Quotes About Entrepreneurship

When I started out, I wrote the songs, recorded the songs, mastered, mixed, did the artwork, made the packaging and did the distribution, all myself. Now I understand what everyone's jobs are, who is doing them right, and who isn't.

'TTM' started off being a feature. A producer wanted me to just hop on the beat, like a Diplo type of thing. When I recorded the song, I liked it a lot, and I figured, instead of them paying me to do this, I'd rather just use this for my project, and we can just get money together.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt's career is kind of how I want to create my career. He's very involved with his recording and production company and also worked on some really great projects.

I'll probably have to open a recording studio at some point because I won't be able to pay the bills.

I wanted to go back to writing for myself and my fans. I built my own recording studio, started my own label, and decided to use the Internet to sell my records.

We're not making records for the fun of it; we're in it to make money.

I'm always happy when I hear about people selling records or selling books or selling movies. It makes me proud of them.

That's been the secret to 'Gas Monkey': Move fast. I opened the first restaurant within a year and a half. Most people wait five years. I always move quickly, and in today's market, no matter what you're in, you can recover from a mistake faster than you can recover from not doing.

When you start off with your first company, you are learning as part of the process and you make mistakes. The important thing is to recover quickly and learn from the experience.

I joined YC to recover from the brain damage of starting companies.

I joined the board of Etsy when it was just three founders, and I helped recruit the COO and CTO, Chad Dickerson, who later became the CEO.

I'm not bothered when other VCs start hiring great designers or start recruiting. That's the direction I'd like it to go.

People always say to me, 'You've really strived to redefine retail.' But the reality is, I wanted to redefine magazines.

I have never seen Jeff Bezos, Marc Benioff, or Reed Hastings complain about being public. Nor have they ever argued that being public prevented them from doing things with a long-term focus.

Thinking like an entrepreneur means establishing a core audience of early adopters and constantly experimenting to make your product better and better. If your initial concept is showing promise and early success, keep iterating to refine and evolve your idea.

I don't know any successful entrepreneur that doesn't have at least a handful of stories about the things they did that went horribly wrong.

My workday begins around 11 A.M., with a cup of black coffee in each hand. If I had more hands, there would be more coffee.

I could quite happily run a florist or a bake shop.

The technologists and entrepreneurs I know are generally good people. If they were given a choice, 'Do your job and eliminate normal jobs' or 'Do your job and create abundant opportunities,' they would choose the latter. Most of them would happily even take a small hit to do so. But this isn't a choice they're given.

Financing is always the hard part, especially if you don't have friends or family to back you, which was my case and the case for most designers.

The thing that helped me most when I started my own business was my experience as the president and PR director of student associations in college. Because of that I knew how to create and run an organization and how to really make things - even hard things - happen.

I wanted to be a 150% entrepreneur and a 150% mom, and I found that I was having a very hard time doing both. I was about 75% and 75% - still better than 100%, but not what I was accustomed to at work.

Embrace your fire - even in hard times. A down economy can actually be a great time to start a business.

Successful musicians are entrepreneurs - they work hard, way beyond 9 to 5.