Venture Capitalists Quotes

We weren't trying to strike it rich with Firefox. It's open source and it's free. We weren't trying to take over the world; we had kind of modest goals, and it was OK if it failed. We were a lot freer to make risky decisions. If you can afford to do things that way, it's just so much better. You're not thinking about venture capitalists or marketing or sales. Just product and users, all day every day. ~ Blake Ross

Venture capitalists are like lemmings jumping on the software bandwagon. ~ Adam Osborne

That first company I started made a lot of money for the venture capitalists - nearly $30 million - but next to nothing for the founders. The companies I started after that varied between failures and mediocre successes. But at no point did I ever consider getting a 'real job.' That felt like a black and white world, and I wanted Technicolor. ~ Michael Arrington

There is a lack of female venture capitalists, and so there are fewer female-oriented businesses getting funded. Intel has done a good job of creating a message across Intel, and they are putting their money where their mouth is. ~ Brit Morin

Everything you want is cheap or free. If you went to a venture capitalist and said: "I need money to buy tools." You flunked the IQ test, I mean every tool that you need is free! ~ Guy Kawasaki

People tend to think that in order to start a new business they have to come up with something new and dazzling, but that's a myth - and it's often propagated by venture capitalists. ~ Gurbaksh Chahal

Most venture capitalists won't read a business plan unless the entrepreneur is introduced to them by a contact. ~ Guy Kawasaki

The government is somewhat inept, but the private sector is inept in general. How many companies do venture capitalists invest in that go poorly? By far most of them. However, every once in a while a Google or a Microsoft comes out, so people keep giving them money. ~ Bill Gates

Harvard and Yale concentrated with venture capitalists that got the best calls and brainpower. Very few firms made most of the money, and they made it in just a few periods. Everyone else returned between mediocre and lousy. When returns happened, envy rippled through institutional money management. The amount invested in venture capital went up 10 times post-1999. That later money was lost very quickly. It will happen again. I don't know anyone who successfully resists this stuff. It becomes a new orthodoxy. ~ Charlie Munger

"Patents make our product defensible." The optimal number of times to use the P word in a presentation is one. Just once, say, "We have filed patents for what we are doing." Done. The second time you say it, venture capitalists begin to suspect that you are depending too much on patents for defensibility. The third time you say it, you are holding a sign above your head that says, "I am clueless." ~ Guy Kawasaki

While I'm a venture capitalist who invests in early-stage tech companies, I often feel like a professional emailer and conference call maker. I try to spend most of my time doing whatever the companies we are investors in need me to do. ~ Brad Feld

Venture capitalists have a list of danger signs to watch out for. Near the top is the company run by techno-weenies who are obsessed with solving interesting technical problems, instead of making users happy. ~ Paul Graham

Show me a first-generatio n fortune and I'll show you a successful partnership between a talented individual and society's invisible venture capitalist, the commons. ~ William H. Gates, Sr.

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. ~ Jay Samit

We had this unbelievable faith that no business has done, quite frankly, and we tripped along the way doing it, but within two years, we were in 40-plus countries. So we ran at an amazing pace, and this is where venture capitalists play a role. Making Groupon into what it is today, we had no role in it; the entrepreneurs did it. ~ Peter Barris

This presentation was truly a testament to the epic magnitude of getting into Thomas Treadwell's class. This exercise was pointedly not some theoretical simulation dreamed up by an academic with no real-world experience. We were presenting our ideas to real venture capitalists and angel investors. ~ Mitty Walters

What do you get when you cross a herd of sheep with a herd of lemmings? A herd of venture capitalists. ~ Ben Horowitz

Venture capitalists make money by buying shares in companies and subsequently selling those shares for more than the original investment. It's a simple game fraught with complexities. ~ Bill Snow

We have the greatest resource universities in the world, the only place in the world. We have the most productive workforce in the world. We have the most agile venture capitalists in the world. We have a situation where right now in the United States of America, we are near energy independent. North America is beginning to be the epicenter of energy. What is it that makes people think that this is not going to be the American century? I don't get it. ~ Joe Biden

At a basic level venture capitalists are arbitrageurs: they have access to more information than those with the capital, and access to more capital than those with information, and they profit by exploiting the mismatch. ~ Ben Thompson

Generally speaking, experience counts for something. So you'd expect entrepreneurs who've been through the ups and downs of a tech startup to have an advantage over the newcomers. Or at least have an equal chance at success. But in fact the opposite may be true. A number of venture capitalists I've spoken with have said that too many "old guard" entrepreneurs are not being bold enough in their business decisions, and it's hurting their startups. ~ Michael Arrington

First of all, in terms of investment in Internet-related developments, venture capitalists - once burned - are now very cautious and are investing in areas that actually make business sense. ~ Vint Cerf

