Quotes About A Startup

#1. You're better off being The Beatles than The Monkees, as a startup ...

Ben Horowitz

#2. When you're doing a startup, life is not all roses and rainbows, like you see on Instagram, and killing it.

Paige Craig

#3. Like having a child, running a startup is the sort of experience that's hard to imagine unless you've done it yourself.

Paul Graham

#4. You have to be decisive. Indecisiveness is a startup killer.

Sam Altman

#5. We hear again and again from founders, that they wish they had waited to start a startup until they came up with an idea they really loved.

Sam Altman

#6. I operate my life like a startup. I learn a little bit and I test something else out and I keep iterating and iterating until it's perfect.

Rameet Chawla

#7. You can have a startup and one other thing, you can have a family, but you probably can't have many other hobbies.

Sam Altman

#8. It turns out that no undergrad class prepares you to start a startup - you learn most of it as you do it.

Kevin Systrom

#9. Volatility and length, that's the value on an option. 10 years on a startup stock, that's a big valuable thing.

Ben Horowitz

#10. A startup will always prefer to work with an IP attorney, who believes in their idea, not one, who is only bothered about billing.

Kalyan C. Kankanala

#11. The really dramatic growth happens when a startup only has three of four people, so only three or four people see that, whereas tens of thousands see business as it's practiced by Boeing or Philip Morris.

Jessica Livingston

#12. When you are a startup you need to hire very fast, and sometimes you have to restructure very fast.

Maurice Levy

#13. Everyone is on Facebook. It is very rare that I can't find a startup. Out of the 72 Y Combinator startups, almost all of them were on Facebook.

Robert Scoble

#14. In a big company, you can do what all the other big companies are doing. But a startup can't do what all the other startups do.

Paul Graham

#15. It's a very valuable skill to succeed in life whether you work for a startup or a Fortune 500 company.

Guy Kawasaki

#16. Thiel's law": a startup messed up at its foundation cannot be fixed.

Peter Thiel

#17. Maybe some percentage that's substantially larger than 95 percent of VCs add zero value. I would bet that 70-80 percent add negative value to a startup in their advising.

Vinod Khosla

#18. A startup can focus on only one metric. So you have to decide what that is and ignore everything else.

Noah Kagan

#19. If a startup stays in Microsoft, it does not have a chance, because all it tries to do goes against what Microsoft is about.

Leroy Hood

#20. If you have an idea that you can't get out of your head, do a startup. Otherwise join a startup.

Fred Wilson

#21. If you have a startup that's keeping it up at night because you think it's so great, then you should do that.

Sam Altman

#22. Recruiting talent is no different than any other challenge a startup faces. It's all about selling.

Vivek Wadhwa

#23. Starting a startup is a process of trial and error. What guided the founders through this process was their empathy for the users. They never lost sight of making things that people would want.

Jessica Livingston

#24. Developing a good, healthy culture is extremely important at a startup. Culture reflects the essence of a startup's operation because it directly affects the success of a company's hiring practices and overall strategy.

Scott Weiss

#25. Everyone starting a startup for the first time is scared, and everyone feels like a bit of an imposter.

Sam Altman

#26. 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

#27. So always keep momentum, it's this prime directive for managing a startup.

Sam Altman

#28. I hate it when people call themselves 'entrepreneurs' when what they're really trying to do is launch a startup and then sell of go public, so they can cash in and move on. They're unwilling to do the work it takes to build a real company, which is the hardest work in business.

Steve Jobs

#29. Working on a startup is a balancing act: being crazy enough to believe your idea can take off but not crazy enough to miss the signs when it's clearly not going to.

Mike Krieger

#30. A startup is a team of people on a mission, and a good culture is just what that looks like on the inside.

Peter Thiel

#31. If you're building a startup or any sort of organization, take a few moments to reflect on the qualities that the people you most enjoy working with embody and the user experience of new people joining your organization, from the offer letter to their first day.

Matt Mullenweg

#32. A lot of entrepreneurs hate big companies. But if you hate them so much, why are you trying to build a new one? The truth is, as soon as a startup has any kind of success whatsoever, it will face big company problems.

Eric Ries

#33. There are so many similarities between a startup venture and a political campaign - the rhythm, the tempo, the hours, the intensity.

Mike McCurry

#34. In the early stage of a startup, hiring senior people is usually a mistake. You just want people that get stuff done.

