Top 100 Startup Quotes
#1. St. Louis is a customer- and partner-rich environment for any financial tech startup.
Jim McKelvey
#2. One startup I dream of funding is the one that kills the record companies.
Paul Graham
#3. I had started at a small startup as a big-company guy. Now I was leaving a big company as a small-startup guy.
Douglas Edwards
#4. Passion gets an entrepreneur through the startup days and the enormous efforts it takes to build a business.
Peter Diamandis
#5. When I came to the United States in 2004 to attend university at Stanford, I was instantly inspired by the stories and advice from startup leaders in Silicon Valley and beyond, who had endeavoured to create new opportunities and improve lives around the world.
Mike Krieger
#6. 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
#7. Investing in a startup does not make you an entrepreneur any more than buying a grand piano makes you a concert pianist.
Jeffrey Fry
#8. 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
#9. 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
#10. That's the part where the governments have a unique role, and then when it progresses well enough, then existing companies or new startup companies should take it. In the $3 trillion a year energy market, the rewards will be quite fantastic.
Bill Gates
#11. Like a tracer running through the veins of the city, networks of air quality sensors attached to bikes can help measure an individual's exposure to pollution and draw a dynamic map of the urban air on a human scale, as in the case of the Copenhagen Wheel developed by new startup Superpedestrian.
Carlo Ratti
#12. I think the single most reassuring thing about doing a startup is knowing in advance how difficult it is going to be.
Jared Tame
#13. 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
#14. In 2000, just before the first dot-com bubble burst, it cost a whopping $5 million to launch a tech startup.
Peter Diamandis
#15. From the CEO, receptionist to the office manager, everybody at your startup should know the one-minute pitch of your business
Timi Nadela
#16. 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
#17. Every startup has a chance to change the world, by bringing not just a new product, but an entirely new institution into existence.
Eric Ries
#18. A single mediocre hire in the first five will often in fact kill a startup.
Sam Altman
#19. 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
#20. Not only is it possible to do lean startup in federal government, but it's the most effective way to drive change in the federal government.
Todd Park
#21. Almost every failed startup has a product. What failed startups don't have are enough customers.
Gabriel Weinberg
#22. 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
#23. 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
#24. At its heart, a startup is a catalyst that transforms ideas into products.
Eric Ries
#25. Like a lot of other DJs, I've been wondering when the first DJ game was going to happen. Somebody even pitched me on their own idea and I thought, "I'm not a video game startup; I don't know what I'm supposed to do with this."
DJ Shadow
#26. If your sole focus is money, you may create a successful startup. But if it's impact, you can probably create history.
Sharad Vivek Sagar
#27. 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
#28. 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
#29. Our job as leaders is to find those innovators and release their mojo - lean startup-style - to serve the American people better.
Todd Park
#30. 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
#32. We lacked something that is the key to a successful startup, and it was bigger than sound quality. It was emotional investment. If you don't love what you're building, if you're not an avid user yourself, then you will most likely fail even if you're doing everything else right.
Biz Stone
#33. From the CEO to the receptionist to the office manager, everybody at your startup business should know that one-minute elevator pitch.
Timi Nadela
#34. Using the Lean Startup approach, companies can create order not chaos by providing tools to test a vision continuously.
Eric Ries
#35. Creating the right advisory board for your startup can be the single most important step you take in building a new business.
Jay Samit
#36. You can basically change everything in a startup but the market.
Sam Altman
#37. About 10 million people start a business each year, and about one out of two will make it. The average entrepreneur is often on his or her third startup.
Brad D. Smith
#38. The startup's goal is to find a profitable customer acquisition strategy by spending small amounts of money in a lot of them, measuring results, and then narrowing down the best channels, while performing PDCA for continuous improvement.
Francisco S. Homem De Mello
#39. A hardware startup with a lot of funding and a lot of momentum has a lot less risk.
Brendan Iribe
#40. 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
#41. The Startup Act should give all Americans, not just immigrants, a better shot at being tomorrow's engineers and entrepreneurs. And that opportunity could begin at a young age with education in computer programming.
Marvin Ammori
#42. 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
#43. 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
#44. Despite what some investors say, older age is an advantage in the startup world. You know more about industries and markets, and have ideas for products that the world actually needs and a better ability to motivate and manage than a kid out of school does.
Vivek Wadhwa
#45. In general don't start a startup you're not willing to work on for ten years.
Sam Altman
#46. Venture capital is about capturing the value between the startup phase and the public company phase.
Fred Wilson
#47. 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
#48. The idea should come first, the startup should come second.
Sam Altman
#49. The Lean Startup works only if we are able to build an organization as adaptable and fast as the challenges it faces. This
Eric Ries
#50. In a startup, both the problem and solution are unknown.
