Categories:
- Rallying the Team
- Personal Success
- Ins and Outs of Entrepreneurship
- Conquering Fear
- Dealing with Failure
- Overcoming Challenges
- Thoughts on Innovation
Personal Success
If you think you’re too small to have an impact, try going to bed with a mosquito in the room.
If you can’t stand the heat, don’t tickle the dragon.
Give me a place to stand, and I will move the earth.
Mediocre people are always at their best.
Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.
Terrible is the temptation to do good!
About right now is better than exactly wrong later.
Make sure that the best thing to happen to your customer today is you.
There is time for work. And time for love. That leaves no other time.
Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.
If a ruler’s anger rises against you, do not leave your post; calmness can lay great offenses to rest.
There is nothing like writing to force you to think and get your thoughts straight.
The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the entrepreneur adjusts the sails.
Continuous effort – not strength or intelligence – is the key to unlocking our potential.
Thankfully, perseverance is a great substitute for talent.
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.
Always make new mistakes.
Diplomacy is the art of letting someone else have your way.
One can learn to cook, but a restaurateur is born.
You want to learn from experience, but you want to learn from other people’s experience when you can.
A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.
You can’t innovate once.
Light travels faster than sound. That is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.
Simplicity is a virtue.
Looking forward, people need to get comfortable with being uncomfortable.
I would rather fail at something I love than succeed at something I hate.
Retail is detail.
People will remember stories long after they have forgotten your bullet points.
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.
Give someone a book, they’ll read if for a day. Teach someone how to write a book and they’ll experience a lifetime of paralyzing self-doubt.
People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
Whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting over.
The first 98% of the engineering design takes 98% of the time. The remaining 2% of the design work takes the other 98% of the time.
There are no stupid questions, just stupid people.
Rank does not confer privilege or give power. It imposes responsibility.
More is more.
The universe is under no obligation to make sense to you.
Why should I worry about dying? It’s not going to happen in my lifetime.
No one ever confines a secret to one person only. No one destroys all copies of a document.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–I took the one less traveled by. And that has made all the difference.
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.
If you try to do some big thing, you don’t just need it to be big: you need it to be good. And it’s really hard to do big and good simultaneously.
The old definition of leadership is ‘look at me, I’m a leader.’ But the new definition should be ‘No, actually, look at you – I’m listening.’
The most serious mistakes are not being made as a result of wrong answers. The truly dangerous thing is asking the wrong questions.
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.
If you don’t have a solution to match the scale of the problem, you have a hobby.
Seek first to understand, then to be understood.
Facts tell. Stories sell.
We live to learn.
Typos in your presentation tell your investors how carefully you plan to manage their money.
The customer of my customer is my customer.
A fish doesn’t know it’s wet.
It’s not success you want to be remembered for, but significance.
Your job is to make people care about your obsessions.
I plan for the future by focusing exclusively on the present.
Done equals good.
I believe the risks I take are justified by the sheer love of the life I lead.
If you watch entrepreneurs long enough, you observe that innovation is typically a ground game, not a Hail Mary pass.
We had a quote over the door that read, ‘Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire.’
Accommodate changing times but cling to unchanging principles.
It’s not necessary to do extraordinary things to get extraordinary results.
One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.
If you build a better mousetrap, you will catch better mice.
Religion either leads to a deeper reflection or a greater certainty.
Let’s go invest tomorrow rather than worrying about what happened yesterday.
Profit gives us resources.
The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
You don’t give people what they want. You give them what they don’t yet know they want.
An entrepreneur is someone who shoots an arrow and then runs to move the target, so the arrow hits it.
The root function of language is to control the universe by describing it.
Trying to come up with a great idea is not a great idea. Go for quantity over quality.
There is living and dying. There is no retirement.
Try your best to make goodness attractive.
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.’
Your faith needs to be greater than your fear.
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.
Even a correct decision is wrong when it was taken too late.
Experience is a good teacher, but she sends in terrific bills.
Learn from the mistakes of others. You can never live long enough to make them all yourself.
A leader is a dealer in hope.
The fact that others are bad does not imply that you are good.
We’re imperfect people pursuing perfect ideas and there’s tremendous frustration in the gap.
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.
Adult humans are only a little more rational than five-year-olds.
We hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.
Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.
I don’t want the revenue; I just want the profit.
An expert is [somebody] who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a very narrow field.
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.
Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’
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.
Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.
Discovery is the process of simultaneously seeing things that everyone sees and thinking things that no one has thought.
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.
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
Sleep on your big decisions and then be decisive.
Complaining is not a strategy.
Sometimes your only available transportation is a leap of faith.
