Elon Musk Quotes

Like any small business owner, I experienced the pressures of building a company from the ground up - developing a business plan, balancing the books, meeting payroll and building a customer base.

Our business is all about helping someone - a founder, a CEO - building a great business. It's not about seeing our names in the press.

I love building companies; I love making products.

The business end of business has never interested me.

Founders go wrong when they start to believe their business plan will materialize as written. I advise entrepreneurs to burn their business plan - it's simply too dangerous to the health of your business.

Entrepreneurship is not really building a product, it's not having an idea, it's not being in the right place at the right time. It's fundamentally company building.

For me, the winning strategy in any start-up business is, 'Think big but start small.'

I'm really inspired to build a billion-dollar company. The hardest part is building the vehicle to get you there.

Most people end up owning a business by accident. Therefore, they don't usually have a thought process and a strategic plan in place.

I studied to be an architect. And I find tremendous similarities between building a company and the design process. Businesses have to do their planning on the fly in a fashion similar to an architect sketching.

Entrepreneurs, because they need money, they are willing to share their crystal ball with someone like me. That's the best thing ever.

I don't think you should ever start a business and move in a direction where you can't see it becoming a business.

People must be realistic when evaluating their business.

People come in with business plans and, I mean I know that no one is going to meet everything they say in a business plan but you got to have something to, to guide towards.

I don't think it's a good idea to plan to sell a company.

There's one thing I've learned about entrepreneurs' business plans. Every one is wrong.

About 10 million people start a business each year, and about one out of two will make it. The average entrepreneur is often on his or her third startup.

Everyone has an idea over time of what the business should be, and during the formative period, too many opinions could be disruptive.

My mother really didn't know a heck of a lot about business. She was a very good mother, that made sure we ate right and we had our cod liver oil, but didn't know a heck of a lot about what I did.

… good luck and good timing are huge components of outsized success in entrepreneurial endeavors. Lots of things have to go right, and the planets have to align; that certainly happened in Amazon’s case. Our timing turned out to be very good. And so you can’t sit down to write a business plan and say you’re going to build a multibillion-dollar corporation; that’s unrealistic.

I got an album concept called 'Exit Strategy,' that might be one of my last ones. It's a term they use in business when you build companies. You create an exit strategy as you make a company. You don't wait till you're five years in it; you create a exit strategy as you make the company.

It's an error in judgment to bounce into starting a small business before you cash in on building a strong foundation.

Inexperienced entrepreneurs often want to keep their plans secret, but this is never how I've seen any of the great companies get built.

There's no seminar in the world that will give you multi million-dollar advice on building a business from scratch!

I want to get my MBA. I want to create my own business. When I'm finished with football, I want a seamless transition to life and work and what I've dreamed about doing all my life.