The Best Quotes From Startup School
This is my compilation of insightful quotes from yesterday's Startup School event. If you have more, let me know in the comments!
Mark Pincus: "First time entrepreneurs get first time VC's"Mark Pincus: 'Not having a clear goal leads to death by a thousand compromises.' Mitch Kapor: "Take culture seriously - every action and inaction sends a message."Mitch Kapor: "Hold people accountable - are your tolerating abusive
behavior by star performers?" Tony Hsieh: "Chase the vision, not the money."Tony Hsieh: "Whatever you're thinking, think bigger."Mark Zuckerberg: "Values are worthless unless they're controversial" Mark Zuckerberg: "For the first 2 years of Facebook, all the advice Peter Thiel would give us was: 'don't mess it up"'Mark Zuckerberg: "Initially, facebook was set up as a Florida LLC. When I came out & met a lawyer that was the first thing he undid." Biz Stone: "In the beginning of Twitter someone said 'twitter is fun - but it's not useful'. Ev dryly remarked: 'so is ice cream'"
Paul Buchheit: "I wrote the first version on Gmail in a single day,but it would only search my email. I sent it out to everyone at Google. Their initial feedback was: 'It's cool but I would like it to search my email, not just yours'"
behavior by star performers?" Tony Hsieh: "Chase the vision, not the money."Tony Hsieh: "Whatever you're thinking, think bigger."Mark Zuckerberg: "Values are worthless unless they're controversial" Mark Zuckerberg: "For the first 2 years of Facebook, all the advice Peter Thiel would give us was: 'don't mess it up"'Mark Zuckerberg: "Initially, facebook was set up as a Florida LLC. When I came out & met a lawyer that was the first thing he undid." Biz Stone: "In the beginning of Twitter someone said 'twitter is fun - but it's not useful'. Ev dryly remarked: 'so is ice cream'"
Paul Buchheit: "I thought about prepping my talk - but it seemed like a lot of work so I didn't"
Paul Buchheit: "They told me to wing it and that it would be cool" (this was apparently inspired by the series Aqua Team) Jason Fried: "If Basecamp had made $5000 a month after 1 year we would have been happy. It made that after 6 weeks."
Jason Fried: "The best people are everywhere" Jason fried: "After sex, relationships, and family the most intimate transaction between people is to take their money" Jason Fried: 'The mindset on day 1 of a bootstrapped startup is: "Make Money". The mindset on day 1 in a funded startup is "Spend money"'Greg McAdoo: "Founders have gotten better on recent years with articulating who needs their product and why" Greg McAdoo on enterprise sales in recessions: "All the talk about your vision is useless. You have to prove an ROI so strong that the buyer is scared not to buy from you"Greg McAdoo: "Startups in recessions buy the cash register early" Paul Graham on startups & dating: "You'll have to wait for the liquidity event, before you can have the liquidity event."
Thanks, YCombinator, for putting on this event! Also thanks to @hnshah @JasonShen, @immad @kul @kimmaicutler for all the live tweets, some of which I stole for this post.