Eric Ries
#51. Imagine working 20% smarter instead of 20% longer ... Work-life balance and startup success at any stage aren't mutually exclusive. There are enough hours in the day to be effective and present.
David Cummings
#52. In a startup no facts exist inside the building, only opinions.
Steve Blank
#53. Building a startup is an exercise in institution building; thus, it necessarily involves management. This
Eric Ries
#54. 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
#55. In the startup world, 'not working' is normal.
Paul Graham
#56. A board member of mine used to say sales fix everything in a startup, and that is really true.
Sam Altman
#57. When valuing a startup, add $500k for every engineer, and subtract $250k for every MBA.
Aaron Patzer
#59. We've all seen it. A #startup begins with a #dream, a #passion to do something others have missed or overlooked.
David Brier
#60. One of the top causes of startup death - right after cofounder problems - is building something no one wants.
Kathryn Minshew
#61. 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
#62. 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
#63. The best founders are extremely thoughtful and have an eye for quality. I don't know if there's any generic advice here that would be helpful. Startup knowledge is a moving target.
Naval Ravikant
#64. Landing a million-dollar investment for your startup is exhilarating. But as big as that number sounds, it doesn't go far. Many startups just getting off the ground won't have a CFO to monitor finances. It doesn't take much for spending to spiral out of control.
Ryan Holmes
#65. She reverse engineered a startup based on market conditions, industry trends, and nascent investor fads.
Douglas Rushkoff
#66. If you are a new startup company, try not to arouse the interest or suspicion of your competition; especially if they are a bigger company. They can crush you while you are still in your startup phase. Lie low while still strengthening your bottom line.
Richard Branson
#67. The American Dream is still alive out there, and hard work will get you there. You don't necessarily need to have an Ivy League education or to have millions of dollars startup money. It can be done with an idea, hard work and determination.
Bill Rancic
#68. 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
#69. 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
#70. 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
#71. Key is the question of where do new ideas come from. Historically, four places: government labs, big corporations, startup companies, and research universities.
Nicholas Negroponte
#72. 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
#73. Every startup should address a real and demonstrated need in the world - if you build a solution to a problem lots of people have, it's so easy to sell your product to the world.
Kevin Systrom
#74. 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
#75. 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
#76. I am a partner at CrunchFund, a venture capital firm with investments in many startups around the world. I am also a limited partner in many other venture funds which have their own startup investments.
Michael Arrington
#77. I'm a creature of startups. For example, I don't want government interference in the startup ecosystem.
Michael Arrington
#78. If you wanted to build an Internet startup in 2005, you had to buy your own servers and hire someone to manage it. Now, that's unheard of.
Sam Altman
#79. In big companies projects have to scale and Lean Startup help us to do it
Beth Comstock
#80. 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
#81. 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
#82. Growth and momentum are what a startup lives on and you always have to focus on maintaining these.
Sam Altman
#83. My first job after college was at Magic Quest, an educational software startup company where I was responsible for writing the content. I found that job somewhat accidentally but after working there a few weeks and loving my job, I decided to pursue a career in technology.
Susan Wojcicki
#84. The benefit to building a startup is that customers don't have the same kind of friction when they adopt new technology.
Aaron Levie
#85. The median startup is a business that's capitalized with about $25,000. The financing of that business comes from the entrepreneur's savings. The business is a retail or personal service business, a hair salon or a clothing store, that kind of thing.
Scott Shane
#86. 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
#87. As a startup CEO, I slept like a baby. I woke up every 2 hours and cried.
Ben Horowitz
#88. Motivated teams are the key to success at every startup, yet I still know entrepreneurs who gave an inspirational speech to kick off the quarter but haven't been heard from since, or don't realize that their actions are often more demotivating than inspirational.
Martin Zwilling
#89. Essentials of how to do a startup do not include writing a business plan
Steve Blank
#90. 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
#91. The reality is the Lean Startup method is not about cost, it is about speed. Lean startups waste less money, because they use a disciplined approach to testing new products and ideas.
Eric Ries
#92. Most people, including me, don't like tracking their time. However, few things will give you better insight into what is going on with your startup company than a time report. If you don't know what people are spending time on, then you probably don't have a good handle on your business.
Mike Moyer
#93. In the startup world, you're either a genius or an idiot. You're never just an ordinary guy trying to get through the day.
Marc Andreessen
#94. When you're in a startup, the first ten people will determine whether the company succeeds or not.
Steve Jobs
#95. Wait to start a startup until you come up with an idea that you feel compelled to explore.
Sam Altman
#96. 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
#97. As an entrepreneur, the pressures of a startup can be enormous, but it's rarely life or death.
Ryan Holmes
#98. One of my first investments was $100,000 in a Web-based calendar startup - and I lost every dollar.
Peter Thiel
#99. 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
#100. When you're doing a startup, life is not all roses and rainbows, like you see on Instagram, and killing it.
Paige Craig
