Categories:
- Rallying the Team
- Personal Success
- Ins and Outs of Entrepreneurship
- Conquering Fear
- Dealing with Failure
- Overcoming Challenges
- Thoughts on Innovation
Ins and Outs of Entrepreneurship
Nothing is easy. If you want to do nothing, that’s easy.
Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.
Make sure that the best thing to happen to your customer today is you.
Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.
The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the entrepreneur adjusts the sails.
Customers don’t want 1/4 drills, they want 1/4 holes.
With Early Stage companies, it’s never one thing. It’s always one thing after another.
One can learn to cook, but a restaurateur is born.
A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.
You can’t innovate once.
Smart MFs sound like Crazy MFs to Dumb MFs.
Neatness rejects involvement.
Purpose is not a mere tagline or marketing campaign, it is a company’s fundamental reason for being.
You can fool all the people all of the time – if the advertising is right and the budget is big enough.
People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
The less money you need, the harder it is to run out.
A man with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.
Failing is good as long as it doesn’t become a habit.
You can’t demand a withdrawal from someone you have not invested in.
Big companies are amazing at coming up with reasons not to do things.
Facts tell. Stories sell.
Typos in your presentation tell your investors how carefully you plan to manage their money.
The customer of my customer is my customer.
It’s not success you want to be remembered for, but significance.
Better salesperson always beats better product.
Done equals good.
If you watch entrepreneurs long enough, you observe that innovation is typically a ground game, not a Hail Mary pass.
It’s not necessary to do extraordinary things to get extraordinary results.
Being a great entrepreneur is doing all the things you love to do on the days you don’t feel like doing them.
Profit gives us resources.
An entrepreneur is someone who shoots an arrow and then runs to move the target, so the arrow hits it.
Trying to come up with a great idea is not a great idea. Go for quantity over quality.
The public wants what it can’t get.
Dad always used to say, ‘Tell me a fact, and I’ll learn. Tell me a truth, and I’ll believe. But tell me a story, and it will live in my heart forever.’
I often tell would-be entrepreneurs that you have to be a little crazy or even masochistic to choose this life. The energy, endurance, optimism and just plain thick skin required aren’t for the faint of heart.
I believe that smart people working hard will eventually get lucky.
If you‘re the smartest person in the room, you haven’t hired well.
I think strategic planning is the antithesis of building a corporation.
Learn from the mistakes of others. You can never live long enough to make them all yourself.
After 35 years, there is not a shred of evidence that stock-based compensation by company officers is correlated with company performance.
Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.
We hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.
You cannot control cattle at a high rate of speed. They have the capacity to tire out and just stand there, and they will not move. Slow is fast – cattle don’t wear a wristwatch.
A financier is a pawnbroker with imagination.
Even if the situation or challenge is very complex, usually the simplest solution is the one to go with.
Good enough never is.
Proving it will be a homerun ahead of the swing is impossible! You have to try for a hit first and sometimes it turns into a homerun.
I don’t like investors. When you take money, you’re typically setting the stage to get out. It’s about multiples and math at that point. It’s not about product. It’s not about customers. It’s just about growth. And that, to me, is a perverted sense of what business is about. Business to me is about making something great, treating your employee’s great, treating your customer’s great, adding something good to the world that wasn’t there before.
Much good work is lost for the lack of a little more.
The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low and achieving our mark.
Complaining is not a strategy.
You can’t really run the company by pissing off the scientists who do the work.
We were given some great advice early on: Strategy is what you don’t do. Whenever we do anything, we ask ourselves, ‘Is this true to Warby Parker?’
Content is king but context is the kingdom.
Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted. The trouble is, I don’t know which half.
It is very hard to find any evidence which shows that a focus on maximizing shareholder value actually maximizes shareholder value.
At the opening of the Hoover Dam, a beaver told a rabbit: ‘Well, I didn’t build it. But it’s based on my idea.
A principle isn’t worth anything if it doesn’t cost you.
Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.
If you’ve gotten to the point where you are thinking it might be time to think about replacing the founder, its past time to replace the founder.
Advertising is art serving capitalism.
The long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead.
The rational and the irrational complement each other. Individually, they are far less valuable.
When the rate of change outside exceeds the rate of change inside, the end is in sight.
Start working with your prospects as if they’ve already hired you.
I see the light when I feel the heat.
On ne règne sur les âmes que par le calme. (One leads by calm.)
Think like an entrepreneur. Create like an innovator. Perform like a teammate.
Great advertising can make food taste better, can make your car run smoother.
Until we have an exit, we Angel investors are just donors.
Talk low, talk slow and don’t say too much.
There’s no decision you should ever make that would embarrass you if it became public.
