Quotes About Startups

In big companies, there's always going to be more politics and less scope for individual decisions. But seeing what startups are really like will at least show other organizations what to aim for. The time may soon be coming when instead of startups trying to seem more corporate, corporations will try to seem more like startups. That would be a good thing.

determination is the most important quality in a founder, open-mindedness and willingness to change your idea are key, and all startups face rejection at first.

Apparently sprinters reach their highest speed right out of the blocks, and spend the rest of the race slowing down. The winners slow down the least. It's that way with most startups too. The earliest phase is usually the most productive. That's when they have the really big ideas. Imagine what Apple was like when 100% of its employees were either Steve Jobs or Steve Wozniak.

What is interesting to me is to find ways to work with early-stage innovators to build from the edge and work on tomorrows ideas.

Startups Are Hard. So Work More, Cry Less, And Quit All The Whining

The other piece besides focus for execution is intensity. Startups only work at a fairly intense level.

The best founders work on things that seem small but they move really quickly. They get things done really quickly.

The market is ridiculously overcrowded with early stage investors. This results in a talent drain, where the best talent gets diffused and work for their own startups.

New industries are created by entrepreneurs who don't necessarily have subject matter expertise when they get started, yet they are still responsible for most of the innovation we see in society.

There's going to be a Google or a Facebook or a Zynga every three to five years. Those are really big ideas that do return substantial amounts of money.

We're seeing a lot of major companies as well as startups coming up with smartwatches that replicate a lot of the functionality you might have in your smartphone. Will it be as big a market as smartphones? Probably not, but it still can be a very substantial market.

At the intersection of food science and technology, food replacement startups are creating substitutes for the basic components of meals as well as replacements for complete meals.

Almost every dot-com idea from 1999 that failed will succeed.

ChicagoNEXT is focused on making Chicago the best possible place for technology entrepreneurs.

People tend to think that in order to start a new business they have to come up with something new and dazzling, but that's a myth - and it's often propagated by venture capitalists.

Startups don't fail because they lack a product; they fail because they lack customers and a profitable business model.

You don't need to have a 100-person company to develop that idea.

Most venture capitalists won't read a business plan unless the entrepreneur is introduced to them by a contact.

Most successful businesses in the country were started on a kitchen table. As long as people have needs unmet or problems unsolved, there are business opportunities.

But let me tell you what happens when regulations go too far, when they seem to exist only for the purpose of justifying the existence of a regulator. It kills the people trying to start a business.

Every successful business, even Google, Facebook, Twitter, started with a combination of manual improvements and friends of the founders using the site.

Ideas are easy. I've never met a single person who didn't think they had a world class idea. The hard part is making it a business.

Only morons start a business on a loan?

My early business ventures included growing Christmas trees and breeding birds.