Quotes & Sayings About Startups

Part of the reward of entrepreneurship lies in having the courage to believe in yourself and take action. — Timothy Freriks

People are bad at looking at seeds and guessing what size tree will grow out of them. The way you'll get big ideas in, say, health care is by starting out with small ideas. 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. So, what that means is you can either do something small and good and then gradually make it bigger, or do something big and bad and gradually make it better. And you know what? Empirically, starting big just does not work. That's the way the government does things. They do something really big that's really bad, and they think, Well, we'll make it better, and then it never gets better.
Building Fast Companies for Growth, Inc. September 2013 — Paul Graham

What held people together was the belief that you're really going to change the world. I think that's the nature of many startups. You believe that what you are doing is going to have a dramatic impact. You might not exactly know how, but you really have a belief. That keeps you going and going through many changes and a lot of uncertainty. — Ray Ozzie

So we should not be surprised when The Economist tells us that "in Beirut, Cairo, Dubai, Riyadh or even Gaza City, small technology firms are multiplying."18 We should not be surprised that in many Middle East cities women comprise 35 percent of Internet entrepreneurs, three times the global rate for such startups.19 We should not be surprised that in high-growth industries twice as many entrepreneurs are over fifty as are under twenty-five.20 Entrepreneurs are everywhere. Opportunities to nourish them are everywhere, too. — Steven R. Koltai

Startups that succeed are those that manage to iterate enough times before running out of resources. — Ash Maurya

Word-of-mouth marketing is a crucial component of organic growth for startups and one of the primary ways that Weebly has grown to over 15 million customers. — David Rusenko

I hear so many startups talking about how they can raise VC instead of questioning whether they need it in the first place. — Jon Oringer

I'm supporting the School for Creative Startups because the project's ambition - to boost innovation and the culture of entrepreneurship - is something I feel strongly about. — Natalie Massenet

I've been lucky enough to be involved in a number of great startups, including eBay and Wikia as an entrepreneur and LinkedIn and Paypal as an investor. — Gil Penchina

Startups and small businesses that do not invest at least 10% of their profits into R&D will have the privilege of remaining a startup and/or a small business. — Mark Anthony Peterson

In a world hooked in "Start-ups"
She was his final "Settle-down"

-The Drenched Writer — Shonali Dey

As a serial investor who has raised hundreds of millions of dollars for startups, I know that the business plans coming out of incubators tend to be vetted and more thoroughly validated. The incubator's input into your business plan will make you look far more polished and experienced - even if you have never run a business before. — Jay Samit

On average, it takes as much as $100 million in paid media for a brand to be a household name in America. Marketing partnerships are the best form of off-balance sheet financing one can ever find. Smart startups use this technique to scale their companies and build their brand equity. — Jay Samit

Etermination is the most important quality in a founder, open-mindedness and willingness to change your idea are key, and all startups face rejection at first. — Jessica Livingston

To all young people out there: This is the time you should be fearless but not jobless. Identify the right job, find what excited you the most, find what you are the most passionate about. — Sharad Vivek Sagar

I want something completely new and different to happen, and lots of it. Stuff that makes us change the way we think about a market or the world. Something that inspires a new generation of crazy startups doing crazy things. — Michael Arrington

You need three things to create a successful startup: to start with good people, to make something customers actually want, and to spend as little money as possible. — Paul Graham

The goal - at least the way I think about entrepreneurship - is you realize one day that you can't really work anyone else. You have to start your won thing. It almost doesn't matter what the thing is. We had six different business plan changes, and then the last one was PayPal.
If that one didn't work out, if we still had the money and the people, obviously we would not have given up. We would have iterated on the business model and done something else. I don't think there was ever clarity as to who we were until we knew it was working. By then, we'd figured out our PR pitch and told everyone what we do and who we are. But between the founding and the actual PayPal, it was just like this tug-of-war where it was like, "We're trying this, this week." Every week you go to investors and say, "We're doing this, exactly this. We're really focused. We're going to be huge." The next week you're like, "That was a lie. — Jessica Livingston

Overhead will eat you alive if not constantly viewed as a parasite to be exterminated. Never mind the bleating of those you employ. Hold out until mutiny is imminent before employing even a single additional member of staff. More startups are wrecked by overstaffing than by any other cause, bar failure to monitor cash flow. — Felix Dennis

