Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Start-up success is not a consequence of good genes or being in the right place at the right time. Success can be engineered by following the right process, which means it can be learned, which means it can be taught.
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.
It's a really paradoxical thing. We want to think big, but start small. And then scale fast. People think about trying to build the next Facebook as trying to start where Facebook is today, as a major global presence.
Most people are not good people. In business, in art, in almost every 'world' I've been in, most people I've meet are pretty gray to black. It takes practice to be the person who is a source of compassion and honesty.
When we build our own colonies, we can do them in near-Earth vicinity, because people are going to want to come back to Earth. Very few people - for a long time, anyway - are going to want to abandon Earth altogether.
We fly to 106 kilometers. We've always had as our mission that we always wanted to fly above the Karman line because we didn't want there to be any asterisks next to your name about whether you're an astronaut or not.
People believe that art and science are two distinct realms. It is far from the truth because, if you look at science from a microscope or from a different lens, you can see the beauty in science. It is very artistic.
I really like Kickstarter because you don't have to be a Medici to fund the arts and sciences or to get behind a big idea or a person that sparks your imagination. It's a type of microfunding directed toward creators.
A shift toward access and service would deepen the big-box retailer's relationship to customers and win their loyalty. A service focus would bring more rewarding, frequent, and lasting contact with grateful customers.
The transfer is guaranteed to be safe and secure, everyone knows that the transfer has taken place, and nobody can challenge the legitimacy of the transfer. The consequences of this breakthrough are hard to overstate.
Search engine marketing and search engine optimization are critically important to online businesses. You can spend every penny you have on a website, but it will all be for nothing if nobody knows your site is there.
I'm an investor in MakerBot, which is a good example of the 'thingiverse'. The idea of applying collaboration and rapid iteration to things that we interact with and hold in our hands every day is super revolutionary.
Bitcoin is a bank in cyberspace, run by incorruptible software, offereing a global, affordable, simple an dsecure savings account to billions of people that don't have the option or desire to run their own hedge fund.
Customers won’t care about any particular technology unless it solves a particular problem in a superior way. And if you can’t monopolize a unique solution for a small market, you’ll be stuck with vicious competition.
I think we have a bubble in the US in government bonds, because of the quantitative easing and the negative real interest rates, and to some extent, that increases asset values across the board, including in startups.
We want to build the club on our attendances. We don't want to pay all our TV money straight out in transfer fees and wages. We have to invest in developing Villa Park, allowing us to generate our own revenue streams.
What makes the meaning of life is people, so you try to be good to people immediately around you and in your broader community. So a lot of my projects are about how I can affect the world in the hundreds of millions.
We understand that most of the middle class doesn't know what to do, doesn't feel like they have economic progress, and [Hillary Clinton] goes, "OK, I realize that's my top agenda item. That's the thing I need to do."
I'm sorry, it's true. Having children really changes your view on these things. We're born, we live for a brief instant, and we die. It's been happening for a long time. Technology is not changing it much - if at all.
An open-minded and diverse population that readily shares information, encourages experimentation, accepts failure and dispenses with formality and hierarchy is what makes Silicon Valley the successful hub that it is.
I have no interest in being the biggest, the most profitable or the largest retailer. I just want The Body Shop to be the best, most breathlessly exciting company - and one that changes the way business is carried out.
Look at the Quakers - they were excellent business people that never lied, never stole; they cared for their employees and the community which gave them the wealth. They never took more money out than they put back in.
Your decision to be, have and do something out of ordinary entails facing difficulties that are out of the ordinary as well. Sometimes your greatest asset is simply your ability to stay with it longer than anyone else.
The hardest thing that I had to do every day as a working single parent was child care, to have to leave my child with people that I did not know and hope everything was OK, that was the most painful part of every day.
I'm not saying you can't be successful in the music industry without Spotify. But when I look at the future of music, I don't think scarcity is the model anymore. We have to embrace ubiquity - that music is everywhere.
Learning to see waste and systematically eliminate it has allowed lean companies such as Toyota to dominate entire industries. Lean thinking defines value as 'providing benefit to the customer'; anything else is waste.
