Steve Ells Quotes

For resourceful tech founders, finding capital is rarely a problem; making the best use of it is another story. A few years slinging pepperoni pies and chicken wings - on tiny margins and with minimal investment - might not be the worst fiscal training.

What was worked out at Ford was the practice of moving the work from one worker to another until it became a complete unit, then arranging the flow of these units at the right time and the right place to a moving final assembly line from which came a finished product.

Recessions are the best time to start a company. Companies fail. Others hold back capital. If you are willing to do the preparation and work, it is the best time to invest in yourself and start a business.

If you look at where the tried and true of Silicon Valley VC's are investing, it's in people who understand what it takes, who've been through it and have a network of people they can tap and resources to pull together.

Efficiency innovations provide return on investment in 12-18 months. Empowering innovations take 5-10 years to yield a return. We have ample capital - oceans of capital - that is being reinvested into efficiency innovation.

First of all, in terms of investment in Internet-related developments, venture capitalists - once burned - are now very cautious and are investing in areas that actually make business sense.

I was running an assembly line designed to build memory chips. I saw the microprocessor as a bloody nuisance.

It simply is not cost affective to cover stories from independent sources.

The key, I think, from a business point of view, is to learn how to be efficient in making a record that's not too expensive, so that you're not going crazy spending tons of money making a product that might not ever return that money.

An entrepreneur needs to know what they need, period. Then they need to find an investor who can build off whatever their weaknesses are - whether that's through money, strategic partnerships or knowledge.

I used to have to beg and borrow £25 to hire some French windows. I started producing in 1967, and I was in debt until 1981. Having a think about whether you can afford 'this' or 'that' is a good discipline to have, to maximise what you can achieve to the highest standard.

A challenge always is good. Normal design does not come under the constraints of a small budget and time frame. But it has helped me to make quick and knowledgeable decisions.

With the world changing fast, we needed capital for investments. There's only so much bandwidth in your own balance sheet.

It is a terribly hard job to spend a billion dollars and get your money's worth.

Build a roof over a capital and you have the best of all universities.

We are to give money of which we have to little for land of which we have too much.

If we can afford tremendous sums of money to win the war, we can afford to invest whatever amount it takes to win the peace

We fail to boost our offshore production at our own expense.

The construction of a courthouse is a long-term investment in a building where important public business is done. But that does not justify extravagant expenditures. Courthouses should be dignified, durable, and functional. They should not be grandiose, monumental, and luxurious.

Just like I gave Jack Ma and Alibaba the luxury of staying private for longer, I am now giving Arm the gift of being private. My only message to them now is take my investment and let's go, go, go.

In my International Development Scheme, I propose that the profits of this industrial development should go first to pay the interest and principal of foreign capital invested in it; second to give high wages to labor; and third to improve or extend the machinery of production.

With my business, the way you make big money is you find a great management team and a good concept, and you stick to it, and you add to it over time. In philanthropy, there was more this idea that once an idea was formulated, you moved along.

We need to work together to fairly assess and improve the long-term economic and health value - and affordability - of all components of the healthcare system, including hospitalizations, drugs, devices, and other interventions, to optimize our health investment decisions.

Not all of our movies work, but we take shots, and we're able to do that because we really stick to low budgets.

We have to address impediments that stall implementation of projects and streamline the process to ensure smooth execution going forward. We need to address the leverage levels among corporates to restart investment cycle.