Bill Gurley Quotes

It's worth noting that everything - from the Internet to electric cars, genomic sequencing, mobile apps, and social media - were pioneered by startups, not existing companies.

Over the last ten years, technological advances have dramatically lowered the financial bar for starting a new company, but the courage bar for building a great company remains as high as it has ever been.

I really knew almost nothing about Silicon Valley. I read that Steve Jobs book and watched a bunch of documentaries, and read the book about Mark Zuckerberg. I tried to learn some stuff, but there are consultants on the Silicon Valley show that know so much about it where you can get answers. To me, it's more important to get the particulars about that type of person as opposed to the specifics of the technology world.

Every year we are greeted by a host of new apps that will 'change the way we think' about ordering takeout, 'fundamentally transform' our shoe purchases, or 'revolutionize' the way we edit photos.

Big companies are looking closer term, and even the most technological companies spend less than 1% of sales on research. Startups have suffered the burst bubble.

I think there are four or five interesting pockets where a lot of cool technology companies are getting started. Chicago is one of them. New York is certainly another. Silicon Valley really dominates. And you're seeing some stuff out of Boston and Seattle and down South.

From a product development perspective, choosing whether a technology is disruptive at a potential moment is key.

My mission is to grow business in Silicon Alley.

We are proposing that there is value in a totally new product category and a totally new set of questions. Just like the Apple II proposed, 'Would you reasonably want a computer in your home if you weren't an accountant or professional?' That is the question Glass is asking, and I hope in the end that is how it will be judged.

So many dot-com companies were formulated on air.

When we first invested in Red Hat, it was thought to be totally insane. When we funded MySQL, it was only partly insane.

I'm a creature of startups. For example, I don't want government interference in the startup ecosystem.

In the startup world, 'not working' is normal.

You know what makes me want to cry? I think, whoever the next Facebook is, why would you ever start that company here in the United States?

The phrase 'change the world' is tossed around Silicon Valley conversations and business plans as freely as talk of 'early-stage investing' and 'beta tests.'

To spend time in Silicon Valley in a year of political upheaval is, on one level, soothing. It is pleasant to hear talk of wearables, walled gardens, and disruptive beverages in between updates about mass deportation.

It suddenly occurred to me that the hottest tech startups are solving all the problems of being 20 years old, with cash on hand, because that's who thinks them up.

Without disruptions, startups can't survive.

In 2016, you no longer have to be in Silicon Valley to launch a successful startup. Colorado is home to many.

The best training ground in the world is Silicon Valley and the tech space.

VCs invest in innovation and disruption, but how often do they innovate themselves?

In tech communities, we consider disruption the way to lead to innovation.

I myself am also a small investor in Slack, and one can count four to five IM platforms that were launched by Skype alumni alone.

Books about technology start-ups have a pattern. First, there's the grand vision of the founders, then the heroic journey of producing new worlds from all-night coding and caffeine abuse, and finally, the grand finale: immense wealth and secular sainthood. Let's call it the Jobs Narrative.

I'm sure that the ideas being incubated at places like Startup Village today will form the core of the technologies of tomorrow.