are representative of some huge class of people who all want the same thing you do ... but very often that just turns into a side project that doesn't go anywhere. ~ Emmett Shear

Startups don't just die, they commit suicide ~ Takudzwa Razemba

We know unequivocally that the traditional MBA curriculum for running large companies like IBM, GM and Boeing does not work in startups. In fact, it's toxic. ~ Steven Gary Blank

Social entrepreneurs aim to combine the best of both worlds and "do well by doing good." Usually they end up doing neither. ~ Peter Thiel

Entrepreneurship is not a theory, it is an experiment. ~ Amit Kalantri

Startups are rapidly changing systems. If you use an annual review cycle, you aren't getting feedback at the same pace that you need to adapt and change the business. ~ Fred Wilson

I feel like you can't judge a book by its cover, that's always been the story of my life. I can walk into any restaurant and people would be floored to learn that I know what I do about wine, let alone that I ran one of the best wine programs in the world. ~ Andre Hueston Mack

On Startups: "I hate it when people call themselves "entrepreneurs" when what they're really trying to do is launch a startup and then sell or go public, so they can cash in and move on. ~ Walter Isaacson

For startups, SM is now crucial: it has never been cheaper and easier to reach one's customers. Entrepreneurs should thank God for Twitter, Facebook ... ~ Guy Kawasaki

If everything seems under control, you're not going fast enough. ~ Mario Andretti

So we should not be surprised when The Economist tells us that "in Beirut, Cairo, Dubai, Riyadh or even Gaza City, small technology firms are multiplying."18 We should not be surprised that in many Middle East cities women comprise 35 percent of Internet entrepreneurs, three times the global rate for such startups.19 We should not be surprised that in high-growth industries twice as many entrepreneurs are over fifty as are under twenty-five.20 Entrepreneurs are everywhere. Opportunities to nourish them are everywhere, too. ~ Steven R. Koltai

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. ~ Jay Samit

I'm supporting the School for Creative Startups because the project's ambition - to boost innovation and the culture of entrepreneurship - is something I feel strongly about. ~ Natalie Massenet

I have a particular relationship with Vinod Khosla because he's got a lot of very interesting science-based energy startups. ~ Bill Gates

We have never tried to do most of the things we are dead sure we cannot do. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Write your executive summary of where you want to take your business, and why your business idea will be successful. ~ Timi Nadela

Embrace iteration as the road to improvement, but don't let that lull you into rolling out poorly-thought-out crap. ~ Kate O'Neill

Building a house every day does not necessarily mean that you are building a house every day. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

If you say interesting stuff on twitter, people will follow you there. I think Jim Caruso, from MediaFirst, does this well. He's been at every single technology event I've ever attended in Atlanta for the last 10 years. He knows what's going on. He's a technology geek at heart ... And he's on twitter, tweeting about local startups, global technology news, and of course, his own clients. I follow him on twitter. ~ Ben Chestnut

I think the mistake people make most often when they invest in other kinds of startups is they say, 'This is totally different.' And so the things that matter, like making a product that people desperately want, like talking to customers, they throw this out the window. That is a recipe for heartache and tears. ~ Sam Altman