Startup Risk Quotes

True entrepreneurs have to really forego almost everything; they have to put it all on the line.

Building outrageous expectations about the next big thing - be it a personal video chatting service or venue-based photo sharing app - can create all sorts of complications when things don't go as planned.

Over a 10-year period, 99 out of 100 new entrepreneurs will fail. Only one will be left standing as others get pushed out of the market or burn out from working so hard. It's really sad.

We actually tried to invest in Twitter in April 2007, right when it launched. At the time, the company was wary of having a classic, tier-one traditional venture firm involved.

For early employees you want people that have somewhat of a risk-taking attitude.

In technology, most things fail. Most companies fail.

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.

A hardware startup with no funding is a risky venture.

When I first started as an angel investor, I was excited to start investing in startups - but I didn't know much. I couldn't tell the good ones from the bad; I didn't understand all these venture capital terms, so I would invest somewhat blindly.

I'd rather invest in an entrepreneur who has failed before than one who assumes success from day one.

A startup job is an investment, after all: Venture capitalists may wager money, but you're staking something more precious - your time. And unlike VCs, you can't spread your risk by betting on a bunch of companies at once. Start with TAM. That's 'total addressable market,' and if it's not big enough, there's no point in talking.

One of the metaphors that I use for start-ups is, you throw yourself off a cliff and assemble your airplane on the way down. If you don't solve the right problem at the right time, that's the end. Mortality puts priorities into sharp focus.

Working on a token is similar to working on a startup: higher risk and lower initial impact but higher upside potential. How core protocol work is best funded beyond the initial Ethereum Foundation endowment is an open question, but likely further out.

Whether by design or circumstance, every startup will eventually get disrupted.

If I'm an entrepreneur, and I have a term sheet from Sequoia and Kleiner, that's the safe choice. Google Ventures is the brave choice.

Most startups flame out or just muddle along. Your chances of spotting a unicorn, pre-horn, are incalculably small. But if, knowing that, you still want to toss aside your cushy job, at least listen to corporate vets who have made the transition.

There are too many ways that a startup gig can go sideways. If the startup won't agree to hefty severance, pass.

Rules that may be easy for Wall Street are a death sentence for startups. They are easy to break accidentally and the penalty for noncompliance is severe.

I tell founders all the time, 99.9 percent chance of failure.

A hardware startup with a lot of funding and a lot of momentum has a lot less risk.

The average for entrepreneurs is 3.8 failures before they finally make it in business.

Something like Pinterest would scare the hell out of me. With $5 billion valuation - regardless how sound those numbers are - wouldn't be one that I would start, given what I would consider the risk of failure.

One of the things that's so interesting when talking to minority founders specifically is that there is really a knowledge gap in understanding what the risk-reward profile is for doing a startup.

The entrepreneurial struggle is the same at basically every stage in the sense that there's maybe slightly less risk but strategic issues are generally always the same. Now there's so much existential risk from another company either being able to compete or to disrupt you in the same way you're disrupting somebody else, an entrepreneur needs a real steady partner who has the ability to start working with them in the Seed or the A and be credible and value-add with strategic advice, and just be backstopped by so much capital that you can do any growth round or even a public round.