Quotes & Sayings About Venture Capital

There's never been a good period of venture capital when prices weren't high. — Peter Barris

A good portfolio manager knows which companies to keep and which ones to let go. Many a GP has struggled with portfolio companies that cannot meet their value-creation milestones, or raise additional follow-on rounds of capital, or generate target returns in a time span of, say, five to seven years. The faster you recognize those losses, the better it is."
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"As David Cowan says, "Just focus on your top five - the rest is distraction." The harder part of the investor's discipline is to know when to quit."
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"You have to constantly scan all of those things and be willing to adjust your own sense of what's a reasonable outcome and move the company into a position where it has the maximum chance to succeed. "
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"Time is your enemy: Portfolio companies always take twice as much capital and twice as long to exit. Early-stage companies rarely meet milestones as planned and always burn cash faster than anticipated. — Mahendra Ramsinghani

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

You know, development sometimes is viewed as a project in which you give people things and nothing much happens, which is perfectly valid, but if you just focus on that, then you'd also have to say that venture capital is pretty stupid, too. Its hit rate is pathetic. But occasionally, you get successes, you fund a Google or something, and suddenly venture capital is vaunted as the most amazing field of all time. Our hit rate in development is better than theirs, but we should strive to make it better. — Bill Gates

The wage earner relies upon the ventures of confident and contented capital. This failing him, his condition is without alleviation, for he can neither prey on the misfortune of others nor hoard his labor. — Grover Cleveland

Harvard and Yale concentrated with venture capitalists that got the best calls and brainpower. Very few firms made most of the money, and they made it in just a few periods. Everyone else returned between mediocre and lousy. When returns happened, envy rippled through institutional money management. The amount invested in venture capital went up 10 times post-1999. That later money was lost very quickly. It will happen again. I don't know anyone who successfully resists this stuff. It becomes a new orthodoxy. — Charlie Munger

Hedge funds, private equity and venture capital funds have played an important role in providing liquidity to our financial system and improving the efficiency of capital markets. But as their role has grown, so have the risks they pose. — Jack Reed

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

For instance, even though entrepreneurs in technology often know the statistics that about 80 percent of founders are forced out of their companies by their venture capital investors, I have never heard anyone tell me that this would happen to them. In — Jeffrey Pfeffer

Accounting rules give financial institutions flexibility about when they choose to recognize venture capital profits. — Alex Berenson

I wanted to be a venture capitalist and join Sequoia Capital. They've financed and helped built some really special and enormously successful companies, including Google, Yahoo, Paypal, YouTube, Cisco, Oracle, Apple, and also Zappos. — Alfred Lin

These inventors were elevating the formulation of entrepreneurial ideas to the status of a visionary activity. Though forced to justify their efforts in the pragmatic language of venture capital, they were at heart utopian thinkers intent on transforming the world. — Alain De Botton

I delivered lectures, and I was also a consultant for international companies in finance, both private equity and big venture capital funds. — Ehud Barak

NiOptics also was an example of something Doriot had tried to teach me back at Harvard, and it is a lesson I have learned more than once. In venture capital investing, Doriot said, it is important to understand who will buy the technology you're trying to sell. It is easy to fall in love with technology and lose sight of the fact that someone at some point will have to pay for it. An investor can lose a lot of money that way, and we have not been immune to such temptations. — Robert Finkel

Entrepreneurial management in the new venture has four requirements: It requires, first, a focus on the market. It requires, second, financial foresight, and especially planning for cash flow and capital needs ahead. It requires, third, building a top management team long before the new venture actually needs one and long before it can actually afford one. And finally, it requires of the founding entrepreneur a decision in respect to his or her own role, area of work, and relationships. — Peter F. Drucker

You know what works in venture capital? A group of incredibly smart, connected people who have the financial wherewithal and risk appetite to make multi-million dollar bets on unproven ideas and inexperienced founders. People who can make decisions quickly, and who spend their time trying to help entrepreneurs make the most of that cash. — Sarah Lacy

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

I was encouraged to break all the rules but to take the best of philanthropy, the best of investing, and the best of development finance, and experiment with new ways to create this venture capital model of using philanthropy to back patient capital investments, and then build solutions that were measured in terms of the kind of impact and change they were making on people's lives and in the world, not just on the financial return. — Jacqueline Novogratz

Never go into venture capital if you want a peaceful life. — Georges F. Doriot

Northleaf is delighted to have been chosen to manage the new fund. We look forward to implementing the fund's long-term strategy of constructing a portfolio of high-potential venture capital funds with the scale and resources to execute their plans, support successful high-growth companies and deliver world-class returns. — Jeff Pentland

All markets have boom and bust cycles, and I think venture capital market has even more exaggerated boom and bust cycles. — Fred Wilson

There is no country in the world where it's as easy to find venture capital in the stock market as the United States. — Ron Chernow

