Venture Capitalists Quotes

• Most venture capitalists won't read a business plan unless the entrepreneur is introduced to them by a contact.

  Guy Kawasaki

  Entrepreneur, Plans, Contact

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• At a basic level venture capitalists are arbitrageurs: they have access to more information than those with the capital, and access to more capital than those with information, and they profit by exploiting the mismatch.

  Ben Thompson

  Levels, Information, Mismatch

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• People tend to think that in order to start a new business they have to come up with something new and dazzling, but that's a myth - and it's often propagated by venture capitalists.

  Gurbaksh Chahal

  Thinking, Order, People

  Gurbaksh Chahal (2008). “The Dream: How I Learned the Risks and Rewards of Entrepreneurship and Made Millions”, p.59, Macmillan

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• Harvard and Yale concentrated with venture capitalists that got the best calls and brainpower. Very few firms made most of the money, and they made it in just a few periods. Everyone else returned between mediocre and lousy. When returns happened, envy rippled through institutional money management. The amount invested in venture capital went up 10 times post-1999. That later money was lost very quickly. It will happen again. I don't know anyone who successfully resists this stuff. It becomes a new orthodoxy.

  Charlie Munger

  Yale, Envy, Stuff

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• The government is somewhat inept, but the private sector is inept in general. How many companies do venture capitalists invest in that go poorly? By far most of them. However, every once in a while a Google or a Microsoft comes out, so people keep giving them money.

  Bill Gates

  Government, People, Giving

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• The world is a big place. There are lots of smart people in it. Entrepreneurs are kidding themselves if they think they have any kind of monopoly on knowledge. And, sure as I'm a Macintosh user, on the same day that an entrepreneur tells this lie, the venture capitalist will have met with another company that's doing the same thing.

  Guy Kawasaki

  Smart, Lying, Thinking

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• Everything you want is cheap or free. If you went to a venture capitalist and said: "I need money to buy tools." You flunked the IQ test, I mean every tool that you need is free!

  Guy Kawasaki

  Mean, Needs, Tools

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• Being a venture capitalist to me is like being more of a psychologist. So if you come to my office we have two chairs with a table in the middle. And we sit down and it's like, Tell me your problems.

  Keith Rabois

  Two, Office, Tables

  "Lecture 14: How to Operate" by Keith Rabois, genius.com. November 6, 2014.

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• Outsiders think of Silicon Valley as a success story, but in truth, it is a graveyard. Failure.. is Silicon Valley's greatest strength. Every failed product or enterprise is a lesson stored in the collective memory of the country. We not only don't stigmatize failure, sometime we even admire it. Venture Capitalists actually like to see a little failure in the resumes of entrepreneurs.

  Michael Malone

  Country, Memories, Thinking

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• That first company I started made a lot of money for the venture capitalists - nearly $30 million - but next to nothing for the founders. The companies I started after that varied between failures and mediocre successes. But at no point did I ever consider getting a 'real job.' That felt like a black and white world, and I wanted Technicolor.

  Michael Arrington

  Jobs, Real, Black And White

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• Some of my best friends are Venture Capitalists, but let's face it, a hamster with Alzheimer's could make those kind of numbers. It's great work if you can get it.

  Scott Adams

  Alzheimer's, Numbers, My Best Friend

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• Generally speaking, experience counts for something. So you'd expect entrepreneurs who've been through the ups and downs of a tech startup to have an advantage over the newcomers. Or at least have an equal chance at success. But in fact the opposite may be true. A number of venture capitalists I've spoken with have said that too many "old guard" entrepreneurs are not being bold enough in their business decisions, and it's hurting their startups.

  Michael Arrington

  Hurt, Opposites, Numbers

  "The Twice Shy Entrepreneur". techcrunch.com. December 9, 2007.

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• We have the greatest resource universities in the world, the only place in the world. We have the most productive workforce in the world. We have the most agile venture capitalists in the world. We have a situation where right now in the United States of America, we are near energy independent. North America is beginning to be the epicenter of energy. What is it that makes people think that this is not going to be the American century? I don't get it.

  Joe Biden

  Independent, Thinking, America

  Interview with Rachel Maddow, www.msnbc.com. February 18, 2016.

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• While I'm a venture capitalist who invests in early-stage tech companies, I often feel like a professional emailer and conference call maker. I try to spend most of my time doing whatever the companies we are investors in need me to do.

  Brad Feld

  Trying, Venture, Needs

  Source: money.cnn.com

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• "Patents make our product defensible." The optimal number of times to use the P word in a presentation is one. Just once, say, "We have filed patents for what we are doing." Done. The second time you say it, venture capitalists begin to suspect that you are depending too much on patents for defensibility. The third time you say it, you are holding a sign above your head that says, "I am clueless."

  Guy Kawasaki

  Business, Clueless, Numbers

  Guy Kawasaki (2008). “Reality Check: The Irreverent Guide to Outsmarting, Outmanaging, and Outmarketing Your Competition”, p.49, Penguin

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• Society can't wait. It's sad there are so many entrepreneurs, business successes and venture capitalists who give no thought to society.

  Les Wexner

  Giving, Entrepreneur, Waiting

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• Venture capitalists are professional money managers. We are provided capital to invest as long as we can return it to our investors with a strong return in a reasonable amount of time. A strong return is three times cash on cash. A reasonable amount of time is ten years max.

  Fred Wilson

  Strong, Years, Long

  "Can the Crowd Be More Patient" by Fred Wilson, www.huffingtonpost.com. April 26, 2012.

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• First of all, in terms of investment in Internet-related developments, venture capitalists - once burned - are now very cautious and are investing in areas that actually make business sense.

  Vinton Cerf

  Entrepreneur, Decision, Investing

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• Venture capitalists are like lemmings jumping on the software bandwagon.

  Adam Osborne

  Jumping, Entrepreneur, Decision

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• Every venture capitalist says at some point, 'I wish I could run this company myself' -- to be the entrepreneur instead of the investor.

  Alan Patricof

  Running, Entrepreneur, Wish

  "TechStar Interview: Alan Patricof". Interview with Bill Robinson, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 25, 2011.

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• What do you get when you cross a herd of sheep with a herd of lemmings? A herd of venture capitalists.

  Ben Horowitz

  Sheep, Venture, Lemmings

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• "(Big name research firm) says our market will be $50 billion in 2010." Every entrepreneur has a few slides about how the market potential for his segment is tens of billions. It doesn't matter if the product is bar mitzah planning software or 802.11 chip sets. Venture capitalists don't believe this type of forecast because it's the fifth one of this magnitude that they've heard that day. Entrepreneurs would do themselves a favor by simply removing any reference to market size estimates from consulting firms.

  Guy Kawasaki

  Business, Believe, Names

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• Show me a first-generatio n fortune and I'll show you a successful partnership between a talented individual and society's invisible venture capitalist, the commons.

  William H. Gates, Sr.

  Successful, Firsts, Invisible

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• We weren’t trying to strike it rich with Firefox. It’s open source and it’s free. We weren’t trying to take over the world; we had kind of modest goals, and it was OK if it failed. We were a lot freer to make risky decisions. If you can afford to do things that way, it’s just so much better. You’re not thinking about venture capitalists or marketing or sales. Just product and users, all day every day.

  Blake Ross

  Thinking, Goal, Decision

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• The great danger of dealing with venture capitalists is the 'slow maybe'.

  John Doerr

  Venture, Danger, Capitalist

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