Start-up Success Quotes

When you're in a start-up, the first ten people will determine whether the company succeeds or not. Each is 10 percent of the company. So why wouldn't you take as much time as necessary to find all the A players? If three were not so great, why would you want a company where 30 percent of your people are not so great? A small company depends on great people much more than a big company does.

There are a number of start-ups in Europe that are able to reach beyond their own country. Take Spotify - Spotify just in Sweden isn't that interesting compared to Spotify all over the world.

In the movies, you want a good story and characters that are honest, but you are also looking for a good director who can lead the ship. That's how we look at business. Everybody has a great idea for a start-up, and so do their relatives, and they tell me, 'You gotta build it.' I say, 'I have to believe in it.'

Books about technology start-ups have a pattern. First, there's the grand vision of the founders, then the heroic journey of producing new worlds from all-night coding and caffeine abuse, and finally, the grand finale: immense wealth and secular sainthood. Let's call it the Jobs Narrative.

Back in 2001, my first start-up was mentioned in the 'New York Times' and 'USA Today.' I figured that would drive thousands of visitors to the site and tons of new business. Instead, only a handful of people visited our site, and not much business came of it at all.

Start-ups often die in the first 18 to 24 months because of formative mistakes, like choosing a bad co-founder or the wrong corporate entity or an inappropriate platform. Ninety percent of the companies the Founder Institute has created are alive because we've helped them avoid those mistakes.

There is still a perception that the way women are isn't necessarily what you need for the powerhouse start-ups.

In the first three years of Mint, from when it was founded to when it was sold, I can honestly say that in a sustainable way, I couldn't have worked any harder on it.

There's a historical view that adding process into a scrappy start-up kills innovation, but I'm a firm believer that you need process at some point to remain agile.

Most startups flame out or just muddle along. Your chances of spotting a unicorn, pre-horn, are incalculably small. But if, knowing that, you still want to toss aside your cushy job, at least listen to corporate vets who have made the transition.

The biggest start-up successes - from Henry Ford to Bill Gates to Mark Zuckerberg - were pioneered by people from solidly middle-class backgrounds. These founders were not wealthy when they began. They were hungry for success, but knew they had a solid support system to fall back on if they failed.

A lot of entrepreneurs hate big companies. But if you hate them so much, why are you trying to build a new one? The truth is, as soon as a startup has any kind of success whatsoever, it will face big company problems.

Most start-up companies fail and it is smart public policy to help entrepreneurs increase their odds of succeeding. But, the biggest loss to our economy is not all the start-ups that didn't make it: It's the ones that might have been created but weren't.

A startup for entrepreneurs is like a baby, and I have five babies so far - experienced father.

From my point of view, what I really like, what I think is really terrific about my work, is that the company's had the opportunity to train literally thousands and thousands of brand new franchisees to successfully run their very first business.

The ventures that keep things light and fun, easy to understand, that have a compelling story, a sexy retail product, will have an easier time getting people to rally around them and contribute. A start-up doing something that's difficult to communicate or doesn't offer any kind of retail product will have a tougher go at it.

When I started in California, people would say, 'Enterprise who?'

If you start a successful company in China at 11 A.M., by 2 P.M. there's three more companies like it.

As someone who understands what's needed for entrepreneurs and start-up companies to succeed, I can tell you there is nothing more integral to their success than operating in a stable financial system.

Relative to all the start-ups out there, getting a valuation of $1 billion is rarely accomplished.

I'm thrilled to share the story of my journey in building Eventbrite and what I've learned along the way as a working mother and entrepreneur.

Entrepreneurship transparency, I think, is important because there are so many problems that you just have to be real about them. There are so many ways for a startup to die, so the transparency attitude is key.

People look up to Techstars because they get funded by Techstars; they go through the accelerator. What we do impacts what they do. What we care about we hope has a meta impact on those entrepreneurs and how they think about the world.

It's really rare for people to have a successful start-up in this industry without a breakthrough product. I'll take it a step further. It has to be a radical product. It has to be something where, when people look at it, at first they say, 'I don't get it, I don't understand it. I think it's too weird, I think it's too unusual.'

One of the biggest advantages that start ups have is execution speed and you have to have this relentless operating rhythm.