Mark Warner Quotes

Many businesses fail because the owner wasn't willing to invest and wasn't educated on the difference between spending money frivolously and investing money into the business for growth, and the risks and rewards of that cash infusion.

In the founders, I look for a person I feel is trustworthy, driven and smart. I invest in the person first, because in the event the business fails, the person and I can move forward and create another business.

I had a couple of investments that didn't go my way. That's why I laugh at guys who say, 'Oh, I'm going to open a clothing line. I'm going to start a restaurant.'

I love the business of business; I love the risk raking.

One of my first investments was $100,000 in a Web-based calendar startup - and I lost every dollar.

After I met my partner, Mr. Protherow, we decided to start a banking project, and at the same time we started to think already about a business on a bigger scale. At the very beginning we thought more about gaining money, to have a normal life with our families, etc.

I never knew anything other than wanting to be an entrepreneur. I tried my first business when I was 6 years old, and I started another business when I was 8. I don't think I knew anything besides that.

My first business deal was with my mother. I invested in chickens. I sold the eggs to my mother.

I'm a school dropout. So, at the age of 16, I moved to Mumbai to try my luck on some business.

One thing about the business and investing world that I connect to very intimately is that there is little room to deny the harsh realities of your mistakes. A bad call can lose you many millions.

If you are not making any mistakes, you are being excessively risk-averse. Investing involves risk, and that means you will occasionally be wrong. And although it is okay to be wrong, it is not okay to stay wrong.

My first company failed completely. And it failed at about ten months old. I had about 12 months of savings, so when it failed I was thinking: 'Do I go back to work?' And at that point I believed so deeply in what I was doing that I couldn't imagine anything else other than trying to make this business work.

We sunk everything into it. It came close to going under several times.

If you're not a risk taker, you should get the hell out of business.

We had this unbelievable faith that no business has done, quite frankly, and we tripped along the way doing it, but within two years, we were in 40-plus countries. So we ran at an amazing pace, and this is where venture capitalists play a role. Making Groupon into what it is today, we had no role in it; the entrepreneurs did it.

I started my first business at 14!

The way to become rich is to put all your eggs in one basket and then watch that basket.

I have been rich, and I have been broke. Some of it is my fault for choosing bad management and making bad investments. But that is life - we all take risks.

I'm an entrepreneur. This is my life. This my career. This the way I eat.

I'd heard stories about business managers who lost their client's money. My feeling was that if I made any money, I wanted to lose it myself, to be the author of my own demise.

When I came to the U.S., I tried to take shortcuts to make money - but everything crashed.

I wake up every day, and the family fortune is on the line, and that's a good thing.

It was tennis that got me started in business. When I was 16 and about to embark on my A-levels, I set up a tennis academy and became one of the youngest qualified tennis coaches in the country. It did well; by the time I was 19 I was able to buy my first house.

If life was so easy that you could just go buy success, there would be a lot more successful companies in the world. Successful enterprises are built from the ground up.

A thoroughbred business man cannot enter heartily upon the business of life without first looking into his accounts.