Brad Garlinghouse Quotes

When I became CEO of Xerox 10 years ago, the company's situation was dire. Debt was mounting, the stock sinking and bankers were calling. People urged me to declare bankruptcy, but I felt personally responsible for tens of thousands of employees.

There are lots of businesses that are well in excess of $9 billion that have gone into bankruptcy, that have been mismanaged. And that has not served anyone very well.

Being a starving company isn't fun for anyone. Most that go away need to go away... but certainly not all.

Every large brand has franchisees and stores that don't make it. It's unfortunate, and Cold Stone did everything it could to support its franchisees, but some failure rate is part of the business.

Failure will happen. It's a normal part of the startup process.

When you buy a company that's been on its butt you raise a lot of money, you instantly put new management in place, but that's the end of the glory for three to five years, grinding it out one day after the other.

Nine out of ten businesses fail; so I came up with a foolproof plan - create ten businesses.

I think everybody at IBM knows the early 1990s disaster, and it's in our fabric that you cannot miss the ship.

When I came to DreamWorks, I was in bad trouble. They were in bad trouble. They were millions of dollars in the hole and a few days from closing their doors. I was on my last leg.

We would be billionaires, but we took responsibility for Summa's failure.

I had knockback after knockback before I got anywhere. After I got my first record deal I thought that was it, then Gut Records went into liquidation. I was 20. I had no idea what that meant. I had a few days to get myself out of that contract or my work would be owned by someone else.

We brought Safeco back from the brink of failure.

I love criticism. Equitable Life went down because management wouldn't brook criticism, but if you are in business, you have to hear what's going wrong.

The grim reality is that most start-ups fail. Most new products are not successful. Yet the story of perseverance, creative genius, and hard work persists.

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

A lot of other things come along with Chapter 11, which basically end up in a lot of pain.

In technology, most things fail. Most companies fail.

Every successful businessman will have experienced set-backs and failures - they're lying if they say they haven't. Virgin has had some tremendously successful businesses and some that have not quite worked out. Virgin Cola springs to mind - the product wasn't distinct enough from Coca-Cola.

Despite PAL's troubles in the late 1990s, we were fortunate to have steered the company to clearer skies.

Whenever you start a new business, the sheer number of variables at hand makes failure a constant possibility.

The failure rate for gym owners and personal trainers is very high because it is very difficult for them to work on their business when they are busy working in their business.

When you get into investing, your default stance should be 'No,' because most deals suck. Most deals won't make money. Most companies will fail.

Small businesses are a risky proposition, and most celebrities want a home run.

It's difficult to fix a truly broken business, but when it happens, the returns can be extraordinary.

As with early internet startups, some token models don't make sense. For every 1 huge hit, there will be 3 minor successes and 100 failures, so we shouldn't be surprised when some fail.