Michael Arrington Quotes

I wouldn't call Loopt a failure. It didn't turn out like I wanted, for sure, but it was fun, I learned a lot, and I made enough money to start investing, which led me to my current job. I don't regret it at all.

There are lots of ways to make money in venture capital, and there are even more ways to be mediocre. The industry has too much money and too many smart people chasing too few great entrepreneurs.

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

It was a great time to be born, because I got to have my own publishing company right from the beginning, so I made more money than somebody would have doing what I did ten or fifteen years before.

I didn't leave business school to go bankrupt.

Suddenly I had a contract and I was earning lots of money.

I think that's exactly what Silicon Valley was all about in those days. Let's do a startup in our parents' garage and try to create a business.

There are only two real ways to get ahead today - sell liquor or drink it.

I felt really lucky that 'Hairstyles Of The Damned' and 'The Boy Detective Fails' were both bestsellers, and I thought that donating the money from 'Demons' was a good way to respond to that. My favorite artists are the ones that are willing to experiment, even if it means a smaller audience.

Every time you start a company - and I've started five or six - you have the opportunity to screw up in whole new ways.

We still have that same burn, to get that same kind of laughs. So whether the studio wants us to or not, we're going to do it. The money is just a byproduct of coming out with good stuff. Our whole thing is building that rapport with the audience.

My goal wasn't to make a ton of money. It was to build good computers. I only started the company when I realized I could be an engineer forever.

I never had any initiative or drive to be a success in business.

In technology, most things fail. Most companies fail.

I've been living the American Dream for over 25 years - just being able to do what I do, be creative, and make money out of it. It's incredible.

Even though Traf-O-Data wasn't a roaring success, it was seminal in preparing us to make Microsoft's first product a couple of years later.

Starting a company is like throwing yourself off the cliff and assembling an airplane on the way down.

If you can't admit a failure, you're not an entrepreneur. You are not a good business person. There's nothing brilliant about what you are doing.

I do think there are more and more entrepreneurs all the time that think big. Those are the people we should be finding and funding. Most of them will fail, but the ones who succeed will change the world, and that is progress.

When you have a failed pitch, you meet many more venture capitalists than you really want to.

A lot of the reason I wanted to become an entrepreneur and avoid working for others is that you get to create the world you want to live in and the company you want to work for, and I've loved that. It's a part of entrepreneurship that women should really embrace.

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

Give the composer time to experiment, time to try out ideas. Also, the time to fail. When the composer has very little time, the temptation is to reach for stock ideas - ideas they know will work and have worked in the past.

Britain and the US remain the Wild West for ideas, where pioneers push each other towards ever greater heights in the white heat of free enterprise. No one knows their place, no one fears failure and no one is ashamed of success.

There is always something that you will take away from each project. There definitely has to be something that you have said yes to in the first place. In some projects, it's the freedom to express yourself more; in some, it's a bigger sense of camaraderie, and somewhere, it's the money that is great.