Quotes About Entrepreneurship

As an investor, I'm always looking for the next great American company. Who will create tomorrow's Twitter, Facebook, or Google?

Every breakthrough business idea begins with solving a common problem. The bigger the problem, the bigger the opportunity. I discovered a big one when I took apart an IBM PC. I made two interesting discoveries: The components were all manufactured by other companies, and the system that retailed for $3,000 cost about $600 in parts.

My father, Beric, ran a joinery business and owned two factories.

Our established businesses of hydrocarbons, energy, and petrochemicals pretty much run on their own, with their own proven leaders. This has helped me focus almost exclusively on two things: Firstly, new businesses. And secondly, institutionalising what I call the Reliance Management System.

The more we thought, the more they all sounded boring compared to Apple. You didn't have to have a real specific reason for choosing a name when you were a little tiny company of two people; you choose any name you want.

For some reason I get this key position of being one of two people that started the company that started the revolution.

I have two people that I mainly look up to: Magic Johnson is one of them. He just blew everything out of the water. He didn't make much money in basketball, but since basketball has been over, he's investing in the community and making a lot of money at the same time. The next one I look up to is Sean Combs, who has always been a hustler.

When I sold Weststar Holidays, the idea was to take stock and stop and then decide in life - we were going to travel around the world or whatever we were going to do. After about two weeks my husband said to me, 'Oh for goodness sake Deborah, get yourself a business because this is driving me bonkers.'

Male founders who come across as Type B are more likely to get the benefit of the doubt.

I'm a brand type guy and we want to make sure that 'Gas Monkey' is out there in every arena that we can be. I'm also never short on ideas and I usually try to get them out there at all times.

I had sold products in flea markets before and I thought a cleaning product would be a good idea. So, in 2006, I came up with the ShamWow! I had seen this type of product at fairs, but it wasn't well marketed. And from there, I went to this factory in Germany that made them for me.

The most successful entrepreneurs in the world have a combination of the right type of personality and fortunate life circumstance. A lot of them have been doing it most of their life.

When you're starting a new business, you don't need to know much about it. A lot of the work is blocking and tackling - it's the same type of stuff no matter what sector you're in.

Even as a kid, I was a businessman. I figured out that if you plucked all the berries off my neighbor's tree and smashed them up, they made a Nickelodeon Gak-type consistency. I sold them to all the neighborhood kids and made stacks of quarters. Of course, the berries were poisonous, and I got in all types of trouble.

More than anything, Play Cloths has taken risks in regards to the pieces of clothing that we're even creating. We started out as straight T-shirts. It was just T-shirts and a couple cool things. Now, it's leisure pants, it's all types of clothing. We're evolving even with fashion trends on a super high level.

We are not frou-frou creative types. We have done both sides of the business and are constantly asking ourselves, 'How are we going to pay for this?' But the criteria is that it must fit with our world.

Startups are often best at solving the personal problems of their founders. The more diverse the founders, the more types of problems can be solved - and the more people who will be positively impacted by technology.

My dad was a mathematician and worked for New York City as a statistician. My mom was an accountant and eventually started her own business in her mid-40s. She linked manufacturers in Taiwan to companies in the United States that needed those types of products.

I remember the early days when every month I had to decide whether I should continue to lease a typewriter or if I could finally afford to buy it. Yes, that $12 a month really made a difference in our budget.

In a typical situation, it's going to take pretty close to a year to get your location in, get your permits, and then get open.

I've started to believe that the agency business is a great ingredient of a much bigger business - more than just what typical advertising agencies have done.

In a typical day, I would wake up about 8 A.M., pile all my stuff into my mom's minivan - my guitar, my amp, CDs to sell, a table and a rug - drive it down to the street, and unload it all. I'd wait until about 12, then play for two hours. You could only play in two-hour intervals, so then I would move it all somewhere else.

As an independent artist, you control the means of production, which is the ultimate form of empowerment.

I can say without a doubt that being a mom is the ultimate test of my multi-tasking skills. I spend my day meeting startup after startup, helping our portfolio companies, bringing in speakers, and soon gearing up for Demo Day for our accelerator program.