Pavel Durov Quotes

I truly believe that the combination of a strong top line together with a strong bottom line is what makes for a sustainable business.

In business, no one pays you to have a really good year and then 10 bad years.

If we look at pricing holistically, we'll create a more solid business.

Keep your shop, and your shop will keep you.

My own view is that every company requires a long-term view.

The swamp is a business model. It's a successful business model.

I don't invest in ideas because ideas are a dime a dozen. I could steal the idea pretty quickly.

Chasing profits and building a long-term profit model are two different things.

At the end of the day, it's show business: you earn money to make money.

When you turn a company profitable you've gone from a company whose days are numbered to a company whose days can be infinite.

You can't run a business based on sympathies; otherwise our business would be hampered.

If you have a great idea that can translate elsewhere, then that's where the scalability comes in - and that's where you can actually start to make real money.

You just can't keep pouring money down an endless hole and never recoup any of it. It's got to be a business.

If a company is profitable, the founder is in control. If it's not, investors are in control.

Well, I think that there's a very thin dividing line between success and failure. And I think if you start a business without financial backing, you're likely to go the wrong side of that dividing line.

Cutting prices or putting things on sale is not sustainable business strategy.

If your goal is to provide a service at terms your customers can afford, you have to figure out how to offer your services at price points such that your aggregated costs are lower than your aggregated revenues.

A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.

I don't want to do business with those who don't make a profit, because they can't give the best service.

We're certainly interested in maximizing our return and doing it - we're interested in maximizing our return, but we're also interested in doing it over a long period of time and in doing it in a way that never endangers the firm from a survivability standpoint.

Cisco never had a red quarter. Never. Took us three years to get funding, and in those three years, we were never in the red, and that was because we had two products to sell. They were not sexy or cool, but we had enough of a market that we could generate enough of a cash stream to grow the company.

I don't think you should ever start a business and move in a direction where you can't see it becoming a business.

We've tried to build Sequoia Capital with an eye for the long term that we really look for in the companies we like to partner with.

I think the mistake people make most often when they invest in other kinds of startups is they say, 'This is totally different.' And so the things that matter, like making a product that people desperately want, like talking to customers, they throw this out the window. That is a recipe for heartache and tears.

If your goal is anything but profitability - if it's to be big, or to grow fast, or to become a technology leader - you'll hit problems.