Bill Maris Quotes

I've had a very good stretch with startup investing, and I think it's very important to know when to hold your chips.

Investing in a poker game and investing in stocks, at least the way I do it, it's a very similar skillset.

I have plenty of investments that I wish I'd never made. But the model is to lose money on a lot of investments and then make 1,000X or 10,000X on an investment.

One way to mitigate our risk is to invest in companies with understandable business models.

We've only made three investments: Facebook, Groupon, and Zynga.

In any business opportunity, you'd be looking, probably, primarily at the risk and return. Some business can be very risky with a low return; what you want is the lowest risk with the biggest return.

We make a series of investments, some will pan out and some won't.

Having an investor on your board of directors who is naive about public markets or finds them complex or scary is non-optimal.

Empowering innovations require long-term investments, which tie up capital for years and years. So companies are using capital to create more capital, and consequently, the world is awash in capital, but the innovations we need to advance aren't there.

I'd stay away from investments in a variety of sectors that are capital intensive. Anyone who says we need $100 million before we know if what we're doing makes sense and the customers want it - that's not going to work.

I'm not emotional about investments. Investing is something where you have to be purely rational and not let emotion affect your decision making - just the facts.

I'm not sure at all that I'm any good at this mentoring/investing business - that's why I'm using my own money, and that's why it's not a career.

I consider each business investment based on concept and revenue.

Learn to invest in investments where you can achieve an honest, legal advantage over other investors. When it comes to investing, why play on a level field?

My investment advice is rooted in my understanding of economics.

If you want to invest in us, we believe customer number one, employee number two, shareholder number three. If they don't want to buy that, that's fine. If they regret, they can sell us.

With poker, you have a resolution of the hand within a couple of minutes. Whereas, even if the thought process in investing is very much the same, you're looking at an outcome that could be 2, 3, 4, 5 years from when you make the original decision. And the mindset related to that is very different.

Far too many of my peers were taken in by the jet-setting rock star lifestyle and didn't realise the money might not last forever - but I have always had an eye on the future and invest in a syndicate to share risk.

Look: invest in what you understand, what's foreseeably going to offer real value and returns, not necessarily what's trendy.

Trust me: I know a good investment when I see one.

It's pretty challenging for large funds to spend the time and energy necessary to get a meaningful return when most of the wins coming out are perhaps below $100 million exits and the ones above are very few and far between.

A startup job is an investment, after all: Venture capitalists may wager money, but you're staking something more precious - your time. And unlike VCs, you can't spread your risk by betting on a bunch of companies at once. Start with TAM. That's 'total addressable market,' and if it's not big enough, there's no point in talking.

Well, the most important thing in investing is to know what you're investing in, and if you're confident in the outcome, it's important to stay true to your position.

The [stock] market,like the Lord, helps those who help themselves. But, unlike the Lord, the market does not forgive those who know not what they do.

Everyone said, 'You can't lose money in real estate, because they're not making any more of it.' Hmmmm. Where did everyone go wrong?