Startups do not need cost effective patent filings, they need a strong IP system to help them succeed. — Kalyan C. Kankanala

Our tenants now are companies like Uber, the taxi service, Meituan, China's version of Groupon - and a large number of startups. These companies operate in a modern way, just like their customers: They go on the Internet, look for an offer and take it. — Zhang Xin

It's not about the content we are creating but how much content our customers are creating for us. — Roger Hamilton

Every company, regardless of size, is competing for the same pool of talent, which is why top recruiters can even command equity for finding key hires. Internships give startups a chance to hire the best and brightest from our universities at a fraction of the cost that these same minds will command when they receive their degrees. — Jay Samit

When you run a business, your business is totally different from others. This means your lifestyle, your routine and what you make out of your business is totally different. You lead a different life compared to those in your neighborhood and the people you knew around your business circle. — Dee Dee Artner

The market is ridiculously overcrowded with early stage investors. This results in a talent drain, where the best talent gets diffused and work for their own startups. — Sean Parker

When it's about your life, it's time to be selfish. — Dee Dee Artner

The recession has forced many entrepreneurs to draw on hidden reservoirs of courage. Get up, dust off, and get back to work. — Timi Nadela

In 2007, Stanford Business School Advisory committee asserted that self awareness was the most important attribute a leader should develop. The challenge for the modern entrepreneur is to take that path. — Kevin Kelly DO The Pursuit Of Xceptional Execution

I rationalize this by telling myself that while the work might be ignoble, it's not necessarily evil. We're not Hitler - we're just annoying people. — Dan Lyons

Startups are based in faith, and the ones that succeed have no fear. — Micah Baldwin

Startups don't fail because they lack a product; they fail because they lack customers and a profitable business model. — Steve Blank

There is all the more reason for startups to write Web-based software now,
because writing desktop software has become a lot less fun.
If you want to write desktop software now you do it on Microsoft's terms,
calling their APIs and working around their buggy OS. And if you manage to write something
that takes off, you may find that you were merely doing market research for Microsoft. — Paul Graham

Before I started Code for America, I spent my career around startups. First it was game developers, small teams trying to make hits in a tough business. Then, when I started working on the Web 2.0 events, it was web startups during times of enormous opportunity and investment. — Jennifer Pahlka

One thing I tell startups all the time is that the best way to grow is to make their product better. — Sam Altman

Sometimes you live life, and sometimes life happens to you. But you always get to choose what you do about it. Devon Brooks — Kevin Kelly DO The Pursuit Of Xcdeptional Execution

Startups often win because it's easier to see what comes next when you don't have to worry about maintaining what came last. — Aaron Levie

Was I going to start companies outside of Shutterstock or inside? Going public kind of meant I was going to start them inside, and I kind of thought this through and decided that if I was going to do that, I was going to continue to operate Shutterstock like it was an incubator of startups. — Jon Oringer

Figure out what you are doing is special. What + Who + Why + How = Awesome. Then preach to the masses. — Timi Nadela

Some people revel in getting their hands dirty. These are the people that make startups grow wildly. People with hustle also tend to be much more agile - they're the water that goes around the rock. These are the people you want around when everything goes wrong. They're also the people you want beside you when everything goes right. — Leah Busque

There are a lot of white female-led startups that are raising money without a tech founder. At the core of it is value. — Kathryn Finney

Landing a million-dollar investment for your startup is exhilarating. But as big as that number sounds, it doesn't go far. Many startups just getting off the ground won't have a CFO to monitor finances. It doesn't take much for spending to spiral out of control. — Ryan Holmes

We only hear success stories. You don't hear about the hundreds and hundreds - the overwhelming majority that don't go anywhere. This is a more realistic portrayal of what happens in startups. — Kumail Nanjiani

Most startups eventually pivot to adjust to what the market is telling them. — Alejandro Cremades

Startups Are Hard. So Work More, Cry Less, And Quit All The Whining — Michael Arrington

We are not creators; only combiners of the created. Invention isn't about new ingredients, but new recipes. And innovations taste the best. — Ryan Lilly

It's hard to do a really good job on anything you don't think about in the shower. — Paul Graham

Use photos and videos often. The best startups post lots of imagery and videos. The worst ones? Text only. — Robert Scoble

The thing about startups is you can make it, and if it's wrong you can remake it, and you can build a team that you want to have, a product that you want to have. You're utterly focused on your users or your customers and their needs, and trying to figure out how to meet those needs. — John Katzman

