Tony Hawk Quotes

Well, I think that there's a very thin dividing line between success and failure. And I think if you start a business without financial backing, you're likely to go the wrong side of that dividing line.

When you - when you - and this is still going on today - are making your money by pushing paper around, when you should be making your money by investing venture capital in various job-creating things, that makes it much harder to recover.

To be a designer today is to be an entrepreneur. Whether you're a two-man operation in Shoreditch or a 3,000-person, vertically integrated brand, you need to have the wherewithal to run your business through investment, considering everything from start-up funds to your exit plan or what it takes to go public.

I try getting in front of as many opportunities as possible, but in the late '90s, I had no idea that I'd end up being CFO of a technology company. I'd no idea what venture capital was.

I keep anywhere between 5-10 percent of my net worth in venture ideas.

I think this is also a great time to invest in private equity, helping companies grow from the ground up.

At 25, I made many companies. I was thinking more like a businessman or entrepreneur than a CEO. I created many companies, small companies, medium companies. I tried to be involved in many kinds of activities, in finance, in real estate, in mining.

As of 2011, it cost about $5,000 to launch a tech startup.

I don't think a lot of people have been entrepreneurial about venture capital.

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.

I don't know the venture fund terms. I don't know what a seed round is. I want nothing to do with it.

Finding initial funds is the primary barrier most entrepreneurs face. Many people don't have three or six months' worth of savings to free themselves up to do months of unpaid legwork.

Academically, I was never that interested. I skipped classes. My biggest dream was to have a coffee shop, but I had no idea how to get the money to do that.

The basketball great Kobe Bryant started his own venture-capital firm. LeBron James has rebranded himself as not just an athlete but also an investor and entrepreneur.

I graduated from Columbia University in 1996 and founded my investment company in 1997, thus starting my professional investment career.

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.

I had done six or eight traditional angel investments and basically just thought it sucked.

People who want to make a million borrow a million first

I've invested in pitches and continue to run clinics to help encourage others to do the same.

I consider myself a businessman, not a celebrity or a music star. When I'm getting involved with something I need to executive produce it or be a part of putting it together as an investor. I want to play both sides. That's more important to me than just being a celebrity.

While we would typically encourage young people to start saving for the future as early as possible, it's unlikely that a budding entrepreneur will be able to do so. The entrepreneur will need every bit of capital available for the business, which will likely crowd out personal savings.

There is so much headache and hassle involved in starting a business or running a business.

I'm always investing and building things at the same time.

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.

I'm a very active angel investor in a number of different companies.