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

The key is to take a larger project or goal and break it down into smaller problems to be solved, constraining the scope of work to solving a key problem, and then another key problem.
This strategy, of breaking a project down into discrete, relatively small problems to be resolved, is what Bing Gordon, a cofounder and the former chief creative officer of the video game company Electronic Arts, calls smallifying. Now a partner at the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, Gordon has deep experience leading and working with software development teams. He's also currently on the board of directors of Amazon and Zynga. At Electronic Arts, Gordon found that when software teams worked on longer-term projects, they were inefficient and took unnecessary paths. However, when job tasks were broken down into particular problems to be solved, which were manageable and could be tackled within one or two weeks, developers were more creative and effective. — Peter Sims

Many of the best firms historically in venture capital have been multi-sector. — Marc Andreesen

The biggest secret in venture capital is that the best investment in a successful fund equals or outperforms the entire rest of the fund combined. — Peter Thiel

venture capital funding in robotics is growing at a steep rate. It more than doubled in just three years, from $160 million in 2011 to $341 million in 2014. — Alec J. Ross

Venture capital is unscalable. Production equals the time each partner has. — Bill Gurley

Bitcoin itself has already cycled through the familiar trajectory of rebellious alternative, promising a currency independent of the state, through to a venture-capital-funded investment vehicle in which 0.1% of the participants own 50% of the coins. The debate — Tom Slee

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

America is the greatest engine of innovation that has ever existed, and it can't be duplicated anytime soon, because it is the product of a multitude of factors: extreme freedom of thought, an emphasis on independent thinking, a steady immigration of new minds, a risk-taking culture with no stigma attached to trying and failing, a noncorrupt bureaucracy, and financial markets and a venture capital system that are unrivaled at taking new ideas and turning them into global products. — Thomas L. Friedman

Venture capital is always wanting to go up market. — Clayton Christensen

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

The big advantage that we have as a venture capital firm over a hedge fund or a mutual fund is we have a 13-year lockup on our money. And so enterprise can go in and out of fashion four different times, and we can go and invest in one of these companies, and it's okay, because we can stay the course. — Marc Andreessen

I know the difference between venture capital[ism] and vulture capitalism. Venture capitalism is a good thing, comes in, gives that gap funding to help these companies get off and get started creating jobs, and work. But Mitt Romney and Bain Capital were involved with what I call vulture capitalism. And they walked into Gaffney and took over that photo album company for no other reason than to basically pick the bones clean. And those people lost their jobs. — Rick Perry

I've been a customer of the top venture capital firms, so I know exactly what they do and don't do. — Marc Andreessen

I believe Twitter, right now, is just finishing the venture capital phase, getting into a maturity level. — Al-Waleed Bin Talal

State funds, private equity, venture capital, and institutional lending all have their role in the lifecycle of a high tech startup, but angel capital is crucial for first-time entrepreneurs. Angel investors provide more than just cash; they bring years of expertise as both founders of businesses and as seasoned investors. — Jay Samit

I don't understand why young entrepreneurs feel this pressure to take venture capital or go public. Don't get me wrong: Public companies are A-OK with me. I just think there is another way. Staying private is a lot more sane. — Jack Dangermond

Most venture capital funds are too short-termist and exit-driven to deal with the highly uncertain and lengthy innovation process. — Mariana Mazzucato

Venture capital is about capturing the value between the startup phase and the public company phase. — Fred Wilson

One role of government is to go where venture capital won't. — Joe Biden

The best early-stage venture capital investments appear obvious in retrospect; however, very few of them are actually obvious when you make them. — David Sze

About 4000 men, women and teenagers regularly venture out to play a game in -20 weather and stinging prairie winds. Bundled in sweaters and snow suits, balaclavas on their heads and suction cupped shoes on their feet. They slip and slide across the outdoor hockey rinks chasing a soft rubber puck in the Sponge Hockey Capital of the World. — Bob Cox

Unfortunately, 'climate' has become a dirty word - obviously in politics, but even to some degree in my world, in venture capital. People hesitate if they see something that's purported to be green. That's not a reason to invest for many people. — Evan Williams

Venture capital is about .02% of the U.S. economy invested, and it accounts for 11% of total U.S. jobs and 21% of U.S. economic output. And the reason why is because these companies can get very big, very quickly. — Juan Enriquez

I think 'Something Ventured' is a nice piece because it celebrates venture capital in a unique and powerful way. — Nolan Bushnell

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

I'll say this: I can't think of one instance in my 20 years in venture capital in which I have wanted to sell a company before the entrepreneur. — Douglas Leone

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

First-time fund is acceptable, but not a first-time investor. — Mahendra Ramsinghani

After Secretary Clinton announced in January 2010 that Internet freedom would be a major pillar of U.S. foreign policy, the State Department decided to take what Clinton calls a 'venture capital' approach to the funding of tools, research, public information projects, and training. — Rebecca MacKinnon

There are lots of ways to make money in venture capital, and there are even more ways to be mediocre. The industry has too much money and too many smart people chasing too few great entrepreneurs. — Dan Levitan

A $100,000,000 venture capital fund was set up solely for products using a specific computer language. — Cay S. Horstmann

Prior to SunRun, I was headed toward a career in venture capital and then realized I wanted to apply my knowledge of finance more directly to helping change the world. — Lynn Jurich

I try getting in front of as many opportunities as possible, but in the late '90s, I had no idea that I'd end up being CFO of a technology company. I'd no idea what venture capital was. — Roelof Botha

