Ryan Bethencourt Quotes

I love building companies; I love making products.

I'm just interested in building a company that doesn't necessarily change lives but adapts people's behaviour.

I know plenty of entrepreneurs who are numbers first. They tend to be highly analytical people, and before they pull the trigger, all the numbers have to line up just right.

I think a lot of entrepreneurs think they need money to build the business faster when they actually haven't figured out the business equation yet.

In a startup, in the early days, it can be hard to explain what you do.

If someone doesn't believe enough in your product to put money in to it, then you should rethink how good the product is.

I watch 'Shark Tank,' of course. It's very entertaining. I think it's actually good to help people think about the business they might start, and sometimes you get encouraged by looking at someone going into business and saying, 'Hey, I could do that.'

When talking to first-time entrepreneurs, I often ask them: 'How do you know that people want your product or service?' As you can expect, the answer is often that they don't yet, but will know once they launch. And they're right. That's why it's critical to launch as quickly as possible so you can get that feedback.

You need to invent things and you need to get them to people. You need to commercialize those inventions. Obviously, the best way we've come up with doing that is through companies.

One of my top tips for aspiring entrepreneurs: Tell everyone you know about your idea. This runs contrary to the instinct that most people have, because they're afraid someone is going to 'steal my ideal.' Ideas alone are worth very little; it's in the execution and market feedback that companies are made.

Young entrepreneurs should spend an awful lot of time thinking about what they want to go into.

Once in a while, I see my fellow TV investors praise a business just because they like the entrepreneur behind it. That kind of thinking might make you feel warm and fuzzy inside - but let's get back to reality.

I love what the Valley does. I love company building. I love startups. I love technology companies. I love new technology. I love this process of invention. Being able to participate in that as a founder and a product creator, or as an investor or a board member, I just find that hugely satisfying.

The problem with entrepreneurship is we are often working really hard producing high quality products that no-one wants. The creation of stuff is not valued.

I think the mistake people make most often when they invest in other kinds of startups is they say, 'This is totally different.' And so the things that matter, like making a product that people desperately want, like talking to customers, they throw this out the window. That is a recipe for heartache and tears.

One of my earliest ventures was when I was nine years old. I realized there was a shortage of pencils at school, so I started Rent-a-Pencil. But I made a fundamental mistake. Everybody stole my pencils.

I want to create an environment where I can create technology, get it into the hands of someone to market it, and move on to other technologies so I can keep innovating. I want to be a serial entrepreneur: Incubate an idea, get it to a good state, and make that an enabler to get to the next state. It's every researcher's fantasy.

To turn really interesting ideas and fledgling technologies into a company that can continue to innovate for years, it requires a lot of disciplines.

When trying to start a company, your enemy isn't criticism, anger or insults. Your enemy is apathy.

If your business had no risk, you could go get a bank loan and call it a day. VCs like risks - without them, venture capital wouldn't exist. But they need to be risks that VCs are good at assessing and managing.

The thing about startups is you can make it, and if it's wrong you can remake it, and you can build a team that you want to have, a product that you want to have. You're utterly focused on your users or your customers and their needs, and trying to figure out how to meet those needs.

I almost never invest in ideas or plans, so you'll need to have a company and at least a product, if not customers.

I think that anyone who wants to start their own business can, but not any type of business.

It's definitely an interesting question: 'Do you need more funding to start a luxury business?' That's something I want to think about a little bit more.

One of the rookie mistakes first-time entrepreneurs often make is to be too guarded about their idea - in fact, many will actually spend their first $25,000 on patent lawyers without ever fully vetting their product.