Quotes from Fred Wilson

Not only do you have to put yourself in harms way in service of your country, you have to leave your families at home. It is a great sacrifice.

Start-ups should be hunch-driven early on and data-driven as they scale.

I'm not saying M.B.A.s can't be great entrepreneurs. They can. But you don't need a degree to figure out it's costing you $5,000 per month to run your business, so you need $30,000 to keep it going for six more months.

Money is information, like bits.

Being an entrepreneur is hard. Having supportive and caring investors helps.

The fact is that the amount of money startups raise in their seed and Series A rounds is inversely correlated with success

When I see people laughing at ideas and companies we have backed, I smile. It means we are going to make a lot of money on that investment.

When my dad was in Vietnam, we lost a parent for a year. Thank God we didn't lose a parent for good.

There are so many startups out there raising money. I don't think this is a bad thing. It's a good thing. Entrepreneurship is in vogue. Innovators are innovating. Makers are making.

My venture investing career has three phases, all roughly 6-8 years long. The first, at Euclid, was software to Internet. The second, at Flatiron, was Internet to bubble. And the third, at USV, has been web 2 to mobile. I have always used a new firm to denote a new investment phase for me. Throw away the old. Start with the new.

The Internet is a computing platform built on top of core technology. Applied technology is what gets built on top of that: It's Web services.

Facebook is not an unstoppable juggernaut. There are a lot of other things people can do on the web.

The Web is going to capture an increasing share of people's attention, and billions of dollars are going to flow in. What Web 2.0 is about is harnessing those dollars in highly leverageable ways.

If you are successful, you will be cloned. That's life. In fact, it's a sign that you've made it when clones of your website, mobile app, and business start cropping up.

Many artists stick to making and hire a manager to focus on their business. Artists that build websites and mobile apps can do that, too.

I think 'crazy' is a compliment. I think you make money with people who are crazy.

Startups are rapidly changing systems. If you use an annual review cycle, you aren't getting feedback at the same pace that you need to adapt and change the business.

Skyping with your spouse works well enough, but apparently it is hard to get the kids to hang out on Skype for long.

Building product is not about having a large team to manage. It is about having a small team with the right people on it.

Customers are a great way to finance a business for many reasons. First, customer financing is typically non dilutive. They want something from you other than equity in your business. Customers also help you fit your product to the market. And customers will help debug and improve the quality of the product.

Given New York City's cultural diversity, it has always attracted creative people.

Profiles aren't journalism.

I would like to reiterate that I don't want any profiles of me. I am not newsworthy.

It takes great salesmanship to convince a customer to buy something from you that isn't built or isn't finished.