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Quotes For Entrepreneurs – March 2010
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“To have what you want is riches, to be able to do without is power.”
George MacDonald
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“And the man in the suit has just bought a new car,
From the profit he’s made on your dreams”
Jim Capaldi in “The Low Spark of High Heel Boys“
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“The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.”
Peter Drucker in “Innovation and Entrepreneurship” (1985)
I used this in my first batch of “Quotes for Founders” in April of 2008, when I started to collect the quotes that I was tweeting into blog posts. I liked it so much inadvertently retweeted it again, so it’s included in this month’s roundup.
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“In the real world the tests are all open book, and your success is inexorably determined by the lessons you glean from the free market.”
Jonathan Rosenberg
h/t Jeff Jarvis “TEDxNYed: This is Bullshit” who offers this second quote from Rosenberg:
“It’s easy to educate for the routine, and hard to educate for the novel.”
Jonathan Rosenberg
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“Our history is slow, continuous growth. In the race between tortoise and hare, well, we’re the slow guy”
Craig Newmark
This was Newmark’s answer to “How Craigslist Spread” is worth keeping as your screen saver quote. See also “Sustaining is More Important Than Starting”
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“A business should be run like an aquarium, where everybody can see what’s going on.” Jack Stack “The Great Game of Business” (page 72)
Full quote:
“A business should be run like an aquarium, where everybody can see what’s going on–what’s going in, what’s moving around, what’s coming out. That’s the only way to make sure people understand what you’re doing, and why, and have some input into deciding where you are going. Then, when the unexpected happens, they know how to react and react quickly.”
Jack Stack “The Great Game of Business“
The Great Game of Business site also lists simulations, webinars, coaching and more on open book management. See also “The Business is Everyone’s Business”
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“The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it.” Mark Weiser in “The Computer for the 21st Century,” Scientific American, vol. 265 (September 1991): 94–104.
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“We missed good startups, usually good guys with a terrible idea. Now we focus more on the people than the idea.”
Paul Graham
Full quote from Hacker News Item 1192178:
“We’ve definitely missed good startups. But one advantage of having so many competitors is that we’re much more likely now to learn when we screw up. When a startup from one of the other YC-like organizations does well, I often check their YC application to see how we missed them. Usually it’s because they were good guys but working on a terrible idea, which they later changed. So in response to that we now make a conscious effort to pay less attention to the idea and more to the people when we read applications.”
In response to “Ask HN: Who got rejected in earlier cycles of YC application and made it anyway?”
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“Our plan for 2010: kill initiatives we can’t fix, experiment cautiously, and treat social capital with the same care as cash.”
Sean Murphy
See also “Conserving Trust in a Downturn” & “Bouncing Back”
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“The secret of happiness is curiosity”
Norman Douglas “The South Wind“
Full quote:
“A sound schooling should teach manner of thought rather than matter. It should have a dual aim—to equip a man for hours of work, and for hours of leisure. They interact; if the leisure is misspent, the work will suffer. As regards the first, we cannot expect a school to purvey more than a grip of general principles. Even that is seldom given. The second should enable a man to extract as much happiness as possible out of his spare time. The secret of happiness is curiosity. Now curiosity is not only not roused; it is repressed. You will say there is not time for everything. But how much time is wasted!”
Norman Douglas “The South Wind“
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“Companies that truly want to create a long-term capability around innovation need to invest in building a common language.”
Dr. Clayton Christensen
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“A toolmaker succeeds when customers succeed with his aid: e.g. a sword-smith succeeds when clients die of old age.”
Fred Brooks
Full quote:
“A toolmaker succeeds as, and only as, the users of his tool succeed with his aid. However shining the blade, however jeweled the hilt, however perfect the heft, a sword is tested only by cutting. That sword-smith is successful whose clients die of old age.”
Source: Fred Brooks “The Computer Scientist as Toolsmith”, Comm ACM 39(5), March 1996
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“Salvation comes to him who never ceases to strive.”
Goethe
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“Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.”
Voltaire