The best sales professionals are experts in and advocates for their buyers. They won’t represent companies they don’t believe in. They won’t get on a call without being prepared to make the most of their and their prospect’s time. They know how to leverage every technology, colleague and contact to augment their skills in order to produce optimal outcomes. They welcome coaching, exercise discipline with their time, do their homework and win for the team. They are true athletes.
A recent study found that intense tedium is a major contributing factor in the desire for an early death. I just made that up. But I’ll be we could pay for research that would find that.
It’s one thing to be wrong about the valuation. It’s another to be wrong about the business model.
Done is better than perfect.
If you have an important point to make, don’t try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time – a tremendous whack.
One of the hardest truths for any technologist to hear is that success or failure in business is rarely determined by the quality of the technology.
I hate any advertisement that pretends to know me. You’re not my friend. You’re a company.
The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything.
The meek shall inherit the earth – but not its mineral rights.
If I’m the smartest guy in the room, I’m in the wrong room.
I don’t want a lawyer who tells me what I can’t do. I hire a lawyer to tell me how to do what I want to do!
A business exists to create a customer.
There’s a price to pay for the price you pay.
You can’t talk yourself out of a problem you’ve behaved yourself into. You must behave yourself out!
Strategy – is figuring out what is the most important thing for your company and deciding to focus on it and say no to everything else.
Price is what you pay, value is what you get.
For some entrepreneurs it’s better to be never than late.
This way to the egress.
To be persuasive, we must be believable. To be believable, we must be credible. To be credible, we must be truthful.
There’s no business not like show business.
95% of Initial Coin Offerings give the rest a bad name.
To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.
Wonder what your customer really wants? Ask. Don’t tell.
Many angels have seen more deals than they can remember. Some remember more homeruns than they have seen.
There are only two problems in business: 1. Not enough orders. 2. Not enough capacity to ship the orders.
You’ll see it when you believe it.
It’s not a good strategy until it costs you something to pursue.
I’m sure that you’re trying to challenge yourself to invent something new. That’s impossible.
In my next life, I will try to commit more errors.
The seven smartest words in the English language are: ‘I don’t know, but I’ll find out.’
Listening to advice often accomplishes far more than heeding it.
A joint venture is two parties in the same bed with different dreams.
The four most dangerous words in investing are: This time it’s different.
Purpose motivates employees better than profit. They are proud if they can say, ‘Our company is making the world cleaner, the food healthier.’
Startup companies don’t do better just because you throw more money at them.
Anyone who has ever taken a shower has had a great idea.
Someone needs to do something about this.
I look for businesses in which I think I can predict what they’re going to look like in ten to fifteen years’ time.
But that is what fashion is about, when you look at something, and you aren’t sure if you like it or not.
An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.
Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor: If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up.
If you have no idea how something is supposed to be done, I guarantee you’ll be disruptive. Let what you don’t know become your greatest asset.
Working a little harder to keep a customer now is a lot smarter than working a lot harder later to get a new customer.
Organizations resist innovation because people are more comfortable with what they know than what they don’t.
Corporations don’t have morals.
Our mission is to delight people who appreciate quality of life.
An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man.
There’s only one boss: the customer. He can fire everybody from the chairman on down simply by spending his money elsewhere.
The most dangerous phrase in the language is ‘We’ve always done it this way.’
The amount of money start-ups raise in their seed and Series A rounds is inversely correlated with success. Yes, I mean that. Less money raised leads to more success.
After you ask a closing question, SHUT UP! The next person who speaks loses.
I just invent, then wait until man comes around to needing what I’ve invented.
Be careful – a little success can create a whole lot of overhead.
Deliberately obsolete your product. Do this by raising expectations for the category and ‘reinventing’ your brand in the eyes of the consumer. Nothing puts more pressure on a competitor.
If you have perfect customer analytics, you will know how to find people who look like your current customer. But if you focus only on them, you will never get any new business.
If you don’t know where you’re going, any road’ll take you there.
The first person you lead is you.
Being early and being wrong are sometimes not that different.
Many things are improbable, only a few are impossible.
All of Wendy’s spins off one fresh word – FRESH
Innovation is seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.
If I can’t make money in the $5 trillion U.S. market, it may be a little bit of wishful thinking to think that all I have to do is get a few thousand miles offshore and I’ll start showing my stuff.
My advice on firing is simple. Treat that person the same way you’d want to be treated if you were in that situation. They’re still a good person, just not the right fit.
To understand a company, spend time with its customers.
Outstanding leaders go out of their way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves it’s amazing what they can accomplish.
It’s so much easier to suggest solutions when you don’t know too much about the problem.
I’ve made a lot of mistakes. I don’t have a lot of regrets.