Creativity is great – but not in accounting.
Make space for the new mistakes.
It’s hard to teach a young dog old tricks.
There’s no fun like 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?’
Life is on the wire. The rest is just waiting.
Not knowing what you’re doing has nothing to do with where you’re going.
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.
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.
Deliberation is the work of many men. Action, of one alone.
If the shoe fits, you probably didn’t buy it online.
We’re all born different, that’s what we got in common.
For nothing is hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed that will not be known or brought out into the open.
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.
If you’re the smartest guy in the room, find another room.
I see the light when I feel the heat.
Too many kings can ruin an army.
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.
Humility is the most underrated aspect of being an entrepreneur. Once your head gets too big, you’re cooked.
They tried to be too clever, and that was their undoing.
More important than what disease the person has is what person has the disease.
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.
It’s one thing to be wrong about the valuation. It’s another to be wrong about the business model.
By the time you get really good at this, you’ll be dead!
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.
Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall down an open sewer and die.
Is anything more un-American than an empty shelf?
Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.
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.
Failing to plan, is planning to fail.
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!
Red meat is not bad for you. Now, blue-green meat? That’s bad for you!
A business exists to create a customer.
There’s a price to pay for the price you pay.
Every day is a flaming toboggan ride.
You can’t talk yourself out of a problem you’ve behaved yourself into. You must behave yourself out!
The more things change, the more they stay the same. It may be a different age, but I’m on the same page. ‘Cause one thing I’ve found. I still be digging on James Brown.
What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others lives on.
For some entrepreneurs it’s better to be never than late.
There are some days when I think I’m going to die from an overdose of satisfaction.
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.
To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.
Don’t give up on your dream, but have a backup dream.
I’m only interested in designing for a certain type of woman. Specifically, one that has money.
Small-minded people blame others. Average people blame themselves. The wise see all blame as foolishness.
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.
Wandering is an essential counterbalance to efficiency.
Your results may be worthless or misleading … but at least the data was easy to collect and you got published.
When you’re through changing, you’re through.
By and large the citizens are proud of their great orchestra; and by and large, the citizens have never heard it.
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.
All you need is faith, trust and pixie dust!
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.
If all you ever did is all you’ve ever done, then all you ever get is all you’re gonna get.
There is no reason for any person to have a computer in their home.
Anyone who has ever taken a shower has had a great idea.
We may be wise, after all, to treat impossibility as something other than an absolute condition. Alone among all the creatures in the world, we can think about fantastical things and, at least some of the time, bring them into being.
Mistakes … the portals of discovery.
Someone needs to do something about this.
Life is just one damned thing after another.
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.
Teach thy tongue to say: ‘I do not know.’
There are two ways to be the most important guy in town. One is to have all the money. The other is to give all the money.
Creativity without action is merely imagination.
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.
Never rule out that there are economic linkages you don’t understand.
You can never complete the work, nor must you abandon it.
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.
Corporations don’t have morals.
The darkest nights produce the brightest stars.
Our mission is to delight people who appreciate quality of life.
Beer isproof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man.
Prediction is difficult, especially about the future.
There’s only one boss: the customer. He can fire everybody from the chairman on down simply by spending his money elsewhere.
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.
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.
They say the secret of success is being at the right place at the right time, but since you never know when the right time is going to be, I figure the trick is to find the right place and just hang around.
Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice and discipline.
He that can’t endure the bad will not live to see the good.
I not only use all the brains I have, but all I can borrow.
If you don’t know where you’re going, any road’ll take you there.
Never judge the characters you play… That’s the first rule of acting.
I am the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
The first person you lead is you.
Being early and being wrong are sometimes not that different.
Whatever people … do not understand, they are always prepared to dislike.
Many things are improbable, only a few are impossible.
All of Wendy’s spins off one fresh word – FRESH
The world needs dreamers and the world needs doers. But above all, the world needs dreamers who do.
Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.
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.
The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.
God gave us 2 ears and 1 mouth for a reason.
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.
Anytime anybody says, ‘It’s good enough,’ it’s shitty.
Even if you are on the right track, the train will run you over if you just sit there.
Be a skeptic but never a cynic.
For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.
Don’t overuse exclamation marks!!!
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.
A goal is a dream with a deadline.
It’s so much easier to suggest solutions when you don’t know too much about the problem.
Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.
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 past is never dead. It’s not even past.
The four most important words in business are ‘What do you think?’
Partners don’t pay each other, they help each other get paid.
It does not matter how slow you go so long as you do not stop.
Innovation is the only insurance against irrelevance; the only guarantee of long-term customer loyalty.
