startup mentality Quotes

The point of Silicon Valley, at least when I moved here, was we're all trying to do stuff, and none of us quite felt like we fit in anywhere else. But we were all trying to do good things. And the money was just the byproduct of good things.

At the core of Silicon Valley is a passion for 'yes.'

I think the hallmark of a really good entrepreneur is that you're not really going to build one specific company. The goal - at least the way I think about entrepreneurship - is you realize one day that you can't really work for anyone else. You have to start your own thing. It almost doesn't matter what that thing is.

Finding your entrepreneurial spirit and making it strong is more important than the idea or business you are developing.

The best founders work on things that seem small but they move really quickly. They get things done really quickly.

We've got to get rid of the fear of failure in this country. In America, people start things, fail and shake themselves down and start things again. The animal spirit of capitalism is stronger there.

Ideas, Mike Jones, an engineer at Google explained, were like babies - everything about their environment said they shouldn't exist. But they do. You can't dwell on problems too early, or they will swamp the virtues and you will decide not to do the project.

Real entrepreneurs have what I call the three Ps (and, trust me, none of them stands for 'permission'). Real entrepreneurs have a 'passion' for what they're doing, a 'problem' that needs to be solved, and a 'purpose' that drives them forward.

Ultimately, I didn't quite find the company I wanted to join, but I met more than 100 entrepreneurs and realized that all these entrepreneurs were just as unqualified as I was. If I wanted to be this retailer of the future, or if I wanted to join the retailer of the future, I could just start it.

People ask me all the time, 'How can I become a successful entrepreneur?' And I have to be honest: It's one of my least favorite questions, because if you're waiting for someone else's advice to become an entrepreneur, chances are you're not one.

You can't study to be an entrepreneur. Sometimes, you just have to jump.

A lot of people who own a business aren't entrepreneurial at all.

Most people are average. Founders are not. Founders' traits seem to have an inverse normal distribution to them.

All humans are entrepreneurs not because they should start companies but because the will to create is encoded in human DNA.

There is no point in starting your own business unless you do it out of a sense of frustration.

Out there in some garage is an entrepreneur who's forging a bullet with your company's name on it. You've got one option now - to shoot first. You've got to out innovate the innovators.

On Startups: "I hate it when people call themselves "entrepreneurs" when what they're really trying to do is launch a startup and then sell or go public, so they can cash in and move on.

If we go to work at 8 a.m. and go home at 5 p.m., this is not a high-tech company and Alibaba will never be successful. If we have that kind of 8-5 spirit, then we should just go and do something else.

A business owner is the boss, but it's a job, a place that is stable and profitable. An entrepreneur is an artist of sorts, throwing his/herself into impossible situations and seeking out problems that require heart and guts to solve. Both are fine, but choose.

I think there is this very nice, if at times dangerous, untethered optimism that exists in Silicon Valley.

If you're in the business world, that's what's expected: You should go bust and then start again on something else. So it's a much more relaxed kind of a culture. It's also competitive, but not in such a vicious way. I think the academic world is actually much more destructive of young people.

If you're going to be an entrepreneur... it's not all textbook. It's gut feeling, it's intuition, it's a feeling you have that you can do this and make it happen. I think you have to have a personality.

I mean, look, the government is not a startup obviously. But projects to change government I think are best thought of as startups.

The only way to avoid disruption is to constantly do what you would if you were just starting out.

I've had an entrepreneurial mindset from a young age and I've been interested in companies and products that are a little bit different.