Venture capitalists certainly create value for themselves, but they also singularly create value for the rest of the world. ~ Jose Ferreira

The interventionists do not approach the study of economic matters with scientific disinterestedness. Most of them are driven by an envious resentment against those whose incomes are larger than their own. This bias makes it impossible for them to see things as they really are. For them the main thing is not to improve the conditions of the masses, but to harm the entrepreneurs and capitalists even if this policy victimizes the immense majority of the people. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

Fierce, and what capitalists sometimes call 'ruinous' competition tends, therefore, to produce leap-frogging innovations that more often that not lead capitalists to fetishise technological and organisational innovations as the answer to all their prayers ~ David Harvey

Passion is the fuel that keeps your venture going,even when income is no where to be found. ~ Auliq Ice

I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman. ~ Virginia Woolf

Machines were, it may be said, the weapon employed by the capitalists to quell the revolt of specialized labor. ~ Karl Marx

He had never dreamed anyone would ever care enough to venture into the darkness to pull him into the light. He felt bewildered and awkward and filled with a strange sense of wonder. And a stranger sense of grace. ~ Iris Johansen

Capitalism in its imperialist stage leads directly to the most comprehensive socialisation of production; it, so to speak, drags the capitalists, against their will and consciousness, into some sort of a new social order, a transitional one from complete free competition to complete socialisation. Production becomes social, but appropriation remains private. The social means of production remain the private property of a few. The general framework of formally recognised free competition remains, and the yoke of a few monopolists on the rest of the population becomes a hundred times heavier, more burdensome and intolerable. ~ Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

And it is undeniably true that the greatest and most important right of a British subject is that he shall be governed by no laws but those to which he, either in person or by his representatives, hath given his consent; and this, I will venture to assert, is the great basis of British freedom; it is interwoven with the Constitution, and whenever this is lost, the Constitution must be destroyed. ~ Joseph Warren

Democracies are indeed slow to make war, but once embarked upon a martial venture are equally slow to make peace and reluctant to make a tolerable, rather than a vindictive, peace. ~ Reinhold Niebuhr

A 'social justice' society is a conflict which locks beneficiaries and victims alike in a struggle without end. It becomes a society torn apart by resentment over the wealth of capitalists. ~ Hans F. Sennholz

It seems to me that there is a good deal of ballyhoo about scientific method. I venture to think that the people who talk most about it are the people who do least about it. Scientific method is what working scientists do, not what other people or even they themselves may say about it. No working scientist, when he plans an experiment in the laboratory, asks himself whether he is being properly scientific, nor is he interested in whatever method he may be using as method. ~ Percy Williams Bridgman

The venture community is largely male. ~ Sandra Lerner

I do not mean to exclude altogether the idea of patriotism. I know it exists, and I know it has done much in the present contest. But I will venture to assert, that a great and lasting war can never be supported on this principle alone. It must be aided by a prospect of interest, or some reward. ~ George Washington

There were some places, and streets, where he did not venture since he had learnt that others had claims there greater than his own - not the gangs of meths drinkers who lived in no place and no time, nor the growing number of the young who moved on restlessly across the face of the city, but vagrants like himself who, despite the name which the world has given them, had ceased to wander and now associated themselves with one territory or 'province' rather than another. All of them led solitary lives, hardly moving from their own warren of streets and buildings: it is not known whether they chose the area, or whether the area itself had callen them and taken them in, but they had become the guardian spirits (as it were) of each place. Ned now knew some of their names: Watercress Joe, who haunted the streets by St Mary Woolnoth, Black Sam who lived and slept beside the Commercial Road between Whitechapel and Limehouse, Harry the Goblin who was seen only by Spitalfields and Artillery Lane, Mad Frank who walked continually through the streets of Bloomsbury, Italian Audrey who was always to be found in the dockside area of Wapping (it was she who had visited Ned in his shelter many years before), and 'Alligator' who never moved from Greenwich. ~ Peter Ackroyd

Some big banks remain wary of venture capital. ~ Alex Berenson

If we functionally define a capitalist household as one that receives at least half of the annual income it spends on consumption in the form of return on invested capital, less than 1 percent of United States households are capitalists. ~ Louis O. Kelso

Instead of standing on the shore and proving to ourselves that the ocean cannot carry us, let us venture on its waters just to see. ~ Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

There are lots of ways to make money in venture capital, and there are even more ways to be mediocre. The industry has too much money and too many smart people chasing too few great entrepreneurs. ~ Dan Levitan

A Leader is one who ventures and takes the risks of going out ahead to show the way and whom others follow, voluntarily, because they are persuaded that the leader's path is the right one-for them, probably better than they could devise for themselves. ~ Robert K. Greenleaf

The introduction of free competition is thus public declaration that from now on the members of society are unequal only to the extent that their capitals are unequal, that capital is the decisive power, and that therefore the capitalists, the bourgeoisie, have become the first class in society. ~ Karl Marx

