They are not new lessons. Never owe any money you can’t pay tomorrow morning. Never let the markets dictate your actions. Always be in a position to play your own game. Never take on more risks than you can handle…Good businesses, good management, plenty of liquidity, always having a loaded gun; if you play by those principles you will do fine no matter what happens. And you don’t ever know what’s going to happen…
Warren Buffett
I think if you’re going to start a business, build it around something that you’re interested in and something that you think the world needs because it’s something you need, rather than around something you think will make you money.
Alan Schaf
If business plans are marvelous works of fiction — and they most often are — then the specific financial goals that they are tied to are fairy tales.
Jeff Cornwall
It’s a good lesson for anyone who’s trying to compete with bigger competitors. If you’ve got a smaller product mix, you can obsess over these details in a way that big guys can’t. Customers respond to that.
Matt Linderman
If I had a nickel for every time a potential investor told me this wouldn’t work…
Jeff Bezos
Minimum Viable Product: the smallest feature set that gets you the most: orders, learning, feedback, failure
Steve Blank
More start-ups fail from a lack of customers than from a failure of product development.
Steve Blank
A start up is a temporary organisation used to search for a repeatable and scalable business model.
Steve Blank
The strongest thing you can cultivate as an entrepreneur is to not rely on luck but cultivating an ability to recognize fortunate situations when they are occurring.
Jack Dorsey
You have to solve a problem that people actually have. But it’s not always a problem that they know they have, so that’s tricky.
Joshua Schachter
Without outside capital, we have to make do with less … Constraints are a beautiful thing because they force creativity and precision. We don’t have the resources to throw after hit-or-miss hires or strategies. Bootstrapping a business requires a different mentality. It’s taught us to be frugal, hire slowly, and exercise caution as we grew the business. While companies that take funding can do those things, people have a tendency to behave differently when it’s not their money on the line.
Bryan Johnson
It’s too easy to relinquish responsibility for your idea to experts. This is almost always a mistake, because experts are only experts in their field. They’re no experts in your idea. At this stage the only person qualified to assess your idea is you.
Richard Branson
The pain is not limited to the beginning of the venture. It’s still there three years in, despite real revenue, profitability, customers arriving everyday, and a great team.
A Smart Bear
People are happy to pay for things that work well. Never be afraid to put a price on something. If you pour your heart into something and make it great, sell it. For real money. Even if there are free options, even if the market is flooded with free. People will pay for things they love.
Jason Fried
The pain is not limited to the beginning of the venture. It’s still there three years in, despite real revenue, profitability, customers arriving everyday, and a great team.
A Smart Bear
If you’re worried about threats to the survival of your company, don’t look for them in the news. Look in the mirror.
Paul Graham
If you’re worried about threats to the survival of your company, don’t look for them in the news. Look in the mirror.
Paul Graham
Early in a startup you need to acquire your customers for free. Later on, you can spend on customer acquisition.
Fred Wilson
Start-up organizations provide an extraordinary example of chaos organized into manageable chunks. Perhaps more than anyone else, the individuals who comprise a start-up team are required to understand their team’s goals across a variety of disciplines — research, marketing, design, development, architecture, etc. — as well as their own responsibility to move the company’s overarching objective forward. Entrepreneurs must choose the direction, designers must think through the options, and developers must cull a functional product or service, all while giving feedback to and receiving it from their colleagues.
I learned that quick releases and financial discipline are the lifeblood of any successful startup.
Michael Schneider
It’s not only good software that takes a decade to develop, good companies do too. If you agree that’s true, it follows that you wouldn’t want promising entrepreneurs to go chasing waterfalls before they know how to paddle in the pond. Or something like that. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I want to see evolution get a chance to work its magic, but if great products and companies keep getting abandoned or bought after 3-5 years, there’ll be less of that. And that’s a damn shame.
David Fried
Acquisition should never be the goal. Build something people love, and build revenue to keep it sustainable. After that, the decision to sell is very personal.
The market for something to believe in is infinite
Hugh MacLeod
What’s the best reason to start a company?
Because you want to breathe life into something that didn’t exist and then see it provide value to others at scale.
Mark Hendrickson
I didn’t go along with the cash-shredding of the dot-com boom. I didn’t take venture capital, hire 200 people, and spend money like crazy. I had the mentality of, ‘l don’t care if I’m running a lemonade stand or a dot-com, it’s the same thing. How much do the lemons cost and how much are people buying? Maybe I’d better find some cheaper lemons or make less lemonade. Maybe I need to improve the quality of my lemonade.’
Founder Dany Levy on the success of DailyCandy
When you start a company, the most important consideration should be working on a product you love (a startup can be a 5+ year endeavor so if you don’t love it you probably won’t be able to endure the ups and downs).
Chris Dixon
The fear never goes away.
You just get better at dealing with it.
I was just as afraid when I started my fifth company as I was when I started my first one. In fact, I was probably more afraid, because I understood how truly difficult it is to build a business from scratch.
But it didn’t stop me, and really, I think that’s what defines people we call heroes. They’re just as afraid as anyone else, but they keep going anyway.
They’re willing to lie in bed, sweating and worrying about how they’ll pay the bills.
They’re willing to do the unpopular thing and for everyone to think they’re an ass.
They’re willing to invest years of their life into a product, only to see it flop and have to start over again.
It’s not because they’re special. They just know the price, and they’re willing to pay it.
The Cowardly Lion’s Guide to Conquering Your Entrepreneurial Fears
As any successful entrepreneur will tell you, building companies from scratch requires a certain degree of madness that few people possess.