Fred Wilson Quotes

I've long believed that if you're not embarrassed by your first product release, you've released too late.

Get a minimum viable product out there, test it out, see how customers respond.

In software speed to market, speed to learning is really key. In hardware if you screw it up you are dead. So accuracy really matters.

If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched too late.

If you're not embarrassed when you ship your first version, you waited too long.

In 1991, I co-founded my first start-up, Ink Development, which made software for an early tablet computer.

I take a lean-startup approach: creating agile, interdisciplinary teams that get the minimum viable product to market as soon as possible. It's my job to be entrepreneur-in-residence, an internal change agent.

The most important thing in startups is getting a product to market, as imperfect as it may be, and then iterating on it and continually making it better. A first rev of a site that has a few typos may not be perfect, but it was the start of something that I deeply believed in.

The reality is the Lean Startup method is not about cost, it is about speed. Lean startups waste less money, because they use a disciplined approach to testing new products and ideas.

Virtual reality is a tough sell for a software developer. They have to convince investors that not only are they going to build a good game, which is what they normally have to do, they have to convince them that it's going to be a good game and that virtual reality will be successful.

'Instagram' is an app that only took 8 weeks to build and ship but was a product of over a year of work.

Get your product into users' hands as quickly as possible and incorporate the crowd's feedback to iterate. Your customers will provide the data you need to chart the best course for your company and bury any competitor that goes it alone.

Decades before we were able to articulate the value of 'getting out of the building' and the Lean Startup, the value in having skunk works controlling their own distribution was starkly evident.

Not only because the product wasn't a great product, but remember it took us five or six years to ship it. Then we had to sort of fix it. That was what I might call Windows 7.

The goal of a startup is to figure out the right thing to build-the thing customers want and will pay for-as quickly as possible. In other words, the Lean Startup is a new way of looking at the development of innovative new products that emphasizes fast iteration and customer insight, a huge vision, and great ambition, all at the same time.

Because startups often accidentally build something nobody wants, it doesn’t matter much if they do it on time and on budget. The goal of a startup is to figure out the right thing to build - the thing customers want and will pay for - as quickly as possible.

As you consider building your own minimum viable product, let this simple rule suffice: remove any feature, process, or effort that does not contribute directly to the learning you seek.

The Lean Startup has evolved into a movement that is having a significant impact on how companies are built, funded and scaled.

We built the iPod in weeks. It had to be what I thought it was going to be because there wasn't time for endless refinements.

Windows is probably the most important product in the entire PC industry. Everything we do in terms of supporting touch, new hardware, accessibility has incredible impact.

Paul Allen with Microsoft revolutionized the software industry.

There's still a lot of investors wondering what to invest in. And, of course, I think entertainment looks attractive when you read the few films that make these insane amounts of money. What they don't know is they don't always do that.

Internally, we're focused on building our own technology, leveraging all the momentum that's out there around wearable computing and mobile computing and PC computing. But at the end of the day, all the code we've written and all the invention we've created has been focused on our own tech and our own products.

I don't think anyone is going to say great things about being a native developer on Android.

Our first product was Quicken, which is personal financial management on a PC. It had a tough start, and we ran some tracking surveys to understand who was using it. Half the users claimed to use it in some sort of office environment. We ignored that. I thought it was meaningless.