Stephen A. Schwarzman Quotes

A lot of entrepreneurs hate big companies. But if you hate them so much, why are you trying to build a new one? The truth is, as soon as a startup has any kind of success whatsoever, it will face big company problems.

In my view, the first requirement for success for an entrepreneur is to dream big. The second aspect that prevents entrepreneurs from succeeding is fear of failure.

For over forty years, I've been one of the most passionate believers in entrepreneurs. From day one, I've learned that too many small businesses are predicated on business models that the owner barely understands, and then, those same men and women are baffled when their business dreams are overwhelmed with struggles they never foresaw.

Starting a company is rough. It's even harder when you're young - I know this firsthand, because my first company flopped when I was 25.

I think, at the end of the day, you have to reduce friction to businesses, ideally to zero, so that more and more entrepreneurs can create more and more jobs with higher and higher disposable income.

Very few entrepreneurs start their business on the back of market research. Instead, they have tremendous zeitgeist, honed by paying attention to where they are.

Founders go wrong when they start to believe their business plan will materialize as written. I advise entrepreneurs to burn their business plan - it's simply too dangerous to the health of your business.

Most entrepreneurs don't need as many customers as they think. A lot of people think 10 is too few for a sample. But if all 10 refused a product, why is that not enough? If you want 100, 1,000 or a million customers, you first have to get 10.

All entrepreneurs make decisions. Some will go right, and some will not go that right.

If you're an entrepreneur and you think that the president makes a difference to your business, you should stay at your current job.

Most entrepreneurs are merely technicians with an entrepreneurial seizure. Most entrepreneurs fail because you are working IN your business rather than ON your business.

When you've got a great business going, you go open another and take the risk of losing the whole thing. It's fun!

I get the impression that most Chinese entrepreneurs are so focussed on doing what they need to do to succeed in the Chinese market - which is a big enough challenge even for the established players - that nobody is thinking much about the longer run or the bigger global picture.

Some people are serial entrepreneurs and want to just move on to the next thing. They just want to clean the slate and start from scratch. I feel that sometimes, too, and the way that we do that here is we build things inside Shutterstock: we launch new products all the time.

In the Valley, what's happened is you have entrepreneurs that just want to fill a hole in the market and have a rich exit.

Great entrepreneurs focus intensely on an opportunity where others see nothing.

Of my mental cycles, I devote maybe ten percent to business thinking. Business isn't that complicated. I wouldn't want to put it on my business card.

As a profession, entrepreneurship breeds anything but balance. The highs can be stratospheric, and the lows can be crushing.

One becomes an entrepreneur to break the glass ceiling and that's when you grow the market. Of course, in that process you have to be prepared to get hurt. You will get hurt. But I'm a doer and I like taking risks.

So many entrepreneurs view their companies as their babies. They micromanage, and they stall.

Entrepreneurs love to view risk as binary. The more you put on the line, the greater the potential for reward.

One reason why entrepreneurs are admired is that they often take on a degree of risk in launching a new business.

My motivation at the moment is around knowing how it feels to turn a business around, and I can't wait to have that feeling again.

I think a lot of entrepreneurs think they need money to build the business faster when they actually haven't figured out the business equation yet.

Betting against entrepreneurs who are changing the world has never been a profitable endeavor.