Quotes & Sayings About Startup Companies

You should focus relentlessly on something you're good at doing, but before that you must think hard about whether it will be valuable in the future. For the startup world, this means you should not necessarily start your own company, even if you are extraordinarily talented. If anything, too many people are starting their own companies today. People who understand the power law will hesitate more than others when it comes to founding a new venture: they know how tremendously successful they could become by joining the very best company while it's growing fast. The power law means that differences between companies will dwarf the differences in roles inside companies. You could have 100% of the equity if you fully fund your own venture, but if it fails you'll have 100% of nothing. Owning just 0.01% of Google, by contrast, is incredibly valuable (more than $35 million as of this writing). — Peter Thiel

It's harder, but we're still finding oil in Oklahoma today. The bar has been raised on startup companies, but it can still be done. Every regulation and every rule limits you, but, yes, it can still be done. That's the beauty of living in a free country and having the freedom to have an idea and become an entrepreneur. — Harold Hamm

Using the Lean Startup approach, companies can create order not chaos by providing tools to test a vision continuously. — Eric Ries

The problem with the Internet startup craze isn't that too many people are starting companies; it's that too many people aren't sticking with it. That's somewhat understandable, because there are many moments that are filled with despair and agony, when you have to fire people and cancel things and deal with very difficult situations. That's when you find out who you are and what your values are. — Steve Jobs

We paired this announcement of the R&D [commitment] with the so-called Breakthrough Energy Coalition, which is 27 [major investors] saying, "Hey, we'll put significant money into [energy innovations] when they're ready to spin out probably into startup companies." — Bill Gates

The Lean Startup has evolved into a movement that is having a significant impact on how companies are built, funded and scaled. — Eric Ries

Key is the question of where do new ideas come from. Historically, four places: government labs, big corporations, startup companies, and research universities. — Nicholas Negroponte

The perfect target market for a startup is a small group of particular people concentrated together and served by few or no competitors. Any big market is a bad choice, and a big market already served by competing companies is even worse. This is why it's always a red flag when entrepreneurs talk about getting 1% of a $100 billion market. In practice, a large market will either lack a good starting point or it will be open to competition, so it's hard to ever reach that 1%. And even if you do succeed in gaining a small foothold, you'll have to be satisfied with keeping the lights on: cutthroat competition means your profits will be zero. — Peter Thiel

In a big company, you can do what all the other big companies are doing. But a startup can't do what all the other startups do. — Paul Graham

One startup I dream of funding is the one that kills the record companies. — Paul Graham

A lot of entrepreneurs hate big companies. But if you hate them so much, why are you trying to build a new one? The truth is, as soon as a startup has any kind of success whatsoever, it will face big company problems. — Eric Ries

Halcyon people have put aside and left their homes, their million dollar salaries, full professorships at major universities, and fully seed-funded startup companies to be part of this effort. — Luke Nosek

Big companies are often in the process of laying off workers. Small startup companies are the ones that are hiring. The statistics prove that's where job growth is going to occur. — Jerry Moran

In big companies projects have to scale and Lean Startup help us to do it — Beth Comstock

We see a lot of startup companies, people that have a home-based office, they've been working out of their basement for two or three years, and now their basement or kids cannot accommodate them any longer. — Nancy Fox

That's the part where the governments have a unique role, and then when it progresses well enough, then existing companies or new startup companies should take it. In the $3 trillion a year energy market, the rewards will be quite fantastic. — Bill Gates