Quotes About Entrepreneurship

The cost and risk of developing an innovative idea are borne by the initiator, not the follower.

Here is the worst possible way for you to try to figure out if your idea solves somebody's problem: Ask them. The vast majority of entrepreneurs seem to think that explaining their concept in detail to a few people and then asking whether it's a good idea constitutes validation. It does not.

In my previous book, Grindhopping, I told young entrepreneurs to ask three questions: What do I love so much I'd do it for free? How can I get someone to pay me to do that? If there's no obvious job title in an organization doing what I love (and often there isn't), what's a low-cost way I could start a business doing that, and get the cash register ringing quickly?

legitimately or not, he could sell it for enough to buy a small house; he could live off the proceeds

a big company makes a wonderful place to go and semiretire for a while if you're burned out. But if you're striving to be remarkable (which you are!), a big company is a hard place to get into the right groove in the same way that a bakery is a bad place to go to try to work off your love handles. The solution? Go independent!

Bad taste creates many more millionaires than good taste.

My lessons weren't specific to business, but they were fundamental values—integrity, humility, responsibility, work ethic, entrepreneurship, a thirst for knowledge, the desire to make a contribution, and concern for others—that profoundly influenced the way I do business and live my life to this day.

Principled Entrepreneurship™—creating superior value for our customers while consuming fewer resources and always acting lawfully and with integrity. Good profit comes from making a contribution in society—not from corporate welfare or other ways of taking advantage of people.

By "good profit," I don't mean high margins or high return on capital, or lots of profit by just any means. What I consider to be good profit comes from Principled Entrepreneurship™—creating superior value for our customers while consuming fewer resources and always acting lawfully and with integrity. Good profit comes from making a contribution in society—not from corporate welfare or other ways of taking advantage of people.

interview process typically consists of a series of separate interviews, with each interviewer assessing a candidate's alignment with a unique set of personal traits. These traits are arranged as focus areas based on our Guiding Principles and are as follows: (1) Integrity and Compliance; (2) Value Creation, Principled Entrepreneurship, and Customer Focus; (3) Knowledge and Change; (4) Humility and Respect; and (5) Skills and Knowledge required in the role.

4. Principled Entrepreneurship: This principle—so central to our culture that we had it trademarked—is defined as "maximizing the long-term profitability of the business by creating superior value for our customers while consuming fewer resources and always acting lawfully and with integrity." Creating value for society requires Principled Entrepreneurship—not political or other forms of entrepreneurship, such as corporate welfare or fraud.

A pitfall that most entrepreneurs face is that we become so absorbed in the day-to-day battle (and mind you, it's a glorious battle), that we lose sight of where we are and where we need to go. I believe an imperative for any entrepreneur is to work 'on' the business as much or more so than 'in' the business.

If a man had as many ideas during the day as he does when he has insomnia, he'd make a fortune.

Normally my clients were my mother, my grandmother, and my dad, and I would sell them the issues with a great color cover. There was a story I remember called 'The Invader,' and it had an invisible dome covering a city, with a giant tentacled monster eating everybody in sight, and people trying to drill a hole in the dome. And I did these epic Prismacolor pencil illustrations and sold out the three issues to my captive audience.

Taco Bell, which he launched in 1962 in the Los Angeles suburb of Downey.

I was always a kid trying to make a buck. I borrowed a dollar from my dad, went to the penny candy store, bought a dollar's worth of candy, set up my booth, and sold candy for five cents apiece. Ate half my inventory, made $2.50, gave my dad back his dollar.

Go APE: Author a great book, Publish it quickly, and Entrepreneur your way to success. Self-publishing isn't easy, but it's fun and sometimes even lucrative. Plus, your book could change the world.

He who builds a better mousetrap these days runs into material shortages, patent-infringement suits, work stoppages, collusive bidding, discount discrimination--and taxes."

When starting out, don't worry about not having enough money. Limited funds are a blessing, not a curse. Nothing encourages creative thinking in quite the same way.

When most people are unhappy customers, they get mad; I try to get rich. All of my businesses started the same way: I got rich by improving the world and making a lot of people happier in the process.

Back in the early days at Netflix, it wasn't unheard of for me to tell prospective hires that I could see our stock going to a hundred dollars someday.

I've seen what power women have in unification, and I would love to create co-working spaces and networks for female entrepreneurs.

I opened Union Square Cafe when I was just 27 years old, and my first hope was simply that it would stay in business. My higher hope was that in its lifetime, it might grow to play an essential role in the lives of its stakeholders.

Frankly speaking, I decided to become a businessman at the moment when I understood that it is possible, because I grew up in a country where it was not possible. There existed even a special article in the penal code of the Soviet Union which punished entrepreneurial activity.