Quotes & Sayings About Venture Capitalists

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

Show me a first-generatio n fortune and I'll show you a successful partnership between a talented individual and society's invisible venture capitalist, the commons. — William H. Gates, Sr.

What do you get when you cross a herd of sheep with a herd of lemmings? A herd of venture capitalists. — Ben Horowitz

"(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

We weren't trying to strike it rich with Firefox. It's open source and it's free. We weren't trying to take over the world; we had kind of modest goals, and it was OK if it failed. We were a lot freer to make risky decisions. If you can afford to do things that way, it's just so much better. You're not thinking about venture capitalists or marketing or sales. Just product and users, all day every day. — Blake Ross

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

There is a lack of female venture capitalists, and so there are fewer female-oriented businesses getting funded. Intel has done a good job of creating a message across Intel, and they are putting their money where their mouth is. — Brit Morin

Many venture capitalists say they're looking for the next big idea. But they aren't, really; they're looking for something derivative, because derivative is safe. — Jose Ferreira

Venture capitalists' job is to invest in risky projects. But after shying away from risk for years, VCs finally found there was no longer anybody willing to found a risk-taking company. — Anonymous

The great danger of dealing with venture capitalists is the 'slow maybe'. — John Doerr

Most startup entrepreneurs unnecessarily spend half their time and give up half their equity in search of funding from angel investors and venture capitalists. Tens of millions of dollars are available to them for free from partners who not only don't want their equity, they don't even want to be paid back. — Jay Samit

This presentation was truly a testament to the epic magnitude of getting into Thomas Treadwell's class. This exercise was pointedly not some theoretical simulation dreamed up by an academic with no real-world experience. We were presenting our ideas to real venture capitalists and angel investors. — Mitty Walters

Outsiders think of Silicon Valley as a success story, but in truth, it is a graveyard. Failure.. is Silicon Valley's greatest strength. Every failed product or enterprise is a lesson stored in the collective memory of the country. We not only don't stigmatize failure, sometime we even admire it. Venture Capitalists actually like to see a little failure in the resumes of entrepreneurs. — Michael Malone

Back in the late 1990s, venture capitalists got very excited about the Internet. A whole lot of money was poured into some companies that failed rather spectacularly, and a lot of people lost a lot of money. — Bill Maris

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

We have the greatest resource universities in the world, the only place in the world. We have the most productive workforce in the world. We have the most agile venture capitalists in the world. We have a situation where right now in the United States of America, we are near energy independent. North America is beginning to be the epicenter of energy. What is it that makes people think that this is not going to be the American century? I don't get it. — Joe Biden

"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

Venture capitalists make money by buying shares in companies and subsequently selling those shares for more than the original investment. It's a simple game fraught with complexities. — Bill Snow

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

Being a venture capitalist to me is like being more of a psychologist. So if you come to my office we have two chairs with a table in the middle. And we sit down and it's like, Tell me your problems. — Keith Rabois

Some of my best friends are Venture Capitalists, but let's face it, a hamster with Alzheimer's could make those kind of numbers. It's great work if you can get it. — Scott Adams

Venture capitalists have a list of danger signs to watch out for. Near the top is the company run by techno-weenies who are obsessed with solving interesting technical problems, instead of making users happy. — Paul Graham

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

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

While I'm a venture capitalist who invests in early-stage tech companies, I often feel like a professional emailer and conference call maker. I try to spend most of my time doing whatever the companies we are investors in need me to do. — Brad Feld

Venture capitalists certainly create value for themselves, but they also singularly create value for the rest of the world. — Jose Ferreira

Venture capitalists are like lemmings jumping on the software bandwagon. — Adam Osborne

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

Venture capitalists buy minority positions in young companies they think will grow quickly; buy-out investors buy most or all of companies they think can be turned around by fixing a few basic things. — Jose Ferreira

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

Investors are always biased to invest in things they themselves understand. So venture capitalists like Uber because they like driving in black town cars. They don't like Airbnb because they like staying in five-star hotels, not sleeping on people's couches. — Peter Thiel

The government is somewhat inept, but the private sector is inept in general. How many companies do venture capitalists invest in that go poorly? By far most of them. However, every once in a while a Google or a Microsoft comes out, so people keep giving them money. — Bill Gates

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

Everything you want is cheap or free. If you went to a venture capitalist and said: "I need money to buy tools." You flunked the IQ test, I mean every tool that you need is free! — Guy Kawasaki

That first company I started made a lot of money for the venture capitalists - nearly $30 million - but next to nothing for the founders. The companies I started after that varied between failures and mediocre successes. But at no point did I ever consider getting a 'real job.' That felt like a black and white world, and I wanted Technicolor. — Michael Arrington

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