Sam Altman

#35. Part of the magic of a startup is the fear of death. You have only so much money in the bank, and if you don't get to the right milestone before you run out, then the company goes under - it's over.

Scott Weiss

#36. A startup is the largest endeavor over which you can have definite mastery. You can have agency not just over your own life, but over a small and important part of the world. It begins by rejecting the unjust tyranny of Chance. You are not a lottery ticket.

Peter Thiel

#37. It's easy to move fast or be obsessed with quality, but the trick is you have to do both at a startup.

Sam Altman

#38. You need this sort of a tailwind to make a startup successful.

Sam Altman

#39. It's very important as a startup to get early press because, although it may not be a large number of people, having a 'Fast Company' story - some of those people that read it are going to be your next employees and hires, your next investors.

Jason Calacanis

#40. The right algorithm is to put off seeking funds for as long as physically possible. And in an ideal world, a startup would never have to seek funds at all.

Guy Kawasaki

#41. Properly defined, a startup is the largest group of people you can convince of a plan to build a different future.

Peter Thiel

#42. There's no way I know, to get through the pain of a startup without belief that the mission really matters.

Sam Altman

#43. In a startup, in the early days, it can be hard to explain what you do.

Trip Adler

#44. Every thing at a startup gets modeled after the founders. Whatever the founders do becomes the culture.

Sam Altman

#45. A startup is a temporary organization designed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model.

Steve Blank

#46. The only way to train for a startup is by starting.

Chris Campbell

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

Jay Samit

#48. Startup stories are always smoother in the telling than they are in reality. A startup is not one, but a series of 'Aha!' moments, and some which seem like 'Aha!' moments but turn out not to be.

Anthony Goldbloom

#49. Working at a startup to make a lot of money was never a thing, and that's why I decided to just finish up school. That was way more important for me.

Kevin Systrom

#50. A startup's job is to (1) rigorously measure where it is right now, confronting the hard truths that assessment reveals, and then (2) devise experiments to learn how to move the real numbers closer to the ideal reflected in the business plan.

Eric Ries

#51. Early in a startup, product decisions should be hunch driven. Later on, product decisions should be data driven.

Fred Wilson

#52. By the way, that's my number one piece of advice if you're going to join a startup: pick a rocket ship.

Sam Altman

#53. In the early days of a startup, people's compensation is whatever you negotiate with a founder and it's all over the place.

Sam Altman

#54. This book is about the questions you must ask and answer to succeed in the business of doing new things: what follows is not a manual or a record of knowledge but an exercise in thinking. Because that is what a startup has to do: question received ideas and rethink business from scratch.

Peter Thiel

#55. The life of a startup is full of ups and downs, an emotional roller coaster ride that you can't quite imagine if you've spent your whole career in a corporation.

Harvey MacKay

#56. Investing in a startup does not make you an entrepreneur any more than buying a grand piano makes you a concert pianist.

Jeffrey Fry

#57. Part of the special challenge of being a startup is the near impossibility of having your idea, company, or product be noticed by anyone, let alone a competitor.

Eric Ries

#58. I think the single most reassuring thing about doing a startup is knowing in advance how difficult it is going to be.

Jared Tame

#59. On Startups: "I hate it when people call themselves "entrepreneurs" when what they're really trying to do is launch a startup and then sell or go public, so they can cash in and move on.

Walter Isaacson

#60. A single mediocre hire in the first five will often in fact kill a startup.

Sam Altman

#61. Of course the Silicon Valley is unique and Berlin is not yet comparable. But of all the different cities that are building a startup infrastructure, Berlin is the one with the most similar energy.

Mark Zuckerberg

#62. There is never a time in a company's history when cost control can be relegated to the back burner, but for a startup company, keeping costs low is a vital necessity.

Felix Dennis

#63. The concept of entrepreneurship includes anyone who works within my definition of a startup: a human institution designed to create new products and services under conditions of extreme uncertainty.

Anonymous

#64. At its heart, a startup is a catalyst that transforms ideas into products.

Eric Ries

#65. For most of the early hires you make in a startup, experience doesn't matter very much, and you should go for aptitude.

