Brad Feld Quotes

I went to a woman for advice about how to be in business, but I learned a great deal from men.

We need financial regulation that allows businesses and the banks they use to have access to the tools that help keep prices of consumer goods - like groceries and home heating oil - steady, while ensuring that the taxpayers are never again on the hook for the types of wild bets that helped crash the economy in 2008.

The safest course for public officials is simply to throw all of the money in a sack.

That's the biggest rule in Hollywood: Don't spend your own money.

Starting out, iRobot was not an economic rocket ship. It took six and a half years before we had enough money in the bank at the beginning of each month to make payroll. We always made it - we paid salaries at the end of the month, and I always had four weeks to figure things out.

And I trusted someone to look after me on the business side of life.

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've paid an awful lot of lawyers to protect what I've built. I can only hope the money was well spent.

It's actually a pretty basic concept: when businesses feel secure and confident, they are more likely to grow, hire, and invest. Conversely, when the economy is unstable, businesses often become much more risk averse, and in many cases, they're forced to make undesirable cuts that affect their bottom line.

One thing I never thought about in my big-company job? Cash flow. When your business has billions of dollars in revenue, you can make a lot of mistakes and still have a viable business. But in a startup, make a few hiring mistakes, and you can find yourself in real jeopardy fast.

When you don't spend or invest in the future, you can't always get away with it.

I wouldn't finance a fad if I were a banker.

Don't take risk, and don't get into debt.

You don't tell a player you can't monitor your investments for a month. There's no way you're going to have a billion-dollar investment and never fail to monitor it for a period of time.

When you get successful, the money comes in and pretty soon you've got to hire an accountant, you've got to get up early, and then you've got a day job.

Do invest in Brazil, and you shall not regret it.

When you're dealing with a big amount of money, you should have your own accountant and your own lawyer.

Lots of business owners spend their lives trying to land the whale - the single, massive, brand-name account that will fatten the top line and bestow instant credibility. But big customers make me nervous.

What I do for a living is so high-risk that I try to make sure my portfolio is as conservative as possible.

Berkshire's past record has been almost ridiculous. If Berkshirehad used even half the leverage of, say, Rupert Murdoch, it would be five times its current size.

Never depend on a single source of income.

I think that not relying too heavily on one bank and one bank manager is a good rule to learn.

I do not sacrifice, but lend myself to business.

Clever derivatives broke dozens of companies. It killed them. Bankrupt. We don't need these kinds of innovation in finance. It's OK to be boring in finance. What we want is innovation in widgets.

At Berkshire, I both initiate and monitor every derivatives contract on our books ... If Berkshire ever gets in trouble, it will be my fault. It will not be because of the misjudgments made by a risk committee or chief risk officer.