Vernon Davis Quotes

Every good businessman or woman carefully analyzes all the available facts before making a decision.

I know plenty of entrepreneurs who are numbers first. They tend to be highly analytical people, and before they pull the trigger, all the numbers have to line up just right.

When better business decisions are made, economists won't make them.

At the end of the day, though, there are a huge number of considerations that our management team go through before accepting any project - checking out the license is just one of them.

When you come to 'Shark Tank,' the only person you should listen to is me, because you know you're getting the truth. I'll decide if it's worth it, and after I'm finished, the rest of the people can look into it.

I've made mistakes before of doing different projects just based on my dreams, my hopes, my thing, and not really thinking about my customers.

Once in a while, I see my fellow TV investors praise a business just because they like the entrepreneur behind it. That kind of thinking might make you feel warm and fuzzy inside - but let's get back to reality.

We listen to the entrepreneur. We try to have a fine tuning fork to understand what they are saying and whether that makes sense and know it when we see it. We don't try to do too much predicting.

The real challenge in this line of work is being able to weed the productive ones from the chaff, to decide which you're going to spend the next six to nine months turning into something that people will pay for.

When selecting businesses, I first have to be enticed by the product or the industry they are in. Then I look for passion. If a company has these two qualifiers, I go for it.

If we come to the conclusion after 90 days that the synergies are big enough to justify the efforts, then we can go to the second step, which consists of saying: what would be the best organization and conditions - including shareholdings - in order to make sure the synergies happen.

I have seen entrepreneurs ask for hundreds of millions of dollars on a concept and try to sell because of 'their passion' for an idea. If the idea is that good, why wouldn't I cut you out and hire someone who is just as passionate for much, much less?

It's pretty hard to make out what's going to be a commercial success and what's not.

I was always fascinated by the decision-making process and the managerial process and just business in general.

Picking winners among the many young companies seeking money is a tough business, even for the most sophisticated investors. Indeed, most professionally run venture funds lose money. For individuals, it's pure folly. Buy a lottery ticket instead. Your chance of winning is likely to be higher.

You need to carry out very careful pre-feasibility and feasibility studies before you enter any crisis situation.

The fundamental work of investment management is filtering. The question is what do you filter.

We always look at opportunities. We are not aggressively looking to buy something.

The key to making acquisitions is being ready because you really never know when the right big one is going to come along.

This is a business. Be smart. Choose wisely.

The key to making money in angel investing is saying no. You meet with 100 companies and say no to 99 of them.

How can you be on top of the things you do? I think when you are involved in a business, first of all you need to know the business. After that you know the business, you can - the numbers tell you what is happening. You can read with the numbers.

The effort invested in 'getting it right' should be commensurate with the importance of the decision.

We reviewed our process at Greylock and discovered that the best investments are non-obvious enough that they result in a mixed vote by our partnership.

But you don't get into a business because of personal tastes.