Pierre Omidyar Quotes

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.

Beware angel investors: they can be disruptive.

Groupon looked like a very high valuation, but any investment in a great company at any stage is almost always a good investment.

Venture capitalists are professional money managers. We are provided capital to invest as long as we can return it to our investors with a strong return in a reasonable amount of time. A strong return is three times cash on cash. A reasonable amount of time is ten years max.

We all get into business, and we take a risk in terms of putting capital.

Our experience is that most entrepreneurs are able to attract debt, even for risky and early stage investments. There are investors who provide debt, but very few who fund through equity.

You just can't keep pouring money down an endless hole and never recoup any of it. It's got to be a business.

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.

I delivered lectures, and I was also a consultant for international companies in finance, both private equity and big venture capital funds.

Every time we make an investment decision at FedEx, we ask ourselves: 'What is the return on this investment?'

I found an approach to investing that made enormous sense to me: rigorously analyzing a company's fundamentals, understanding exactly how it makes money, developing a view on the business's future prospects, and deciding if it's a good business.

You can't have personal investors anymore because it's too expensive, so you have to have corporate investment or a lot of rich people.

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.

What do you want your business to do? Make money, of course. To pay for people and supplies, to be able to grow.

I'd stay away from investments in a variety of sectors that are capital intensive. Anyone who says we need $100 million before we know if what we're doing makes sense and the customers want it - that's not going to work.

Producers are not gamblers. They want a good return on their investment.

Venture capital is about capturing the value between the startup phase and the public company phase.

When I see people laughing at ideas and companies we have backed, I smile. It means we are going to make a lot of money on that investment.

The government can’t guarantee that you should earn profit from your investments.

I could never convince the financiers that Disneyland was feasible, because dreams offer too little collateral.

If you go to a venture firm, what you're doing is you're buying money from them in exchange for equity. They have a commodity that they're selling and they have to differentiate themselves.

Anything you get involved with, you are supposed to make money.

I'm running a business.

People will invest in you only if they see some kind of return, and that's the dark truth.

Investors like to invest based on traction, so it's always better to raise money when you've got more traction than less.