Jay Samit Quotes

#1. Building a career or a company is about living a few years of your life like most people won't so that you can spend the rest of your life living at a level most people can't.

Jay Samit

#2. There are riches to be found simply by capturing the value released through others' disruptive breakthroughs.

Jay Samit

#3. You don't need to be an engineer or a tech person to benefit from technology. You can hire them.

Jay Samit

#4. Historically, more media has been consumed sitting in front of the television than any other device. Controlling this screen has been the goal of major technology, consumer electronic, and telecommunications companies.

Jay Samit

#5. When Thomas and John Knoll launched Photoshop 1.0 in 1990, the software couldn't even handle color images. But their offerings got the startup noticed by Apple and Adobe, both of whom became key to the fledgling company's later success.

Jay Samit

#6. In life, you get what you believe you deserve.

Jay Samit

#7. To stay relevant, you must keep your career in permanent beta. That means committing to a lifetime of learning and professional growth, a lifetime of strategic

Jay Samit

#8. With less and less television being watched live, consumers are enjoying the freedom to record at home or in the cloud, watch locally or on the go, and binge watch entire series that they never had the time to enjoy.

Jay Samit

#9. A free and open Internet is a despot's worst enemy.

Jay Samit

#10. The strength of brand loyalty begins with how your product makes people feel.

Jay Samit

#11. What most entrepreneurs don't understand is that it isn't the economy that bursts a bubble, but investor psychology.

Jay Samit

#12. I always say the more problems you have, the more opportunities you have.

Jay Samit

#13. Be the best at what you do or the only one doing it.

Jay Samit

#14. Too many startups get in the habit of continually raising more and more money, which has the deleterious effect of both pushing out profitability and limiting your exit options. The less rounds of capital you need to raise, the more of your company you get to own.

Jay Samit

#15. You have a choice: pursue your dreams, or be hired by someone else to help them fulfill their dreams.

Jay Samit

#16. To thrive, all businesses must focus on the art of self-disruption. Rather than wait for the competition to steal your business, every founder and employee needs to be willing to cannibalize their existing revenue streams in order to create new ones. All disruption starts with introspection.

Jay Samit

#17. Distributers don't need massive amounts of square feet to stock digital products. Retailers don't need brick-and-mortar stores to sell them. The entire supply chain for these select items has been permanently dematerialized. The marketplace has been blown to bits.

Jay Samit

#18. Cable and satellite businesses are competing against fixed-line telephone companies and wireless companies.

Jay Samit

#19. Success doesn't teach as many lessons as failure

Jay Samit

#20. My job is to hire the best and brightest employees and empower them to do their best work. As a manager, I am not a mind reader nor an expert at every job function. Therefore, it is incumbent on all hires to feel empowered to tell me what resources they need to do their job.

Jay Samit

#21. The answers to all a startup's challenges are out there. By setting up the right mechanisms for gathering feedback, the road to success can be a less bumpy ride.

Jay Samit

#22. For all founders, going public is a momentous milestone that has to be experienced to be fully understood. It is the culmination of years of hard work and personal sacrifice.

Jay Samit

#23. Whether by design or circumstance, every startup will eventually get disrupted.

Jay Samit

#24. prestidigitator,

Jay Samit

#25. Starting each day with a positive mindset is the most important step of your journey to discovering opportunity.

Jay Samit

#26. Founding a successful startup is no different than forming a rock band.

Jay Samit

#27. Lifelong learning is no longer a luxury but a necessity for employment.

Jay Samit

#28. Your innovation can create new winners and losers; or at the very least, make existing companies look fresh and innovative by partnering with you. Everyone wants to align with market makers.

Jay Samit

#29. The most important tool you have on a resume is language.

Jay Samit

#30. The best big idea is only going to be as good as its implementation.

Jay Samit

#31. The real challenge is for each of us to determine where we feel we can make the most impact.

Jay Samit

#32. Whether you stay private or go public, after all is said and done, a CEO's job is to create lasting shareholder value.

Jay Samit

#33. Most startup failures result from entrepreneurs who are better at making excuses than products.

Jay Samit

#34. Our world's future is far more malleable and controllable than most people realize.

Jay Samit

#35. The greatest challenge to most innovation centers around the world is many nations' punitive attitudes towards failure. In most of the world, if your first business fails, no one will work with you again. But, trial and error is the genesis of innovation.

Jay Samit

#36. It doesn't matter how good your product solution is if users don't enjoy or understand how to use it.

