Being an entrepreneur is like eating glass and staring into the abyss of death.
Being an entrepreneur is not about being in love with an idea, it's about being in love with running a company.
An entrepreneur's life is always a continuous journey.
The life of an entrepreneur is the life of a human. Some days are amazing. Some days are a struggle. A lot are in between. It's the same for all of us.
You know, Mrs. Fields was never a business. It was a part of me...and I never separated, oh, well, business from personal because to me they all blended together.
The most challenging thing for a young entrepreneur is to think long-term. When you are 22 years old, it’s hard to think in 22-year increments since that’s as long as you’ve been alive. But it’s really important to view your life as an entrepreneur as a long journey that consists of many short-term cycles.
No. 1 thing is that life is just not as interrupt-driven as when you're running a company.
Being an entrepreneur is more than a matter of simply starting a business.
Giving customers and prospects a glimpse into the entrepreneur's life and mindset can allow them to cultivate a deeper relationship with customers separately from the brand.
The life of a startup is full of ups and downs, an emotional roller coaster ride that you can't quite imagine if you've spent your whole career in a corporation.
I spent the bulk of my career on building my company, and Morningstar is where the passion is.
Running your own business is a huge amount of fun, but there's also a huge amount of seriousness, so actually, they level out.
Growing your own business is great. Watching your ideas come to life, taking care of new customers and watching them become repeat customers, and successfully building your team is a feeling that can't be matched.
I live a fairly simple life, and that didn't change much after I sold TechCrunch in 2010. I didn't buy a new house or even a new car. The one thing I did splurge on was a boat. Nothing too fancy or large.
When you're doing a startup, life is not all roses and rainbows, like you see on Instagram, and killing it.
Startups are not the best choice for work-life balance, and that's sort of just the sad reality.
There is, in fact, nothing easy about being an entrepreneur.
If you are under the illusion that you can start a business and run it at your life's schedule, you are mistaken. The business is like a starving puppy - when it needs to eat, then it needs to eat regardless of what you have going on personally.
If I'd really known how hard I was going to have to work behind the scenes to have any kind of business, I think I would have stopped.
As an entrepreneur, you love your business like a child, and you're taught to be laser-focused on the business.
While I'm a venture capitalist who invests in early-stage tech companies, I often feel like a professional emailer and conference call maker.
Running your own business can be the loneliest job in the world. You are the MD, answer the phone and make tea, handle the invoices and have to make payments on time.
I am giddy with enthusiasm when my companies are doing well. And my heart hurts when they're not. Maybe that sounds very cheesy, but that's the reality of my life right now.
One day, I'm designing a candy product; the next day, I'm going to a candy factory. The day after that, I might be traveling to Los Angeles to look at a possible location for another store.
It's a fight to get anyone other than your mom to care about your startup.