You do not necessarily have to get before you do but when you do, you shall get — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

We are already seeing the creation of a new kind of network based on friendships: Startups, which are often founded by friends, are the beginning of something that could reshape social relations. — Theodore Zeldin

90% of Startups fail.
Come in to be the 90% until we shift to rest 10%. ;) — Prerak Trivedi

Your writers write these pieces about meaningless startups, meaningless apps and meaningless companies. — Nick Denton

Define your own success: If you're going after a million bucks with your own startup, you've already failed yourself. Instead, do something because it's interesting, challenging, it offers you the chance to learn something new or gives you the chance to work with really interesting people. Most startups that are designed to make money, especially in this environment, don't. — Tara Hunt

We've all been in positions where we felt out of place or not accepted for whatever reason. For me, that's been my life. I've always been that person that stood out. And what makes you an outcast is what makes you unique, and you should harness that. Being a black sheep gives you creative license to do sh*t differently. — Andre Hueston Mack

Startups don't starve; they drown." There — Eric Ries

We're seeing a lot of major companies as well as startups coming up with smartwatches that replicate a lot of the functionality you might have in your smartphone. Will it be as big a market as smartphones? Probably not, but it still can be a very substantial market. — Henry Samueli

A lot of the machines that Google is built on - commodity is the polite word for them - they're regular PCs and so they're not always the most reliable. — Jessica Livingston

Research conquers doubt. It aligns everyone around the incontestable. Research is the key to clarity - in startups, enterprises, and life itself. — Laura Busche

Fred wasn't convinced, telling Charlie that such a service would never work and that other companies that had tried to make Twitter-like products had all failed. — Nick Bilton

Startups on the inside are always badly broken. — Sam Altman

At the end of the day, it's just grape juice. No one needs anything that I make. The last thing we need is another wine on the shelf. So that just makes me grateful for the people who do enjoy it. — Andre Hueston Mack

Most startups are not just built for the person who is using them. When you do that, every now and then you get really lucky and ... are representative of some huge class of people who all want the same thing you do ... but very often that just turns into a side project that doesn't go anywhere. — Emmett Shear

I'm a creature of startups. For example, I don't want government interference in the startup ecosystem. — Michael Arrington

An "eye" on the vision is more important than an "I" on the vision. — Sharad Vivek Sagar

My best ideas come in the shower, where I'm showered with water, but also ideas. — Ryan Lilly

A key part of helping startups is providing them with a G/SCORE that measures a company on the path to sustainability. We score companies from around the world and use Knoodle so they can easily sync video and presentations together for a more effective pitch. We send these pitches to judges all around the world and it's critical that we have a flexible tool that is easy to create, easy to deliver, and effective at letting audiences understand the entrepreneur and their innovation. — Chris Shipley

Desktop freelancers and innovative startups all over the world — Thomas Friedman

Fundly is at the dynamic intersection of high-growth technology startups, social entrepreneurship, and the exploding world of social media. Kapor Capital is proud to back this passionate team, their product, and Fundly's impressive customer base. — Mitch Kapor

There are certain zip codes that generate a disproportionate share of patents, of startups, of wealth, of jobs. And it's really important if other parts of the country are going to want to create these tech centers. — Juan Enriquez

No sector will ever be so important that merely participating in it will be enough to build a great company. — Peter Thiel

Until you become so passionate about you and your business no one will. You are your first cheerleader and business promoter. — Bernard Kelvin Clive

If you look at most successful startups, they're run by people in their mid to late forties, who've gone through the trenches multiple times and had multiple failures, so they understand. — Tony Fadell

When strategy, culture, and brand harmonize, they amplify one another and resonate loud and clear. — Kate O'Neill

9/10 startups fail, which is a harsh reality in the world of entrepreneurship. However, I believe that such a high number of startups fail because they do not take the right steps necessary when building their business. The biggest challenge people have is building something that their target audience or niche really wants. — Jeet Banerjee

If everything you do needs to work on a three-year time horizon, then you're competing against a lot of people. But if you're willing to invest on a seven-year time horizon, you're now competing against a fraction of those people ... Just by lengthening the time horizon, you can engage in endeavors that you could never otherwise pursue — Jeff Bezos

It's hard to tell with these Internet startups if they're really interested in building companies or if they're just interested in the money. I can tell you, though: If they don't really want to build a company, they won't luck into it. That's because it's so hard that if you don't have a passion, you'll give up. — Steve Jobs

