Douglas Leone Quotes

On the tech side, little start-ups can do something magnificent. They don't need too much in terms of plants and infrastructure.

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.

As you grow in this business, you learn how to do more with less.

I found it very helpful not to do the venture round. Instead, I started with very little money, a few thousand dollars, and I did every job myself. I was the first photographer. I was the first customer service rep. I was the first online marketing person.

It's the intelligent thing to be frugal.

The way to build billion dollar companies is to first build something people love. There isn't really a shortcut there.

Well, we had more money and more time the first season than we did at TV 23.

Startups are often very undercapitalised, but I found that to be very beneficial because it forces you not to throw money at problems. Instead, you learn all the nuts and bolts of what you're doing and become an expert.

Cheapness is a great virtue.

Instapaper is much bigger today than I could have predicted in 2008, and it has simply grown far beyond what one person can do. To really shine, it needs a full-time staff of at least a few people.

Technology ventures can succeed with very little investment, unlike many other industries. A lot of the big Internet players like Google or Yahoo were started by a couple of guys with computers. Microsoft was started in Bill Gates' garage.

I started Shutterstock without any outside funding; I believe in creating a lean startup. By not taking outside investors early, I was forced to use every dollar I had as efficiently as possible. And I was able to keep a large part of the company.

Small business owners and entrepreneurs worthy of the title need to build systems that replace themselves.

Don't be buying out of emotion. Buy less if you love something but feel it's a risky item. We don't want overstock. And remember: No profit, no fun!

Whether you're a government entity, a large enterprise, or a startup, a true digital transformation takes advantage of technology to focus on the customer, automates work that does not need manual interference, and unleashes your people to truly make decisions that change the path of your company.

We like scalable companies that we think we can grow - because of our expertise, operational is consumer-facing. For the most part, consumer-facing, technology-driven process, driven sometimes if they're call center or into the sales type of stuff associated with it.

I have seen a lot of now-great companies at their earliest stages, and these early-stage startups are not built by the senior people who know how to run and scale big-company machines.

Unfortunately, as you hire more people, the casual, informal 'do what it takes' culture, which worked so well at less than 40 people, becomes chaotic and less effective.

In a market where funding is hard to come by, if you're scaled already, then you are in a brilliant position because nobody is going to catch up with you.

It always seemed mad to me that people who have common investment objectives, let alone are related to each other, should take their capital and allow it to be less efficient by breaking it up into smaller bits.

Many of the best YC companies have had phenomenally small number of employees for their first year, sometimes none besides the founders.

We started in our living room on a card table in our living room, and we have a multi-million dollar company and we know it can be done without borrowing a dime. It takes a while to get it started and to turn the wheel over, but the next time it's easier and the next few hundred times, it's easier than that. Have a budget where you reinvest a percentage of every dollar you earn to grow it.

If there could've ever been a magical time to build an enterprise software company, now is absolutely that time.

Run lean; avoid unnecessary expenses.