Jon Oringer Quotes

Well, I think that there's a very thin dividing line between success and failure. And I think if you start a business without financial backing, you're likely to go the wrong side of that dividing line.

Part of the magic of a startup is the fear of death. You have only so much money in the bank, and if you don't get to the right milestone before you run out, then the company goes under - it's over.

Investors like to invest based on traction, so it's always better to raise money when you've got more traction than less.

I ran a profitable boostrapped company for five years, then raised $40 million from Andreessen Horowitz.

If you want to build a startup that has a good chance of succeeding, don't listen to me. Listen to Paul Graham and others who are applying tons of data to the idea of startup success. That will maximize your chance of being successful.

The point of an accelerator is to teach you about companies and business, not about technology.

When you start a business, go for the lowest hanging fruit.

I focus on consumer Internet. Sometimes it's a working prototype; sometimes it's an idea on a napkin. I don't do a ton of deals a year, and I really like working with startups - it's the only way I can invest. It fits my ADD brain.

Accessing capital to start a business can be a daunting process, especially for entrepreneurs who start out with a great idea, but have no real familiarity with the business world.

How many times have you been out for a beer or dinner and people are coming up with business ideas? Everybody wants to think they've got that great business idea.

In the founders, I look for a person I feel is trustworthy, driven and smart. I invest in the person first, because in the event the business fails, the person and I can move forward and create another business.

Many venture capitalists say they're looking for the next big idea. But they aren't, really; they're looking for something derivative, because derivative is safe.

There's nothing wrong with raising venture capital. Many lean startups are ambitious and are able to deploy large amounts of capital. What differentiates them is their disciplined approach to determining when to spend money: after the fundamental elements of the business model have been empirically validated.

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

The venture industry is both quite vibrant and quite competitive.

There would really be no reason to get up in the morning if Founders Fund was not willing to invest in companies that were doing important things, great businesses that very few people believe in.

We worked personally with a lot of great VCs. They just work incredibly hard at supporting entrepreneurs and their companies.

If you're not a risk taker, you should get the hell out of business.

It's almost a cliche that great Silicon Valley entrepreneurs don't go sit on a beach when they make a lot of money; they get back to work building another company or at least investing in other people's companies.

I'm not saying M.B.A.s can't be great entrepreneurs. They can. But you don't need a degree to figure out it's costing you $5,000 per month to run your business, so you need $30,000 to keep it going for six more months.

So we went to Atari and said, 'Hey, we've got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we'll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we'll come work for you.' And they said, 'No.' So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, 'Hey, we don't need you. You haven't got through college yet.'

The swamp is a business model. It's a successful business model.

When the venture industry started, it was enough to just have money and then it was enough to sort of have this big fuzzy brand. But now startups are getting a lot smarter.

I really have become very interested at working with and helping entrepreneurs at the early stages of their growth.

I'm a very active angel investor in a number of different companies.