Sam Altman

#66. People say doing a startup is like a marathon. It's actually a roadtrip at night with no headlights. You think you're going to Toledo but you're actually going to Miami and you might not have enough gas so you might need to buy gas from someone who might take you out if you aren't driving well

Ben Silbermann

#67. 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

#68. You can basically change everything in a startup but the market.

Sam Altman

#69. Because fundraising is so distracting, a startup should either be in fundraising mode or not. And when you do decide to raise money, you should focus your whole attention on it so you can get it done quickly and get back to work.

Anonymous

#70. 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

#71. You know in a startup, you only need three people. You need someone who can make something. You need someone who can sell it. And you need someone to collect the money. That's the only three roles in a startup. So which one are you?

Guy Kawasaki

#72. In general don't start a startup you're not willing to work on for ten years.

Sam Altman

#73. Building a startup community is not a zero-sum game in which there are winners and losers: if everyone engages, they and the entire community can all be winners.

Brad Feld

#74. In a startup, both the problem and solution are unknown.

Eric Ries

#75. Help each user personally. Sure that won't scale to a very large size, but when a startup is just starting out, it really helps you have an advantage as a small and nimble company.

John Collison

#76. For a startup, you need to stay small so the others don't attack, or you aim to be one of the big guys. If you don't do it right, you might lose everything.

Hamdi Ulukaya

#77. Growth and momentum are what a startup lives on and you always have to focus on maintaining these.

Sam Altman

#78. The benefit to building a startup is that customers don't have the same kind of friction when they adopt new technology.

Aaron Levie

#79. If you have managers reporting to managers in a startup, you will fail. Once you get beyond startup, if you have managers reporting to managers, you will create politics.

Mark Cuban

#80. As a startup CEO, I slept like a baby. I woke up every 2 hours and cried.

Ben Horowitz

#81. Essentials of how to do a startup do not include writing a business plan

Steve Blank

#82. Because startups often accidentally build something nobody wants, it doesn't matter much if they do it on time and on budget. The goal of a startup is to figure out the right thing to build - the thing customers want and will pay for - as quickly as possible.

Eric Ries

#83. only one out of every ten aspirants actually gets around to establishing a startup business. Basically, it means that there is a huge gap between the dreamers from the doers.

Bill Robb

#84. As an entrepreneur, the pressures of a startup can be enormous, but it's rarely life or death.

Ryan Holmes

#85. Startups and small businesses that do not invest at least 10% of their profits into R&D will have the privilege of remaining a startup and/or a small business.

Mark Anthony Peterson

#86. Wait to start a startup until you come up with an idea that you feel compelled to explore.

Sam Altman

#87. When you're in a startup, the first ten people will determine whether the company succeeds or not.

Steve Jobs

#88. In a startup no facts exist inside the building, only opinions.

Steve Blank

#89. If you want to build a startup that has a good chance of succeeding, don't listen to me. Listen to Paul Graham and others who are applying tons of data to the idea of startup success. That will maximize your chance of being successful.

Michael Arrington

#90. Coming from Ireland, it's quite hard to do a startup because you're culturally so far away from what everyone else is doing. In the Bay Area, it's much easier. It's the equivalent of an actor or actress moving to Hollywood.

John Collison

#91. It's difficult to get large groups of people, to the extreme levels of focus and productivity that you need, for a startup to be successful.

Sam Altman

#92. America is an unsolvable problem: a nation divided and deeply in hate with itself. If it was a startup, we'd understand how unfixable the situation is; most of us would leave for a fresh start, and the company would fall apart. America is MySpace.

Michael Arrington

#93. The first follower is what transforms the lone nut into a leader, and in a startup, that first follower is usually a cofounder.

Guy Kawasaki

#94. She reverse engineered a startup based on market conditions, industry trends, and nascent investor fads.

Douglas Rushkoff

#95. I mean, look, the government is not a startup obviously. But projects to change government I think are best thought of as startups.

Todd Park

#96. I think that's exactly what Silicon Valley was all about in those days. Let's do a startup in our parents' garage and try to create a business.

Walter Isaacson

#97. We've all seen it. A #startup begins with a #dream, a #passion to do something others have missed or overlooked.

David Brier

#98. We seek to be as nimble as a startup.

Beth Comstock

#99. When valuing a startup, add $500k for every engineer, and subtract $250k for every MBA.

Aaron Patzer

#100. A board member of mine used to say sales fix everything in a startup, and that is really true.

Sam Altman