Tech Startup Quotes

I've long believed that if you're not embarrassed by your first product release, you've released too late.

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.'

I really knew almost nothing about Silicon Valley. I read that Steve Jobs book and watched a bunch of documentaries, and read the book about Mark Zuckerberg. I tried to learn some stuff, but there are consultants on the Silicon Valley show that know so much about it where you can get answers. To me, it's more important to get the particulars about that type of person as opposed to the specifics of the technology world.

If you're a teenager in Palo Alto launching an app, you know from the outset how you plan to finance your business.

Everyone on the founding team ought to invest the time in a coding bootcamp.

In May of 2010, I joined Kevin Systrom, my co-founder, and we created 'Instagram', a mobile social network that today has over 15 million users.

When I started my company in the U.S. I was always told by my mentors, 'If you want to start a tech company, you need a technical co-founder,' because outsourcing just doesn't work. It is too slow, it is too expensive, and the product is going to change a lot.

Loopt wouldn't have happened without Y Combinator.

It's relatively easy to set up a tech company, join an accelerator, and progress down a pathway towards success. It's more complex to do that with food.

Of the six people who started PayPal, four had built bombs in high school.

I remember, when we were starting Tinder, we were like, 'We're going to be the next Instagram!' I remember sending my parents emails being like, 'We got 300 members!'

In 2010, the night before we launched 'Instagram v1', my co-founder Kevin and I bet on how many people would download the app its first day in the wild.

It took less time to build 'Instagram' than it did for me to get my work visa. The app was an instant hit, and Facebook agreed to acquire the startup for about $1 billion in April 2012.

If it hadn't been for our Traf-O-Data venture, and if it hadn't been for all that time spent on UW computers, you could argue that Microsoft might not have happened.

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.

As of 2011, it cost about $5,000 to launch a tech startup.

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.

My dream is to build a tech company that helps people discover content.

Silicon Valley is the best place to start a tech company in so many ways.

Mindtree began as an internet systems integrator when the dot-com boom was going on.

In a web/mobile startup, coding is not an outsourced activity. It's an integral part of the company's DNA.

Snapchat's ramp reminded us of another mobile app Benchmark had the good fortune to back at an early stage: Instagram.

Venture capitalists don't pay attention to you unless you have an app or a widget.

In 2000, just before the first dot-com bubble burst, it cost a whopping $5 million to launch a tech startup.

One of the cool things we're seeing at TaskRabbit is local tech and gaming startups hiring TaskRabbits to test their products and deliver immediate user feedback. As the founder of a tech startup, I can tell you that this type of focus group testing is paramount - and usually really pricey and difficult to coordinate.