The first step in exceeding your customer’s expectations is to know those expectations.
You can’t let your past hold your future hostage.
What got you here won’t get you there.
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.
Adversity doesn’t build character, it reveals it.
Integrity is a binary state. You either have it or you don’t
Nobody in football should be called a genius. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein.
The beginning of thought is disagreement – not only with others but also with ourselves.
I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.
The only thing worse than a big flop is a small success.
People fire themselves.
Possessions are a way of turning money into problems.
If you are batting 1,000, you are playing in the Little Leagues.
I worship entrepreneurs. They do more than anyone thinks is possible – with less than anyone thinks is possible.
It’s kind of fun to do the impossible.
I am not a fan of lost causes. But a … of causes not yet won.
Imagination is a good servant, and a bad master.
There is great power in ignorance and naivete.
There is nothing so depressing as boundless optimism.
If you don’t listen to your customers, someone else will.
History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.
Elon cares a lot about humanity, but he doesn’t really care about individual people all that much.
In economics, things take longer to happen than you think they will, and then happen faster than you thought they could.
Focus on doing things that can’t hurt and might help. You’ll always be ahead.
Can you teach me to believe?
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.
I want my children to have all the things I couldn’t afford. Then I want to move in with them.
If you presume, you are putting ‘P’ on your resume.
Choice is the enemy of decision.
If no one ever took risks, Michaelangelo would have painted the Sistine floor.
The main thing is keeping the main thing the main thing.
Problems don’t age well.
Long as the night will be, the sun will rise without you.
If you take comfort in anti-dilution clauses you probably believe in lifetime guarantees.
There is always a well-known solution to every human problem – neat, plausible, and wrong.
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.
I think and think for months and years, ninety-nine times, the conclusion is false. The hundredth time, I am right.
I made it because I believed I’d make it.
Solving big problems is easier than solving little problems.
You miss 100% of the shots you never take.
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.
There are decades when nothing happens and then there are weeks where decades happen.
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.
Wealth is not about having a lot of money. It’s about having a lot of options.
Decide what your [company] purpose is and write it down. That way, you won’t lie to yourself.
Anything can happen, but it usually doesn’t.
Expedite the inevitable.
The things that come to those that wait may be the things left by those that got there first.
Any data fed to AI is chosen subjectively. Computers do not see the world precisely as it is; they see it within the limits of the data given to them to represent the world. That’s a flaw AI and people have in common.
Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.
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.
I did not always think he was right, nor did he always think I was right. But we were each the person the other trusted.
Building a great company is necessary but insufficient for building a great investment.
With good people, you can do anything. With bad people, nothing helps.
Failure and invention are inseparable twins. To invent you have to experiment.
The universe is basically an animal that grazes on the ordinary. It creates infinite idiots just to eat them.
To do a common thing, uncommonly well, brings success.
The impossible missions are the only ones that succeed.
Raising your first VC round can be like bobbing for piranhas.
If you never retire, you will never expire.
If it doesn’t scare you, you’re probably not dreaming big enough.
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.
Leaders define reality and provide hope.
Good judgment comes from experience and experience … well, that comes from poor judgment.
Our company is guided by three deeply held beliefs: That brands with purpose grow, companies with purpose last and people with purpose thrive.
Too little confidence, and you’re unable to act; too much confidence, and you’re unable to hear.
If you don’t have a business, what do you do for aggravation?
Investing is about meeting people’s needs.
Purpose is not the sole pursuit of profits, but the animating force for achieving them.
I never know how much of what I say is true.
Entrepreneurs’ genius is the gold in the mine; angels are miners helping to extract it; VCs are claim jumpers.
If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go long, go together.
Angels who won’t conduct postmortems climb the ladder of success wrong by wrong.
Three may keep a secret if two of them are dead.
Make no little plans.
Storms make trees take deeper roots.
Less is more.
Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss in enthusiasm.
Objects have their own world. Making an object means imbuing it with its own spirit.
Half of the lies they tell about me aren’t true.
Art is not optional, not decorative landscaping in front of the castle of civilization. It is no more or less important than philosophy, religion, economics, or psychology.
The harder I work, the luckier I get!
Respect everyone, fear no one.
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.
Honest criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance – or a stranger.
The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
Regrets, I’ve had a few, but then again, too few to mention.
A leader’s job is to have all the questions. You have to be incredibly comfortable looking like the dumbest person in the room.
When you’re finished changing, you’re finished.
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.
One never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to be done.
A smooth sea never made for a skillful sailor.
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.
In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true either is true or becomes true.
Panic is not a strategy.
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.
