Max McKeown Quotes

Entrepreneurs see the thing they want or need, then try to figure out a process of how to get it. People who shouldn't be entrepreneurs see the standard process they need to go through to get the thing they want or need then decide if they want to go through that process.

Entrepreneurs, by their nature, see not only problems but solutions and opportunities.

I've often thought of successful entrepreneurs as individuals who have just the right expertise - at just the right moment - to solve the emerging problems of their time.

I've come to a real understanding of the enormity of what owner entrepreneurs do in founding great businesses. They are rare and a thing of art in many ways.

Entrepreneurs have the flexibility and the ability to do things that large companies simply cannot. Could a large company pull off a trick like Amyris, going from anti-malaria medicine to next-generation fuel?

Entrepreneurs can't forecast accurately, because they are trying something fundamentally new. So they will often be laughably behind plan - and on the brink of success.

Entrepreneurs are risk takers, willing to roll the dice with their money or reputation on the line in support of an idea or enterprise. They willingly assume responsibility for the success or failure of a venture and are answerable for all its facets.

What separates sports from entrepreneurism, however, is that in business we constantly have to overcome undefined and unpredictable challenges. Athletes train for specific events and conditions, whereas entrepreneurs generally have little idea what they will encounter along the way.

We want people who work for us to be entrepreneurs. We like them to look at ideas. We like them to chase ideas. We like them to not be what I call a caretaker of an asset.

Great entrepreneurs focus intensely on an opportunity where others see nothing.

What does an entrepreneur do? The first thing is they've given themselves permission to see a problem. Most people don't want to see problems... Once you see a problem and you keep looking at it, you'll find an answer.

Steve Jobs has been right twice. The first time we got Apple. The second time we got NeXT. The Macintosh ruled. NeXT tanked. Still, Jobs was right both times.

I stood up for what I believed in starting businesses.

A lot of entrepreneurship is seeing the future in a way that no one else sees it. Then, it becomes about execution and doing what it takes to succeed.

Like many of my fellow entrepreneurs, I didn't create Hearsay Social with my co-founder Steve Garrity because it would be fun and easy, but because we're at our best when faced with enormous challenges.

The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.

Atari showed that young people could start big companies. Without that example it would have been harder for Jobs and Bill Gates, and people who came after them, to do what they did.

As I've conducted my interviews with crowdsourcing entrepreneurs and experts, it's constantly hit me that your ability to do something big and bold is really a function of the size and quality of your crowd.

Being an entrepreneur means the ability to think out of the box by putting away our fear of any risk, including financial.

Part of the challenge of being an entrepreneur, if you're going for a really huge opportunity, is trying to find problems that aren't quite on the radar yet and try to solve those.

Most entrepreneurial ideas will sound crazy, stupid and uneconomic, and then they'll turn out to be right.

Some people are serial entrepreneurs and want to just move on to the next thing. They just want to clean the slate and start from scratch. I feel that sometimes, too, and the way that we do that here is we build things inside Shutterstock: we launch new products all the time.

Good entrepreneurs can manage, but no one but an entrepreneur can entrepreneur, let alone help build and lead the world's community of leading social entrepreneurs and their top business entrepreneur allies.

I think entrepreneurs are born and not created, and so I think you see a lot of similarities among entrepreneurs in different parts of the world. Their backdrop may be very different, but their drive to create a business and to create jobs remains very much the same, whether it's in Silicon Valley or Kandahar or Kabul.

The greatest companies in the world were started and are run by fanatics.