Since most startups operate at a break-neck pace, with a concept to prove or a product to launch within a rapidly shortening runway of financing, company culture often gets shoved aside. This is a big, big mistake: Nobody serious about their business should put culture in the corner. — Leah Busque

people then products then traffic then revenue." The people are supposed to come for the coolness: Yahoo! demonstrated design awareness by overhauling its logo, it asserted youthful relevance by acquiring hot startups like Tumblr, and it has gained media attention for Mayer's own star power. But the big question is what products Yahoo! will actually create. — Peter Thiel

Progress in manufacturing is measured by the production of high quality goods. The unit of progress for Lean Startups is validated learning-a rigorous method for demonstrating progress when one is embedded in the soil of extreme uncertainty. — Eric Ries

I love what the Valley does. I love company building. I love startups. I love technology companies. I love new technology. I love this process of invention. Being able to participate in that as a founder and a product creator, or as an investor or a board member, I just find that hugely satisfying. — Marc Andreessen

I feel like you can't judge a book by its cover, that's always been the story of my life. I can walk into any restaurant and people would be floored to learn that I know what I do about wine, let alone that I ran one of the best wine programs in the world. — Andre Hueston Mack

If you can just learn to think about the market first, you will have a big leg up on most people starting startups. — Sam Altman

1. Do consumers recognize that they have the problem you are trying to solve?
2. If there was a solution, would they buy it?
3. Would they buy it from us?
4. Can we build a solution for that problem? — Ries Eric

A recession is very bad for publicly traded companies, but it's the best time for startups. When you have massive layoffs, there's more competition for available jobs, which means that an entrepreneur can hire freelancers at a lower cost. — Timothy Ferriss

Very ambitious startups often take a long time to work - or sometimes they take a very long time to look ambitious. — Sam Altman

Startups allow technologists and scientists to take risks and change plans in a way that would be frowned upon in a big company. Having said that, big companies will play a key role in certain areas and in partnerships with little companies. Each has its strengths. — Vinod Khosla

For almost the first year of The Muse's life, I would do 5 to 8 networking events a week. And I don't necessarily think that's the right path for everyone, but I realized that as an entrepreneur, one of my strengths was finding the right people who could help us. I didn't come into startups with any network. — Kathryn Minshew

One of the cool things we're seeing at TaskRabbit is local tech and gaming startups hiring TaskRabbits to test their products and deliver immediate user feedback. As the founder of a tech startup, I can tell you that this type of focus group testing is paramount - and usually really pricey and difficult to coordinate. — Leah Busque

In order to protect against being disrupted, startups also need to recruit employees that are committed to life-long learning. The skills that made your team members valuable may not be the skills needed to take your company to the next level or to compete in emerging markets. — Jay Samit

I love working with really early stage startups where the outcome is still in doubt. Maybe they'll go on to greatness, or maybe they'll never get off the runway at all. — Sam Altman

Silicon Valley has evolved a critical mass of engineers and venture capitalists and all the support structure - the law firms, the real estate, all that - that are all actually geared toward being accepting of startups. — Elon Musk

Enterprises have customers! Ask them for feedback and you can compete with startups! — Colin Humphreys

I believe there's plenty of market for each; we're talking about an ecosystem that is going to support billions of devices, so a competitive landscape is good for consumers, developers, and the platforms alike. Apple brings a smooth elegance to its devices and platform, with the best marketplace experience to boot. Google brings a higher volume of devices as well as a more diverse ecosystem to interact with. The real story here is that Microsoft is nowhere to be seen, ending a two-decade monopoly and creating biggest opportunity for software startups probably ever. — Aaron Levie

Embrace iteration as the road to improvement, but don't let that lull you into rolling out poorly-thought-out crap. — Kate O'Neill

The bigger a company gets, the more people are involved in decisions, the slower decisions get made. Look, the whole theory of startups is that three motivated people can go and do something that every company can't. — Garrett Camp

Startups are not the best choice for work-life balance, and that's sort of just the sad reality. — Sam Altman

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

The pace of decision-making at startups is way faster than it is at big companies. It has to be because most startups are burning cash. — Anonymous

Entrepreneurs see what others can't, do what others won't, and accomplish what others dream. — Ryan Lilly

Doing startups is all about making mistakes. — Biz Stone