Business Venture Quotes & Sayings

I'm amazed by the potential of more companies employing integrated philanthropic initiatives at earlier stages in their life cycle. What if this were done on an even more massive scale? Consider what would happen if a top-tier venture-capital firm required the companies in which it invested to place 1% of their equity into a foundation serving the communities in which they do business. — Marc Benioff

Never venture, never win! — Sun Tzu

We have never seen a career like George Strait's in this business, and I venture to say we never will again. He has handled things amazingly well. — Lee Ann Womack

Amidst all the hype and hoopla around this business, I wanted to emphasize the challenge - it is seductive but the failure rate is very high. And those who fail have no good place to go. — Mahendra Ramsinghani

"(Big name research firm) says our market will be $50 billion in 2010." Every entrepreneur has a few slides about how the market potential for his segment is tens of billions. It doesn't matter if the product is bar mitzah planning software or 802.11 chip sets. Venture capitalists don't believe this type of forecast because it's the fifth one of this magnitude that they've heard that day. Entrepreneurs would do themselves a favor by simply removing any reference to market size estimates from consulting firms. — Guy Kawasaki

Ask ourselves: How can we serve, nurture and sustain the planet and its people in our business ventures? — Horst Rechelbacher

But far too often when we face the failure of a business venture, we let that failure paralyze us from trying again. The failure could stem from a lack of financial planning, a lack of resources, or the lack of the right team members. But you have to realize that failure is part of the process when you are on the road to success. The only way to get back on track is to come up with another plan. I've failed more times than I can count. But you can't let the failure freeze you in place and stop you from pursuing your dreams. — Steve Harvey

He talking Louisiana, you speaking Tennessee. The music so different, the sound coming from a different part of the body. It must of been like hearing lyrics set to scores by two different composers. But when you made love he must of have said I love you and you understood that and it was true, too, because I have seen the desperation in his eyes ever since - no matter what business venture he thinks up. — Toni Morrison

What we are trying to do is to create a social business in Bangladesh, a joint venture to create restaurants for common people. Good, healthy food at affordable prices so that people don't have to opt for food that is unhealthy and unhygienic. — Muhammad Yunus

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

Most people yearn to contribute, make the world a better place and have success ... all at the same time ... Make sure to give your business a background, a mission and a story. That might be the most important step part of any venture. And remember, giving may be the best investment you ever make. — Blake Mycoskie

The problem with taking venture capital is if you take $5m from someone, it may feel great; you may feel like they're validating your business model. But they're giving $5m out to 20 different people, hoping one of them will be a hit. They don't really care if it's you. — Jon Oringer

For the existing enterprise, whether business or public-service institution, the controlling word in the term 'entrepreneurial management' is 'entrepreneurial'. For the new venture, it is 'management'. In the existing business, it is the existing that is the main obstacle to entrepreneurship. In the new venture, it is its absence. The new venture has an idea. It may have a product or a service. It may even have sales, and sometimes quite a substantial volume of them. It surely has costs. And it may have revenues and even profits. What it does not have is a 'business', a viable, operating, organized 'present' in which people know where they are going, what they are supposed to do, and what the results are or should be. But unless a new venture develops into a new business and makes sure of being 'managed', it will not survive no matter how brilliant the entrepreneurial idea, how much money it attracts, how good its products, nor even how great the demand for them. — Peter F. Drucker

80% of all products and services that will be on the market in five years do not exist today. So therefore, always be innovative, always be creative, always think, 'What new products or services could I create, could I represent, could I joint venture? Sometimes you can find someone else that has a fabulous product or service that you can use your existing business or resources to sell and you can double your income or sales in your business by selling somebody else's product to the same customers that are buying yours. — Brian Tracy

'The Ecologist' has lost money from the day it was launched in 1970, and will continue until the last edition is printed. It was never set up as a business venture. It was set up as a campaign, and like all good campaigns, it costs. Its various backers have, over the years, been happy to pay that cost. — Zac Goldsmith

Rejecting the rules of late-stage tech-bubble venture-capital madness is a better, more resilient, and durable approach to business in a digital landscape. Who better to affirm this than one of the digital industry's most trusted news and analysis sources, PandoDaily. — Douglas Rushkoff

Claire Waverley has started a successful new venture, Waverley's Candies. Though her handcrafted confections - rose to recall lost love, lavender to promote happiness and lemon verbena to soothe throats and minds - are singularly effective, the business of selling them is costing her the everyday joys of her family, and her belief in her own precious gifts. — Sarah Addison Allen

There is ... a huge tacit conspiracy between the U.S. government, its agencies and its multinational corporations, on the one hand, and local business and military cliques in the Third World, on the other, to assume complete control of these countries and "develop" them on a joint venture basis. The military leaders of the Third World were carefully nurtured by the U.S. security establishment to serve as the "enforcers" of this joint venture partnership, and they have been duly supplied with machine guns and the latest data on methods of interrogation of subversives. — Edward S. Herman

So many folks in the venture capital business are sheep that just want to follow the herd. They are momentum investors purchasing highly illiquid investments. That is a recipe for disaster. — Fred Wilson

