Christoffel Wiese Quotes

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

An adaptable company is one that captures more than its fair share of new opportunities. It's always redefining its 'core business' in ways that open up new avenues for growth.

As an entrepreneur, one of my biggest struggles is that you have to focus, but you also have to expand.

As an entrepreneur, if you're the originator, you need to be faster than ever.

The important thing to remember, if you are trying something that is an innovation, is not to think too much about it. Because if you take too long, by the time you get there, the world will have changed. You take a risk, and if it doesn't work, you make a change. We are not betting our lives on it.

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?

You can't get married to any one particular plan. That is the biggest lesson I learned at PayPal.

There's always something happening in the world that creates an opportunity to try to fix a business and build a business.

Starting a company, your success is going to be very dependent on how you adapt. You're going to make decisions, you're going to make bets; most of them are going to turn out to be wrong.

It is human nature, especially as we get older, to look for stability in our lives. But if you want to be a successful entrepreneur, you have to fight against that somewhat, as starting a business requires movement. You cannot stay still.

Some people revel in getting their hands dirty. These are the people that make startups grow wildly. People with hustle also tend to be much more agile - they're the water that goes around the rock. These are the people you want around when everything goes wrong. They're also the people you want beside you when everything goes right.

Our only security is our ability to change.

Entrepreneurs have a great ability to create change, be flexible, build companies and cultivate the kind of work environment in which they want to work.

What an entrepreneur does is to build for the long run. If the market is great, you get all of the resources you can. You build to it. But a good entrepreneur is always prepared to throttle back, put on the brakes, and if the world changes, adapt to the world.

As an entrepreneur, you work out solutions.

Entrepreneurs … benefit greatly from being willing to fail, willing to experiment. Good entrepreneurs tend to be stubborn on the vision but flexible on the details. They’re persistent on what they’re trying to accomplish, but they are willing to rewrite the details as needed as they learn and as things fail.

Moving with the times is an important idea for strategy today.

One of my philosophies of building companies is the importance of velocity.

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.

That's been the secret to 'Gas Monkey': Move fast. I opened the first restaurant within a year and a half. Most people wait five years. I always move quickly, and in today's market, no matter what you're in, you can recover from a mistake faster than you can recover from not doing.

I do believe it is important to be future-ready with a portfolio to be able to deal with however the market evolves. This is better than just forecasting accurately but in having the weapons ready to deal with the uncertainties.

The marketplace is absolutely mercurial. But what I love about our company is that we create a vision, and then we go all in.

I wanna keep people on their toes, and that's just kind of how we've always operated.

One of the difficult things in a high-growth company is that, even with the best intentions, the company moves so fast, and growth happens so regularly. When you move at that rate, you have to be willing to change, and you have to be willing to take advice.

Great companies need to reinvent themselves. We can do that: we can stay relevant, we can grow, and we can stay successful. It takes courage, but it's a path we've been preparing for carefully.