David Sze Quotes

The best early-stage venture capital investments appear obvious in retrospect; however, very few of them are actually obvious when you make them.

Investigate carefully before you invest. Spend as much time researching the investment as you spend earning the money.

I hope that my investment into Atomico will become my best financial investment to date.

Every time we make an investment decision at FedEx, we ask ourselves: 'What is the return on this investment?'

Ask any venture capitalist, and they will tell you that they consider the experience and completeness of the founding team to be a more important factor in their investment decision than the technology that is being built.

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

I'm a very commonsense guy - I just look at the viability of the idea, if I feel the team has the ability to execute the idea. I also look at the investment syndicate, the size of the market, and then a lot of gut married on top of it.

Most firms do two investments a year. They may talk to between 50 and 100 and do a couple, whereas we're talking to thousands and doing several hundred.

Investment must be rational; if you can't understand it, don't do it.

I have seen entrepreneurs ask for hundreds of millions of dollars on a concept and try to sell because of 'their passion' for an idea. If the idea is that good, why wouldn't I cut you out and hire someone who is just as passionate for much, much less?

Investors have to ask themselves two questions. How much can we grow our investments? And, can we afford our mistakes?

When you come to 'Shark Tank,' the only person you should listen to is me, because you know you're getting the truth. I'll decide if it's worth it, and after I'm finished, the rest of the people can look into it.

Investing is about making probabilistic decisions with limited information about an unknowable future. The variables are well known, as are the possible outcomes.

I have no complaints about losing money I put in high-risk investments. I did some of that when I had real money; my informed choice, my measured gamble.

The key to making money in angel investing is saying no. You meet with 100 companies and say no to 99 of them.

I always tell my partners that our job is to fund all the companies we can that can be worth $10 billion or more. That's such a difficult constraint, we can't have any other constraints.

When I see people laughing at ideas and companies we have backed, I smile. It means we are going to make a lot of money on that investment.

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

I've learned that all investments have risk.

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

One of the rules I've learned is that struggling to try and think your way into making an investment is usually the best way to not have a great outcome.

Before acquiring a project, take the advice of experienced trade pundits in the industry and analyse the risks and business propositions thoroughly.

Loving something doesn't make it a good investment.

When you see a 'Shark fight' erupt, we aggressively want to understand what we are committing our money toward.

The reality is, risk is variable. Those in the financial world know it.