"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

Businesses who are members of Businesses for Social Responsibility or the Social Venture Network are internalizing costs on a voluntary basis and therefore raising their costs of doing business, but their competitors are not required to. — Paul Hawken

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

Business by no means forbids pleasures; on the contrary, they reciprocally season each other; and I will venture to affirm that noman enjoys either in perfection that does not join both. — Lord Chesterfield

If the business were a play, Act One is: Woohoo, bright and bushy-tailed. We're going to make something great! Act Two is: We're six months behind on back-end development. We're trying to raise venture capital. We're trying to figure out what furniture we should sell to make payroll. — Caterina Fake

When we launched If WeRanTheWorld, I said to my team, I want us to innovate in every aspect of how we design and operate this as a business venture, as much as the web platform itself - because I want us to design our own startup around the working lives that we would all like to live. Women and men alike. — Cindy Gallop

The fastest way to get kicked out of a venture capitalist's office is to say that you want to build a business that grows steadily, focuses on employees, and creates wealth over the long term. Entrepreneurs with such ambitions are considered pariahs. — Vivek Wadhwa

Building a business doesn't mean getting venture capital funding. It means finding customers and making money. — Ziad K. Abdelnour

We must learn to lean upon ourselves; we must learn to plan and execute business enterprises of our own; we must learn to venture our pennies if we would gain dollars. — Timothy Thomas Fortune

A fact rarely suspected, let alone understood, is that businessmen are by no means the chief beneficiaries of the free market, private ownership, limited government way of life. Many business ventures fail entirely. Who then are the beneficiaries? The masses! — Leonard Read

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

Business, endorsements and things of that nature, I got into it kinda naturally. Those ventures materialised as a direct result of things that I was actually doing; all the partnerships have been organic and not necessarily etched out plans for monetary gain. — Nas

Sir Richard Branson is probably the best communicator ever. He was an inspiration for me - contrary to some reports, we've never done business together, although we did discuss an aviation venture very early on. I don't think easyJet competes with Virgin - we're in different areas. — Stelios Haji-Ioannou

The venture business is a bit of an apprenticeship business, so the firm I worked for didn't let me make an investment until I was 30. That was probably a very smart thing. — Fred Wilson

Every time I go into a new venture, I find a "rabbi" who has the business acumen to help me understand the mechanics of that industry, the costs involved in developing a product, and what you need to do in order to make a profit. — Russell Simmons

That's the greatest miracle, and ultimately the only one: that you awaken from the dream of separation and become a different kind of person. People are constantly concerning themselves with what they do: have I achieved enough, written the greatest screenplay, formed the most powerful company? But the world will not be saved by another great novel, great movie, or great business venture. It will only be saved by the appearance of great people. — Marianne Williamson

Dreams, in their essence, include risk. This risk could be physical danger (often true in climbing big mountains like Everest), or it could be financial (leaving a comfortable job and pouring your life savings into a business venture), or it could be emotional (like the feelings of loss and questioning that comes with losing friends and coworkers to climbing accidents). — Adrian Ballinger

If your business had no risk, you could go get a bank loan and call it a day. VCs like risks - without them, venture capital wouldn't exist. But they need to be risks that VCs are good at assessing and managing. — Jose Ferreira

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

At the turn of the century, parishioners attacked vaudeville as a sinful venture. Organized boycotts adversely affected ticket sales. Benjamin Franklin Keith's wife was deeply religious and prodded her husband to follow church directives. Comedian Fred Allen said, 'Mrs. Keith instigated the chaste policy, for she would tolerate no profanity, no suggestive allusions, double-entendres or off-color monkey business. — Kliph Nesteroff

Society can't wait. It's sad there are so many entrepreneurs, business successes and venture capitalists who give no thought to society. — Les Wexner

Become a maniac on a mission: How to succeed in any venture or business . — Phillip Gary Smith

Seasons 5 and 6 were about the frustrations of Leslie Knope's new job. They also are about Ben and Leslie finally getting married and pregnant. They dealt with Ann and Chris leaving, Andyand April trying to figure out what they wanted, Donna finding love, and Tom entering a new business venture. I forget what happened with Jerry. — Amy Poehler

He simply shook his head. 'If your point of reference is a glimpse you've caught of a business transaction conducted in an alley, I'd venture that you have no idea what I can do with a wall. — Courtney Milan

What motivates Olympic athletes to train for years for one event - in some cases, for just seconds of actual competition? It's the same thing that kept my friend Pete nosing around old bookstores for years. It's the same thing that makes a person venture out of a comfortable job to start a new business. We see it in the artist who spends day after day in a studio chipping away at a block of stone. Look closely and you'll find it in the shopper who passes up the good deal in search of the best deal. It's one of the things that makes us most human. We consciously pursue what we value. It's not simply a matter of being driven by biology or genetics or environmental conditioning to satisfy instinctive cravings. Rather, we perceive something, prize it at a certain value, then pursue it according to that assigned value because we were created that way. This ability to perceive, prize, and pursue is part of our essential humanness, and it's the essence of ambition. — Dave Harvey