Every time I look at my yacht, I think of the 30X exits on one of my investments. I don’t have a yacht.
Entrepreneurship exists in the tiny space between madness and genius; and, its journey requires a few cross border violations across both madness and genius to get to the final destination.
The four most important words in business are ‘What do you think?’
Partners don’t pay each other, they help each other get paid.
Innovation is the only insurance against irrelevance; the only guarantee of long-term customer loyalty.
It’s so much easier to do something new than to do something well.
Take my factories and my money but leave me my salesmen and I’ll be back where I was in two years.
Never mistake a clear view for a short distance.
We’re not trying to entertain the critics… I’ll take my chances with the public.
The job of tech transfer manager is to make something happen – without getting fired.
Integrity is a binary state. You either have it or you don’t
People fire themselves.
I worship entrepreneurs. They do more than anyone thinks is possible – with less than anyone thinks is possible.
The power of compound interest is the 8th wonder of the world.
If you don’t listen to your customers, someone else will.
In economics, things take longer to happen than you think they will, and then happen faster than you thought they could.
Change before you have to.
The biggest thing about negotiating: You’ve got to make sure you’re trying to construct a good deal for them.
Learn to sell and you will never starve.
If you can’t be kind, at least be vague.
Rule No. 1: Never lose money. Rule No. 2: Never forget rule No. 1.
A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.
Choice is the enemy of decision.
The main thing is keeping the main thing the main thing.
Problems don’t age well.
If you take comfort in anti-dilution clauses you probably believe in lifetime guarantees.
History has shown that incumbents tend to fight trends that challenge established ways and, in the process, lose focus on what matters most: customers. Customers always win.
Solving big problems is easier than solving little problems.
We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful.
When you need money, go ask for advice. When you need advice, go ask for money.
We’re not funding Mother Teresa. We’re funding imperial, will-to-power people who want to crush their competition.
Advertising cannot sell a poor product. It might induce people to try it once. But it cannot build an enduring business on such a product.
Decide what your [company] purpose is and write it down. That way, you won’t lie to yourself.
More startups die of indigestion than starvation.
Expedite the inevitable.
The things that come to those that wait may be the things left by those that got there first.
I don’t try to reinvent the wheel. I just try to change the spokes.
You can’t make a good deal with a bad person.
If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.
Face-to-face contact will give you the edge over your competitors every time.
Building a great company is necessary but insufficient for building a great investment.
The best audience is intelligent, well-educated and a little drunk.
Failure and invention are inseparable twins. To invent you have to experiment.
To do a common thing, uncommonly well, brings success.
Raising your first VC round can be like bobbing for piranhas.
If you are going to doubt something, doubt your limits.
When assessing ‘first mover advantage’ remember that mousetraps demonstrate the wisdom of being the second mouse.
Having money is no reason to spend it.
Our company is guided by three deeply held beliefs: That brands with purpose grow, companies with purpose last and people with purpose thrive.
If you don’t have a business, what do you do for aggravation?
Investing is about meeting people’s needs.
Success is an accident … well placed.
Purpose is not the sole pursuit of profits, but the animating force for achieving them.
Innovation often originates outside existing organizations, in part because successful organizations acquire a commitment to the status quo and a resistance to ideas that might change it.
Developers will fill the world with empty buildings – if you pay them to do it.
Entrepreneurs’ genius is the gold in the mine; angels are miners helping to extract it; VCs are claim jumpers.
Angels who won’t conduct postmortems climb the ladder of success wrong by wrong.
I don’t know what the price is, but the price knows what the price is.
Make no little plans.
Feed the strong, starve the weak. Lead with your strength and avoid protecting the weak – weak brands, weak products and weak people. Know your strengths and lead with them.
Objects have their own world. Making an object means imbuing it with its own spirit.
The harder I work, the luckier I get!
No amount of advertising can force any large number of people to buy things they do not want. Advertising can only create a new market for products which fill a genuine – though often unexpressed or latent – consumer want.
The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
A leader’s job is to have all the questions. You have to be incredibly comfortable looking like the dumbest person in the room.
If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.
No nationwas ever ruined by trade.
Nobody cares about your product, service or solution. All they care about is the difference you can make for their organization.
If this is a blessing, it is certainly very well disguised.
The future is like a Japanese game show. You have no idea what’s going on.
The business of America, it turns out, is not business. It’s monetizing what is in our heads.
A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.
Be ready to revise any system, scrap any method, and abandon any theory, if the success of the job requires it.
You don’t go broke making small profits.
Whether individuals or organizations, we follow those who lead not because we have to, but because we want to. We follow those who lead not for them, but for ourselves.