My very first venture was a national student magazine to try to campaign against the [Vietnam] War. And so I wanted to be an editor. I wanted to bring the magazine out. And in order for the magazine to survive I had to worry about the printing and the paper manufacturing and the distribution. And, you know, I had to try to, at the end of the year, have more money coming in than going out. ~ Richard Branson

Frank White, who literally wrote the book on the overview effect, is also part of the Overview Institute. And he thinks of space travel largely as Mitchell does - an evolutionary step. "If fish could think at our level of intelligence," White said, "back before humanity existed, and some fish were starting to venture up on land, a lot of them would be saying, just as we do now about space: 'Why would we want to go there? What's the point?' And they'd have literally no idea of what venturing onto land was going to mean". ~ Steve Volk

I would not venture into government buildings during the COVID-19 pandemic. ~ Steven Magee

Dionysus. Wilt thou be led By me, and try the venture? ~ Euripides

Having a child, I thought, was something you should actively want, crave, even. It was not a venture for the ambivalent or passionless. ~ Hanya Yanagihara

In my experience, there's only one thing that will always steer you toward success: That's to have a vision and to stick with it ... Once I have a vision for a new venture, I'm going to ride that vision until the wheels come off. ~ Russell Simmons

The terror in which English capitalists now stand of organized proletarian resistance gives to the naturally protected craft organizations the power to receive the wages they demand. They act as they have been trained to act by capitalist society, which denies the doctrine of the Just Price, which proclaims work to be an evil and the goal of human endeavor to be the avoidance of it; which puts it up as an ideal that individuals should get as much money as they possibly can out of their fellows by any means in their power. ~ Hilaire Belloc

is not a competitive event; it is a cooperative venture. The Spirit distributes his gifts so that believers are compelled to rely on each other in unity, not to contend with each other in selfishness. ~ Standard Publishing

Wishing is a form of inspiration for the lazy mind but taking Action, Persisting and finding alternative routes to your destination against all odds is the definition of a SUCCESSFUL Venture. ~ Oscar Bimpong

We can't be afraid of change. You may feel very secure in the pond that you are in, but if you never venture out of it, you will never know that there is such a thing as an ocean, a sea. Holding onto something that is good for you now, may be the very reason why you don't have something better. ~ C. JoyBell C.

I continued with whatever 'qualified climbers' I could con into this rather unpromising venture. ~ Warren G. Harding

Life has a way of going in circles. Ideally, it would be a straight path forward––we'd always know where we were going, we'd always be able to move on and leave everything else behind. There would be nothing but the present and the future. Instead, we always find ourselves where we started. When we try to move ahead, we end up taking a step back. We carry everything with us, the weight exhausting us until we want to collapse and give up.
We forget things we try to remember. We remember things we'd rather forget. The most frightening thing about memory is that it leaves no choice. It has mastered an incomprehensible art of forgetting. It erases, it smudges, it fills in blank spaces with details that don't exist.
But however we remember it––or choose to remember it––the past is the foundation that holds our lives in place. Without its support, we'd have nothing for guidance. We spend so much time focused on what lies ahead, when what has fallen behind is just as important. What defines us isn't where we're going, but where we've been. Although there are places and people we will never see again, and although we move on and let them go, they remain a part of who we are.
There are things that will never change, things we will carry along with us always. But as we venture into the murky future, we must find our strength by learning to leave things behind. ~ Brigid Gorry-Hines

The capitalist system of production is an economic democracy in which every penny gives a right to vote. The consumers are the sovereign people. The capitalists, the entrepreneurs, and the farmers are the people's mandatories. If they do not obey, if they fail to produce, at the lowest possible cost, what ~ Ludwig Von Mises

The democracy which shows up in the United States and in England is not an ideal democracy, because the will of the people is under the pressure of property, which is in the hands of the wealthy capitalists. ~ Hans Fritzsche

Today's president, CEO or managing director needs to be a disruptive influence with imagination, vision, and courage to lead the organization into new and dangerous territory. The leader must be an entrepreneurial driver who can inspire the team to boldly venture into uncharted lands. ~ Paul Sloane

The more successful the unit, the more difficult it is to make sure that the large company doesn't put the same expectations on it as it does for the rest of the company. When it's a new venture, whether it's outside or inside the business, it's a child. And you don't put a 40-pound pack on a 6-year-old's back when you take her hiking. ~ Peter Drucker

I warn you, Captain, God crafted these creatures for three things only. Passing wind from the rear end, passing wind from the front end, and spitting. They spit stomach acid so tell your men, and don't let anyone venture into the hold with a naked flame or you may find yourself the master of a marvelous collection of floating splinters. Also, we'll all drown. ~ Mark Lawrence