Ronald Reagan Quotes

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

As policymakers, we need to foster an environment that allows U.S.-based innovators and entrepreneurs to compete and to flourish. Excessive regulations and bureaucratic red tape dramatically increase the cost of doing business and create uncertainty for companies.

What does the name Virgin mean? We are a company that likes to take on the giants. In too many businesses, these giants have had things their own way. We are going to have fun competing with them.

America demands invention and innovation to succeed.

I saw my father deal with every headache the government threw his way - whether it had to do with the signs on the front of the building or the prices on the showroom floor. He knew he could do better, if government would just get out of the way - and stay out of the way. He was right.

In the private sector, there is always innovation. There's always change. There's always improving productivity, and if you're not leading that, you'll be passed and ultimately go out of business. So there's an urgency to constantly update and renew and to rethink your enterprise.

Government can encourage innovation, but mainly by doing less, not doing more.

I don't believe in government regulation of the software industry.

Getting things done in this country, if you want to build something, if you want to start a company, it's getting to be virtually impossible with all of the bureaucracy and all of the approvals.

We in Congress need to do everything possible to encourage and cultivate small businesses, so that they can expand and create jobs. Far too often, however, U.S. small businesses are impeded by government paperwork and bureaucratic red tape.

The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.

Most of what we've done at SurveyMonkey is create a market, which I would say is much harder than trying to enter a market that already exists. But if you get it right, it can become a great business.

The trick is, a market has to be nonexistent when you start. If the market is large early on, you will have too many competitors. You have to make it large.

We, we - as I say, we go in and shake up other industries and I think, you know, we do it differently and I think that industries are not quite the same as a result of Virgin attacking the market.

I look at every business and ask, How long can this last? How can I identify the status quo and change it?

In America, when you bring an idea to market, you usually have several months before competition pops up, allowing you to capture significant market share. In China, you can have hundreds of competitors within the first hours of going live. Ideas are not important in China - execution is.

Google worries - and rightly so - about how hard it is for a big company to come up with the next hot thing.

No one should expect building a new high-growth, software-powered company in an established industry to be easy. It's brutally difficult.

Investing capital in the free market creates innovation, businesses, jobs and economic growth. Investing capital in the government creates more bureaucracy, more paperwork and inefficiency.

You have to be willing to risk things; otherwise, somebody else will put you out of business.

The sooner we rein in the red tape factory in Washington, D.C., the sooner small businesses can get back to creating jobs and helping more Americans find an honest day's work.

When I visit local communities, people often complain that they need the approval of several dozen government departments to get something done or to start a business, and people are quite frustrated about this.

If companies don't think systemically enough - if they try to capture too much of the value - eventually, innovation moves somewhere else.

I ... can sniff out a bureaucracy when I see it coming [in new legislation.]

Once the government starts forbidding things, then someone will come around the corner saying, “I’ve got it.”