Tom Golisano Quotes

It was something of a personal challenge for me to come up with a business suitable for the Internet world and the Internet age.

I feel that the best companies are started not because the founder wanted a company but because the founder wanted to change the world... If you decide you want to found a company, you maybe start to develop your first idea. And hire lots of workers.

I started the company in 1986, but we didn't have the money to do a show until '92.

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

I told myself the next time I had a good idea, I would bring it to market.

Turning nothing into a business is cool.

I tell aspiring entrepreneurs all the time: Validate your idea locally. Get some experience under your belt. Prove your idea has legs where you are. Spend some time as a big fish in a small pond. Demonstrate that there's a there there... there. Where you live.

When I started Atom Factory, the idea was to do something small yet powerful. That name resonated with the mission.

I started my first company when I was 18 and learned by trial through fire, having no formal education or entrepreneurial experience.

I have always had an entrepreneurial spirit. When I was seven, I remember sticking a sign on my bedroom window that read, 'Manicures and massage, come on in.' My mother rushed in, saying, 'All these weirdos are knocking on the door.'

The idea of working in films came after I passed class ten. I was planning to set up a restaurant and manage a business.

Netflix was my sixth start-up, and that point I decided I didn't have it in me to start another company. At least that's what I thought at the time.

When you start a company, you become really emotionally involved in it.

People didn't believe that eyebrows were a business. I believed in it, and I think that's enough. If you believe it, you can do it.

So many entrepreneurs approach me and say, 'I want to start the next big thing,' and I say, 'Well, what are you solving?' And oftentimes they say, 'Oh, I'm not sure. I want to start something big.' You can never start something big without solving something small, right?

When you walk into a room and you're asking someone to give you money to finance an idea, that's never easy.

I thought of a great way to celebrate my Finnish heritage at home. I'm going to look into opening a chain of strip clubs, and I'll call them Lapland!!!

How can you get fired from the company you started?

A business can be started with very little money.

That business we started with 10 people has now grown into a great American success story. Some of the companies we helped start are names you know. An office supply company called Staples – where I’m pleased to see the Obama campaign has been shopping; The Sports Authority, which became a favorite of my sons. We started an early childhood learning center called Bright Horizons that First Lady Michelle Obama rightly praised. At a time when nobody thought we’d ever see a new steel mill built in America, we took a chance and built one in a corn field in Indiana.

I wasn't that interested in the dollars-and-cents part of business. My interest in starting Mary Kay Inc. was to offer women opportunities that didn't exist anywhere else.

He [Steve Jobs] had more of the future vision: We can bring this to everyone; we can start a company; we can sell it.

Before there is a business, a successful entrepreneur is designing this type of business in his or her mind's eye. According to my rich dad, this is the job of a true entrepreneur.

I'm going to go do this crazy thing. I'm going to start this company selling books online.

I started Dell 28 yrs ago with $1000. Revenues in 1984 were $6 million. Last year $62.1 billion. Impossible is nothing.