Bill Gurley Quotes

Increasingly prices are set by sellers to raise their prices without a loss of sales sufficient to wipe out the gain.

Chasing profits and building a long-term profit model are two different things.

… in May, 1917, wheat was selling in Chicago at $3.25 a bushel and the consumer was paying for his bread on that basis, although the official estimate of the Department of Agriculture of the average price actually received by the farmer for his crop was but $1.44 a bushel.

We have to have a business model that can be a sustainable and acceptable one to both regulators and the other stakeholders, clients, and investors.

For a long time, the film business was a single-digit business on investment return. Now, because of home video, it's a low double-digit business, and the studios want to make sure it doesn't go back into the single-digit business.

Americans mythologize competition and credit it with saving us from socialist bread lines. Actually, capitalism and competition are opposites. Capitalism is premised on the accumulation of capital, but under perfect competition, all profits get competed away.

My first business deal was with my mother. I invested in chickens. I sold the eggs to my mother.

If all you needed to do is to figure out what company is better than others, everyone would make a lot of money. But that is not the case. They keep raising the prices to the point when the odds change.

One of my earliest ventures was when I was nine years old. I realized there was a shortage of pencils at school, so I started Rent-a-Pencil. But I made a fundamental mistake. Everybody stole my pencils.

I think everyone should sell whatever product they want to sell for whatever price they want to sell it for, but ultimately the market will dictate what it is and people will have to charge less money for everything. Record companies have been overcharging people for way too long and now this is the trouble that they're in.

That iPad you just bought. Do you care that it cost a few pence to manufacture? No. It's cost you several hundred pounds because somebody else was willing to pay that much for it. If they weren't... it wouldn't.

If GE's strategy of investment in China is wrong, it represents a loss of a billion dollars, perhaps a couple of billion dollars. If it is right, it is the future of this company for the next century.

The battle of competition is fought by the cheapening of commodities

With competition, prices tend to be uniform; with monopoly, prices are uniformly high.

The consumer knows that his prices are made for him by those who control the avenues of trade and the highways of commerce.

Buy cheap and sell dear.

What is price gouging and what is capitalism can sometimes be a fine line.

There can never be a free market in health care …. The buyer can never have the leverage and power as the seller.

Competition is good for consumers. It provides more choices at better prices.

I truly believe that the combination of a strong top line together with a strong bottom line is what makes for a sustainable business.

I believe in the principle that if you have more competition, it will drive down the prices.

You want supply to always be full, and you use price to basically either bring more supply on or get more supply off, or get more demand in the system or get some demand out.

I see business as an ecosystem.

Competition drives growth in the end as opposed to monopolies.

Markets are, in many settings, self-organizing and 'efficient' in terms of maximizing the welfare of both buyers and sellers.