Ricky Van Veen Quotes

When most people ask about a business growing, what they really mean is growing revenue, not just growing the number of people using a service. Traditional businesses would view people using your service that you don't make money from as a cost.

Great businesses can be built on scale. I think Amazon has built a phenomenal commerce business largely on scale. Their network effect isn't obvious to me, but boy, have they used scale effectively.

Our goal definitely isn't to sell Stripe.

Focusing on the long term and building a great product that is scalable ultimately leads to a great company.

If Vancouver did not succeed as Starbucks from '87 on, our entire international business, which is now thousands of stores and a significant amount of growth and profit, may not have existed.

Solving problems for users at scale ultimately results in monetization opportunities.

I'm in favour of entrepreneurial, risk-taking businesses that create great products and services.

We never thought we'd be commercially viable, and we were proved wrong.

I knew, back when I was starting up, that if I had something that could be developed for the mass market, I could really take it forward.

We have to have a successful box business if we are going to go beyond the box.

If you want to build a startup that has a good chance of succeeding, don't listen to me. Listen to Paul Graham and others who are applying tons of data to the idea of startup success. That will maximize your chance of being successful.

I didn't generate my success by being a prognosticator. I developed my reputation building our businesses by building great businesses and making them more efficient.

We're building a great company, and we're very excited about the future of the company.

I get a lot of criticism for telling founders to focus first on making something great, instead of worrying about how to make money. And yet that is exactly what Google did. And Apple, for that matter. You'd think examples like that would be enough to convince people.

Before me, there was no money, no business with yoga.

Our investments in data, Internet and international have been particularly timely and have positioned the company to post industry-leading incremental revenue gains.

There are a lot of people who get support from a thriving business.

I want to create something like Sony. Not in terms of manufacturing products but creating something that is innovative, makes money, improves peoples' lives.

The studios basically, besides developing some material, their strength is distribution. Distribution in any other business is a cost that you incur. You know, in a trucking business, you eat it. In a film business, distribution is a profit center.

I have great expectations for our company; pretzels were just the beginning.

Cisco never had a red quarter. Never. Took us three years to get funding, and in those three years, we were never in the red, and that was because we had two products to sell. They were not sexy or cool, but we had enough of a market that we could generate enough of a cash stream to grow the company.

If you look historically, what creates growth and wealth is innovation and investment, and increase in scale - more customers.

I believe Business Objects is on the cusp of becoming a multi-billion-dollar sales company. There is tremendous growth potential for business intelligence.

If you make a really good product that people want and are willing to pay for, money will come.

The best companies are the ones that offer their products for free.