Reggie Fils-Aime Quotes

You need to make certain decisions to expand your market.

For any business that has an indirect model to move into the direct business is very difficult and very challenging.

Set your business plan to win; raise the bar or you're not going to be prepared. You need to think that what you're doing will make you $100 million.

The most essential thing for us was to get the business model right, then put the world-class technology under it to support it. At Merrill, that meant not doing what people expected.

When I hear people debate the ROI of social media? It makes me remember why so many business fail. Most businesses are not playing the marathon. They're playing the sprint. They're not worried about lifetime value and retention. They're worried about short-term goals.

People follow proven formulas in any business.

Our goal definitely isn't to sell Stripe.

Apart from boosting our long-term economic strength like other Asian economic powers, Philippine companies expanding overseas and going beyond our comfort zones, or going to some uncharted territories, will help sharpen our management skills.

Basically if you study entrepreneurs, there is a misnomer: People think that entrepreneurs take risk, and they get rewarded because they take risk. In reality entrepreneurs do everything they can to minimize risk. They are not interested in taking risk. They want free lunches and they go after free lunches.

You should learn from your competitor, but never copy. Copy and you die.

A lot of web companies will take a short-term approach and sell to an incumbent and don't end up living up to their full potential.

People come in with business plans and, I mean I know that no one is going to meet everything they say in a business plan but you got to have something to, to guide towards.

There are good examples of companies - Coca-Cola is one - that invested before there was a huge market in countries, and I think that ended up playing out to their benefit for decades to come.

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.

The reason why it is so difficult for existing firms to capitalize on disruptive innovations is that their processes and their business model that make them good at the existing business actually make them bad at competing for the disruption.

To bring out a new technology for consumers first, you just had a very long road to go down to try to find people who actually would pay money for something.

Advertising is the life of trade.

In the U.S., we didn't have scale, and without scale, it's difficult to operate.

We have to still develop the Ikea group. We need many billions of Swiss francs to take on China or Russia.

Being a conglomerate, each of our businesses has a different challenge; business landscape is different for each business. It makes it challenging as well as exciting.

There are companies with management and companies with money. You can always find money. Management is the key to success in any business.

Know the business, learn the business, own something.

Strategy is about making choices, trade-offs; it's about deliberately choosing to be different.

Making new products is an easy tap for a company in a recession.

Volkswagen must continue to attack and make good use of its opportunities.