We grew to our present size almost against ourselves. It was not a deliberately planned commercial venture in the sense that I sat down and said that we were going to make ourselves into a huge financial octopus. We evolved by necessity. We did not sit down and say to ourselves, 'How can we make a big pile of dough?' It just happened. — Walt Disney

It was the combination of EC2 and S3 - storage and compute, two primitives linked together - that transformed both AWS and the technology world. Startups no longer needed to spend their venture capital on buying servers and hiring specialized engineers to run them. Infrastructure costs were variable instead of fixed, and they could grow in direct proportion to revenues. It freed companies to experiment, to change their business models with a minimum of pain, and to keep up with the rapidly growing audiences of erupting social networks like Facebook and Twitter. — Brad Stone

When I started Biocon in 1978, the obstacles I needed to navigate were manifold - ranging from infrastructural hurdles to issues related to my credibility as a business woman. With no access to venture capital, money was scarce and high-cost, debt-based capital was all I had. — Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw

After I began to make some money, my brain-damaged accountant put me in one business after another that went bad. The only one that panned out was a small bank, an old Scottish firm with London offices in Pall Mall. I was a director. We sold out to a larger bank. That was the only successful venture I've had, apart from acting. — Sean Connery

My first venture was to trade bicycle parts and hosiery yarn. The initial days proved to be difficult, and I earned very little from my business. But I kept at it. Each day, when I retired for the night, I told myself that money would come in the next day. — Sunil Mittal

When we start a new venture, we base it on hard research and analysis. Typically, we review the industry and put ourselves in our customer's shoes to see what we could do better. — Richard Branson

The golden rule of business is supply and demand. I venture to say that this is also the rule of happiness. When a balance is achieved between our desires and another's willingness to satisfy them, the result is a sympathetic, mutually rewarding relationship. ( ... ) a thriving economy of love.' - character Mike Lambeth — Caroline Adderson

Picking winners among the many young companies seeking money is a tough business, even for the most sophisticated investors. Indeed, most professionally run venture funds lose money. For individuals, it's pure folly. Buy a lottery ticket instead. Your chance of winning is likely to be higher. — Steven Rattner

In 1958, my father invested everything he had in a business venture and became the largest automobile dealership in Chicago for Ford's new Edsel line. But Edsel sales plummeted and my father fell into bankruptcy. I watched him struggle; working long hours to protect us from poverty. — Radhanath Swami

Civically engaged, business oriented, technology obsessed, and socially skilled, Franklin was "our founding Yuppie," declares the New York Times columnist David Brooks. Franklin "would have felt right at home in the information revolution," Walter Isaacson writes in his biography of the statesman. "We can easily imagine having a beer with him after work, showing him how to use the latest digital device, sharing the business plan of a new venture, and discussing the most recent political scandals or policy ideas." The essence of Franklin's appeal is that he was brilliant but practical, interested in everything, but especially in how things work. — Fareed Zakaria

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

Christine Gray wrote in her remarkable 1986 PhD dissertation, Thailand: The Soteriological State in the 1970s: Any study of contemporary Thai society must account for the U.S. influence on that polity and the mutual denial of that influence. Thailand's relationship with the United States is complex, heavily disguised and, in many instances, actively denied by the leaders of both countries... In many cases, it is difficult if not impossible to determine the extent of American influence in Thailand. Thailand is a nation of secrets: of secret bombings and air bases during the Vietnam War, of secret military pacts and aid agreements, of secret business transactions and secret ownership of businesses and joint venture corporations. This is precisely the point; the American presence has taken on powerful cosmological, religious and even mythic overtones. The American influence on the Thai economy and polity has become a symbol of uncertainty, of men's inability to know the truth. — Andrew MacGregor Marshall

I don't think that Mitt Romney can legitimately say that he learned anything about how to create jobs in the LBO (leveraged buyout) business. The LBO business is about how to strip cash out of old, long-in-the-tooth companies and how to make short-term profits. All the jobs that he talks about came from Staples. That was a very early venture stage deal. That, you know they got out of long before it got to its current size. — David Stockman

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

No one looks for pots of gold, it just happens. Sure, some people are born with an incredible financial ability, and some people are natural salesmen, but creating a business, driving a venture, mobilizing an army, is not something you are born to do - it just happens, by accident. — Ronnie Apteker

You gotta know that you're better than anybody, 'cause to me, if you don't go in like that, you're gonna lose! They're gonna punk you out! On any stage, court, business venture, on the anchor desk - whatever. You've got to go in believing, 'I can do this better than anybody.' — Stuart Scott

There's nothing wrong with raising venture capital. Many lean startups are ambitious and are able to deploy large amounts of capital. What differentiates them is their disciplined approach to determining when to spend money: after the fundamental elements of the business model have been empirically validated. — Eric Ries

Knowledge is more important than capital. Lack of capital is a common excuse for not starting a business venture. — Timi Nadela

There is always a critical job to be done. There is a sales door to be opened, a credit line to be established, a new important employee to be found, or a business technique to be learned. The venture investor must always be on call to advise, to persuade, to dissuade, to encourage, but always to help build. Then venture capital becomes true creative capital - creating growth for the company and financial success for the investing organization — Georges Doriot