Brad Feld Quotes

We worked personally with a lot of great VCs. They just work incredibly hard at supporting entrepreneurs and their companies.

I know how to make stuff happen, how to create wealth, create jobs, create investment.

I think this is also a great time to invest in private equity, helping companies grow from the ground up.

We need banks and financiers and entrepreneurs to take risks because that's how economies grow over time.

The American economy has been built and sustained by risk-taking entrepreneurs whose pioneering ideas and hard work gave birth to flourishing businesses.

If your business had no risk, you could go get a bank loan and call it a day. VCs like risks - without them, venture capital wouldn't exist. But they need to be risks that VCs are good at assessing and managing.

An entrepreneur needs to know what they need, period. Then they need to find an investor who can build off whatever their weaknesses are - whether that's through money, strategic partnerships or knowledge.

Often, entrepreneurs don't build a board until they are forced to by their VCs when they raise their first financing round. This is dumb, as you are missing the opportunity to add at least one person to the team who - as a board member - can help you navigate the early process of building your company and raising that first round.

Just like I gave Jack Ma and Alibaba the luxury of staying private for longer, I am now giving Arm the gift of being private. My only message to them now is take my investment and let's go, go, go.

You have venture capitalists. We view them as experts who also help finance your company and give directions and also some pretty candid discussions about what you have to do better.

I really have become very interested at working with and helping entrepreneurs at the early stages of their growth.

Once we started making investments, we realized the same service we provided to artists was applicable to entrepreneurs as well.

I remember looking up to most any venture capitalist as someone who could make my little company happen with a single million-dollar check.

It is not often that one of the world's best entrepreneurs rings you up and says 'I've got this business we are about to float off as an independent company and we'd like you to be chief executive.'

Our main funders... a lot of them are entrepreneurs and technologists themselves as well and familiar with iterative development processes.

Other than playing the game I love, my passion is investing in innovative companies and helping the entrepreneurs behind them succeed.

I would love to raise a fund or get some awesome empowered women together and put together an advisory board to get behind female entrepreneurs.

I often say Policy Planning is very analogous to a venture capital firm. A venture capital firm sees an interesting idea and puts money behind it; in Policy Planning, we look for promising ideas and then put contacts and relationships behind it.

I like most of the venture capitalists I know; they're smart, well-intended guys who genuinely enjoy helping entrepreneurs succeed. And I love venture capital and investment capital of all categories - its economic impact is proven. The more of it the better.

Inasmuch as there is a useful purpose to what we do as VCs, I tend to think it's our duty not only to mentor entrepreneurs and executive teams, but also to learn from them and the others involved. We can then pass on lessons to aid the startup ecosystem and help businesses succeed and grow their impact.

I am the CEO of HCL Corporation, and, of course, a large part of my time does get spent in HCL Corporation, whether it is in actively managing our investments or perhaps even the governance and accountability and really seeing the strategic direction forward for HCL Corporation.

There is a reason companies raise money from investors, which is to invest in growth.

As CEO of Aetna, I was a buyer of portfolio companies rather than a participant in the value creation process. From the end of the assembly line, what happened in manufacturing wasn't visible to me.

A lot of people want to start a business, and they're like, 'I wanna start a business, give me some money to invest.' Where is your business plan? Are you investing money yourself into your own business? How is this going to work? People think that they can just come to you with an idea and have money.

Having been a venture-backed CEO, and having an established background in working with consumer-focused companies, I've built a strong network of entrepreneurs and people who can help startups.