Businesses are made by people. We've proven time and time again that you can have wonderful shop, and put a bloke in there who's no good, and he'll stuff it up. Put a good bloke in, and it just turns around like that .
My first dream was to travel. I was attracted to different places, different colors of skin, different food. When I was 18 in 1977, I went to Europe with my accordion and discovered the pleasure of entertaining people.
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and other economic and social platforms are not trying to build businesses, they are trying to build countries. Countries with laws, law enforcement, borders, and economic policy.
When I was starting out, I thought about how the Internet is global and that we should have a global name, a name that's interesting. At that time, the best name was Yahoo! Suddenly I thought, 'Alibaba is a good name.'
When we deny the poor and the vulnerable their own human dignity and capacity for freedom and choice, it becomes self-denial. It becomes a denial of both our collective and individual dignity, at all levels of society.
Whenever you need something from someone else before you can move forward, it's a dependency. We believe dependencies slow people down. We want people to be more independent, because that will keep them moving forward.
Your employees have lots of opinions about everything - your strategy and vision; the state of the competition; the quality of your products; the vibe in the workplace. There are tons of things you can learn from them.
I have successfully challenged the Western world's existing model of pharmaceutical innovation, which leads to the creation of monopolistic markets for novel, life-saving drugs that deliver high margins at low volumes.
I was greatly inspired by my late father, who was a well-known name in the brewing industry. It was he who encouraged me to take the road less traversed and gave me the confidence to pursue my path of entrepreneurship.
Even when it comes to zippers and buttons, Italy reigns supreme. The luxury market is ours, as demonstrated by the voracity with which various foreign conglomerates are buying up the jewels of our manufacturing sector.
Early versions of Microsoft Word left a lot to be desired. However, to the company's credit, it quickly learned where Word fell short, made the necessary changes, and repeatedly introduced new versions of the software.
When we started Skype, if you look at analyst reports, no one forecasted it as a big business. Also when Google started, it was not fashionable to be in search. It's not trying to do the obvious - that's the hard part.
By validating and aggregating the best material from a wide range of independent and mainstream content owners, Babelgum aims to encourage common interest communities that are not well served by traditional television.
What's really important in life? Sitting on a beach? Looking at television eight hours a day? I think we have to appreciate that we're alive for only a limited period of time, and we'll spend most of our lives working.
Since its founding, I've been friends with ModCloth's cofounders and many of its executives and investors. I have long imagined we would one day belong under one roof with that brand as a force in the future of apparel.
My wife and I work out together almost every day. It's just a great way to spend time together. We're going to run a marathon together later this year, and that's one more goal that we'll accomplish as husband and wife.
As we move towards 8 or 10 billion people on the planet, there's a little less gold per capita. Each one of us will continue to be fighting over an ever smaller percentage of total resources. This is not a happy thought
I wanted to take part in the Women's Aid Real Man campaign because domestic violence affects so many women and children during their lifetime and I think it is important to stand up against what is often a hidden crime.
I am an atheist. I was born a Catholic, but after I had traveled to Northern Ireland with some Catholic friends, and we had a horrible experience with the English Protestant police, I lost all taste for formal religion.
But as the business grows, you get more attention, and then you realize that the whole world is trying to get time from you. Which is amazing. But every time you give it to the world, you give less to what you’re doing.
Percentage margins don't matter. What matters always is dollar margins: the actual dollar amount. Companies are valued not on their percentage margins, but on how many dollars they actually make, and a multiple of that.
We need a modern people's lobby that empowers all of us to choose our leaders and set our agenda. Imagine voting for a president we're truly excited about. Imagine a government that promotes capitalism and civil rights.
There are people who have formed guilds in 'World of Warcraft' who may have played together for years before actually meeting, but because of the adventures they had together, they formed really deep-rooted friendships.
Today, if you look at financial systems around the globe, more than half the population of the world - out of six billion people, more than three billion - do not qualify to take out a loan from a bank. This is a shame.