Jay Samit

#37. In my experience, there are only two valid reasons to take a company public: access to growth capital and investor fatigue.

Jay Samit

#38. Crowdsourcing is the ultimate disruptor of distribution because in a most Zen-like fashion, the content is controlled by everyone and no one at the same time.

Jay Samit

#39. Silicon Valley's long-running track record of creating globally disruptive startups is the envy of the world.

Jay Samit

#40. Too many investors overvalue companies in the near term while undervaluing them in the long term.

Jay Samit

#41. A successful entrepreneur is one who recognizes her blind spots. You may be the world's best engineer, but you probably have never run a 10-person sales force. You may be a brilliant marketer, but how do you structure a cap table?

Jay Samit

#42. In an era of endless innovation and constant disruption, what is any company really worth? How does a startup determine its valuation?

Jay Samit

#43. An average idea enthusiastically embraced will go farther than a genius idea no one gets.

Jay Samit

#44. As every entrepreneur and investor sifts through year-end data to predict the next trend or opportunity for financial success, there is a much easier way to accurately predict the future: hang out with those who are creating it.

Jay Samit

#45. As good and as smart as you may be, no one knows everything. I truly wish I was as smart as I thought I was when I started my first company.

Jay Samit

#46. Corporate planning cycles are a classic example of generals fighting the last war over again instead of preparing for what might lie ahead.

Jay Samit

#47. Consumers value their personal time and are loyal to those companies that make their lives more productive. Brands gaining some of the biggest successes in social media are engaging with millions of consumers through value exchange.

Jay Samit

#48. On average, it takes as much as $100 million in paid media for a brand to be a household name in America. Marketing partnerships are the best form of off-balance sheet financing one can ever find. Smart startups use this technique to scale their companies and build their brand equity.

Jay Samit

#49. Get your product into users' hands as quickly as possible and incorporate the crowd's feedback to iterate. Your customers will provide the data you need to chart the best course for your company and bury any competitor that goes it alone.

Jay Samit

#50. Every threat to the status quo is an opportunity in disguise.

Jay Samit

#51. There is a difference between failing and failure. Failing is trying something that you learn doesn't work. Failure is throwing in the towel and giving up.

Jay Samit

#52. All too often, new hires have a different expectation of their job and responsibilities than the organization does. Any miscommunication during the recruiting process needs to be cleared up ASAP. Whenever possible, give new employees a written plan of objectives and responsibilities.

Jay Samit

#53. Valuations are actually quite simple to grasp. A company is only worth what two acquirers are willing to pay for it. Don't you just need to find that one buyer? If there is only one potential company interested in buying your startup, chances are you won't be hearing the word 'billion' in the offer.

Jay Samit

#54. No matter how much we tweet, blog and post, nothing in business is as powerful as actual face time with prospective business partners and customers.

Jay Samit

#55. As great as you believe your new product or company is, the world got along just fine without you. The greatest competition every startup faces is convincing consumers that there is a better solution to the problems that vex them.

Jay Samit

#56. Creating something that builds lasting value and changes the lives of millions of people requires forging a team that will work hard to overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles, stand up to the pressures of fame and fortune, and stay true to the original vision long after others stop believing.

Jay Samit

#57. Disruption causes vast sums of money to flow from existing businesses and business models to new entrants.

Jay Samit

#58. The possibilities of migrating from an economy based on owning to one based on sharing are limitless.

Jay Samit

#59. Would you rather work forty hours a week at a job you hate or eighty hours a week doing work you love?

Jay Samit

#60. Security doesn't rob ambition; the illusion of security robs ambition.

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#61. I'd been on the Internet since the 1970s when it was just for nerds. I started saying, 'Who would benefit from this?' I started imagining a world where young people could have their own email address, back in the days of family AOL accounts.

Jay Samit

#62. By maintaining an active feedback system at every stage of a startup, founders can reduce their burn rate, increase their virality coefficient, and retain key hires.

Jay Samit

#63. You will always need more capital than you think, because it will always take you longer to reach profitability than you can imagine.

Jay Samit

#64. Use your development time to brief analysts and industry press. Use these influencers as your eyes and ears to let you know what else is being developed by competitors so that you can be the first to market, and don't make the mistake of launching an also-ran product.

Jay Samit

#65. Creating the right advisory board for your startup can be the single most important step you take in building a new business.

Jay Samit

#66. Digital products are, for the most part, services that empower consumers to achieve something that they couldn't do before. Every screen must reflect your value proposition.