Venture capitalists are professional money managers. We are provided capital to invest as long as we can return it to our investors with a strong return in a reasonable amount of time. A strong return is three times cash on cash. A reasonable amount of time is ten years max. — Fred Wilson

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

Whatever the potential pitfalls, banks are increasingly enthusiastic about venture capital, particularly in new companies with strong prospects in fields like health care and technology. — Alex Berenson

It is clear as you look at the team why Data Point Capital has so quickly become one of the premier venture capital firms. I look forward to adding to the firm's very bright future. — Colin Angle

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 evidence summarized in this matrix may be of some use to venture capital investors, as a general way to frame the riskiness of proposed investments. It suggests that start-ups which propose to commercialize a breakthrough technology that is essentially sustaining in character have a far lower likelihood of success than start-ups whose vision is to use proven technology to disrupt an established industry with something that is simpler, more reliable, and more convenient. — Clayton M Christensen

I'd been a great angel investor, but professional venture capital was clearly not the right thing for me. — Mitch Kapor

more than just a corporate thriller, its about the lifestyle and culture of Silicon Valley — Patrick Krejcik

One thing I'm so grateful for is sidestepping the usual venture capital, private equity route. My friends who have gone that way are many times beholden to their boards of directors, to 'sell' ideas to a team. — Blake Mycoskie

Working in the context of ultra-famous brands like Dior and Vuitton, creative spirits are always going to feel reined in. It's important that they are free to develop ideas. And rather than detracting from the principal job, it reinforces it. I think of that money as venture capital. It's not a big investment. — Bernard Arnault

As a lot of the venture capital world seems to be shifting away from consumer, we want to make sure that consumer entrepreneurs know there's still money available. — Dan Levitan

At a basic level venture capitalists are arbitrageurs: they have access to more information than those with the capital, and access to more capital than those with information, and they profit by exploiting the mismatch. — Ben Thompson

In Silicon Valley, entrepreneurs and their backers got drunk on the overflowing optimism and abundant venture capital and threw a two-year-long party. Capital was cheap, opportunities seemed limitless, and pineapple-infused-vodka martinis were everywhere. — Brad Stone

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

I've probably done more venture capital deals and expansion financings than I have done private equity deals. But both are the same. Private equity companies have also built jobs. — Stephen Pagliuca

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

Venture capital today is clustered in just a few locations - Silicon Valley, New York, Boston, and D.C. It's far from efficiently distributed and accessible. — Jose Ferreira

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

Some big banks remain wary of venture capital. — Alex Berenson

I am a partner at CrunchFund, a venture capital firm with investments in many startups around the world. I am also a limited partner in many other venture funds which have their own startup investments. — Michael Arrington

Finance is critical. If sufficient investment is made in infrastructure and venture capital is made available, there will be a big improvement in the situation. — Sanjay Kumar

Where micro-finance focuses on small loans to individual, low-income women, think of Acumen Fund more like a venture capital fund. — Jacqueline Novogratz

Aside from the movies, examples of positive-Black Swan businesses are: some segments of publishing, scientific research, and venture capital. In these businesses, you lose small to make big. You have little to lose per book and, for completely unexpected reasons, any given book might take off. The downside is small and easily controlled. The problem with publishers, of course, is that they regularly pay up for books, thus making their upside rather limited and their downside monstrous. (If you pay $10 million for a book, your Black Swan is it not being a bestseller.) Likewise, while technology can carry a great payoff, paying for the hyped-up story, as people did with the dot-com bubble, can make any upside limited and any downside huge. It is the venture capitalist who invested in a speculative company and sold his stake to unimaginative investors who is the beneficiary of the Black Swan, not the "me, too" investors. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

For a first-time entrepreneur, there's nothing better than being in Silicon Valley because there is so much going on, and there's such a large number of inventors, that even a B level idea or a C level idea could be nurtured and be given venture capital there. — Jason Calacanis

The innovation industries are rapidly going global. In five years, more than 50% of venture capital returns will come from markets outside the United States, including China, India, Brazil, and Australia, and AlwaysOn events are on top of these trends. — Jim Breyer

When you - when you - and this is still going on today - are making your money by pushing paper around, when you should be making your money by investing venture capital in various job-creating things, that makes it much harder to recover. — Howard Dean

There's almost too much venture capital in India - there are issues with seed capital, but for venture capital, there's a lot money chasing deals here. — Ram Shriram

We believed the world didn't need another commoditized venture capital firm. — Dan Levitan

I don't think a lot of people have been entrepreneurial about venture capital. — Josh Kopelman

We need to start to talk about money in ways that dethrone it and make it subject to human ethics and standards of love and decency. — Joel Solomon

We own only a small percentage in Omnivore, but we manage it. It is basically a venture capital fund to help newer enterprises and provide them with the funding they require in their early stages of development. — Adi Godrej

My buddy Alex Blumberg learned - he was very public about his learning process, and I know for a fact because we sat next to each other for many years, that he knew nothing about venture capital or seed rounds or "A" rounds or whatever you call them, and he had to really learn, like, pitch by pitch. He just screwed pitches up. — David Plotz