Jay Samit

#67. No first-time entrepreneur has the business network of contacts needed to succeed. An incubator should be well integrated into the local business community and have a steady source of contacts and introductions.

Jay Samit

#68. You will have more regrets for the things you didn't try than the ones you tried and didn't succeed at.

Jay Samit

#69. Plan for ways to get more enjoyment into your life and you will get more joy out of it.

Jay Samit

#70. Television programming is the number one topic on Twitter, and dozens of start-ups in the social space are linking second-screen experiences. People no longer need to sit on the same couch to enjoy a show together.

Jay Samit

#71. For a startup to overcome obstacles and succeed, it must foster limitless thinking. By hiring students into their first career job, you get to set their framework for how a company functions and instill them with your values for your company's culture.

Jay Samit

#72. In order to protect against being disrupted, startups also need to recruit employees that are committed to life-long learning. The skills that made your team members valuable may not be the skills needed to take your company to the next level or to compete in emerging markets.

Jay Samit

#73. Startups are now creating specialized 3-D printers capable of producing everything from synthetic hamburgers to multi-story apartment buildings.

Jay Samit

#74. New ideas for innovation grow out of the minds of each new generation. Having an institution of higher learning that can help young people put those ideas into action is critical.

Jay Samit

#75. Numerous studies, and my own experience as a serial entrepreneur, have proven that companies with a diverse management team provide greater financial returns to investors.

Jay Samit

#76. Founders need sizable egos to believe that what they are creating is good enough to change the world. What makes for great co-founders is having those egos focused on complementary, not competing, skills.

Jay Samit

#77. While commercials interrupt consumers' enjoyment of a TV program, social media allows video to enter the conversation between friends in a non-intrusive way with an opt-in choice.

Jay Samit

#78. Your energy is a valuable resource, distribute it wisely.

Jay Samit

#79. Most discoveries come from the simple act of identifying life's problems.

Jay Samit

#80. It is not incumbent on the world to conform to your vision of change. It is up to you to explain the future in terms that those living in the past and present can follow.

Jay Samit

#81. The Industrial Revolution was about making physical things. Many of the manufactured goods that were once tangible objects have now been reduced to bits and bytes of data.

Jay Samit

#82. A career is just a longer trip with a whole lot more baggage.

Jay Samit

#83. Some of the most lasting contacts and friendships that I have developed began by just grabbing a drink or breaking bread with a stranger at an industry event.

Jay Samit

#84. The customer is always right ... even when they're wrong.

Jay Samit

#85. A dream with a deadline is a goal.

Jay Samit

#86. Problems are just businesses waiting for the right entrepreneur to unlock the value.

Jay Samit

#87. Most companies overlook the most basic of all training functions: the onboarding of new employees into their corporate culture.

Jay Samit

#88. I never understood why women wanted equality in the workplace when in fact, that would be selling them short.

Jay Samit

#89. The most successful people have the same twenty-four hours in a day that you do.

Jay Samit

#90. No obstacle is so big that one person with determination can't make a difference.

Jay Samit

#91. Disruptors don't have to discover something new; they just have to discover a practical use for new discoveries.

Jay Samit

#92. The power of crowd sourcing always remains with the crowd, not the technological implementation.

Jay Samit

#93. To be successful, innovation is not just about value creation, but value capture.

Jay Samit

#94. Never expect that your startup can cover every aspect of the market. The key is knowing what segment will respond to your unique offering. Who your product appeals to is just as important as the product itself.

Jay Samit

#95. There is a huge difference between failing and failure. Failing is trying something that you learn doesn't work. Failure is throwing in the towel and giving up. True success comes from failing repeatedly and as quickly as possible, before your cash or your willpower runs out.

Jay Samit

#96. You need to begin to network with angels and VCs while you are still ideating. It is easier to ask someone you know for funding than a stranger. Build your financial network by attending as many industry functions and reaching out for advice from experts online.

Jay Samit

#97. The secret to fundraising comes down to three magic words: before, more, and strategic.

Jay Samit

#98. I have realized that businesses - whether they make dog food or software - don't sell products; they sell solutions.

Jay Samit

#99. For those that fear being taken advantage of by people working from home or on flexible schedules, I can say my experience is quite the opposite. Employees are so appreciative of these accommodations that they outperform their coworkers and are less likely to be poached by the competition.

Jay Samit

#100. As a serial entrepreneur, angel investor and public company CEO, nothing irks me more than when a startup founder talks about wanting to cash in with an initial public offering.

Jay Samit