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Quotes For Entrepreneurs August 2014
“An early start beats fast running.”
Michael Bowen (@mdcbowen) “Cobb’s Rules“
Used as closing quote for “Start with a List of Customers and Problems that Build on Your Experience and Relationships”
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“Technology per se is not disruptive or sustaining: it is the way it is deployed in the market.”
Clayton Christensen in “Still Disruptive“
This quote inspired me to update “Distant Early Warning Signs of Market Disruption” with a additional paragraph on the need to counter a disruptive entrant where they are taking root, not where you are comfortable selling already.
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“Almost always great new ideas don’t emerge from within a single person or function, but at the intersection of functions or people that have never met before.”
Clayton Christensen in “Still Disruptive“
More context
“Almost always great new ideas don’t emerge from within a single person or function, but at the intersection of functions or people that have never met before. And most universities are organized so you don’t have those intersections. They are siloed. Universities think people come up with great ideas by closing the door. The academic tenure process, where you have to publish to journals which are very narrow, stands in the way of great research.”
Clayton Christensen in “Still Disruptive“
h/t Sandeep De (@sandeepcast) in Intersections/Exaption: Silo Busting
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“In the heart of every apple is an entire orchard waiting only to be planted.”
Thorstan Osborne
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“Cultivate mindfulness: it’s not the fastest reaction, it’s the decision that leads to the first effective response.”
Sean Murphy in “Cultivating Mindfulness”
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“A man should never neglect his family for business.”
Walt Disney quoted in Ch. 14 : The Real Walt Disney, p. 361
h/t Entrepreneurs Quotes (@entrepreneurship) I used this in “Father’s Day 2016”
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“Start building network, blog, educating 1 year before you make the leap. Build community. The first sales will always be to friends. Make those friends.”
Conor Neill in “Entrepreneur: Start a year before you Start“
Used as the opening quote for “Start with a List of Customers and Problems that Build on Your Experience and Relationships”
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“When Iran develops its fervently sought nuclear weapon, this will look in retrospect like our last carefree summer.”
Abe Greenwald (@abegreenwald) in “Reality is Neoconservative“
Looking back August 2014 may rhyme with August 1914 (“History doesn’t repeat itself, but sometimes it rhymes.” Mark Twain).
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“We’d achieve more if we chased the dream instead of the competition.”
Simon Sinek (@simonsinek)
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“There now ensued a series of incidents which transported me to the opposite extremes of ecstasy and horror; incidents which I tremble to recall and dare not seek to interpret.”
H. P. Lovecraft
This would make a great opening quote for many startup success stories (and more than a few failure stories).
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“To base thought only on speech is to try nailing whispers to the wall. Writing freezes thought and offers it up for inspection.”
Jack Rosenthal
I used this as the opening quote for “Lessons Learned from 12 years of blogging” (which was also a distributed as the SKMurphy newsletter for 2018).
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“Buddy, we’re here in Iowa. Usually, a man’s word is like gold. A handshake is a contract.”
William Nagel in a Washington Post article on Bruce Braley
I think “here in Iowa” is a good metaphor for how effective bootstrappers manage trust. Full quote:
Another neighbor, William Nagel, who sits on the homeowners association board, said, “Buddy, we’re here in Iowa. We talk like men here and we act like men. Usually, a man’s word is like gold. A handshake is a contract. Neighbors are neighbors, and if you’ve got a problem with your neighbor, you talk it out.”
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“It is possible to create an epidemic of health which is self-organizing and self-propelling.”
Jonas Salk
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“You don’t think that seeing your grandparents die or your parents die is good fortune, but you would be wrong.”
Sean Murphy in “Good Fortune.”
I was reminded of this observation by the recent death of John Foster McKenna, age 23.
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“The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost.”
G. K. Chesterton
Compare to Achaan Chaa’s “when I understand that the glass is already broken, every moment with it is precious” in Mark Epstein’s Thoughts Without a Thinker (pages 80-81) quoted in “Thanksgiving 2011” I liked it so much I used it again in “Father’s Day 2016”
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“The tragedy of life is not so much what men suffer, but what they miss.”
Thomas Carlyle
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“He who does not understand your silence will probably not understand your words.”
Elbert Hubbard
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“The best teams are motivated by a sense of mission, of working on the worthwhile. When they have a why they will find the how.”
Sean Murphy in “Five Quotes For Entrepreneurs by Branch Rickey“
I was inspired by this quote by Branch Rickey:
“First of all, a man, whether seeking achievement on the athletic field or in business, must want to win. He must feel that the thing he is doing is worthwhile; so worthwhile that he is willing to pay the price of success to attain distinction.”
Branch Rickey
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“The stories we tell ourselves can serve as straitjackets for stagnation, or scaffolding for transformation.”
Seb Paquet (@sebpaquet) tweet Dec-1-2010
h/t Conal Elliott
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“Bootstrappers are open to possibility but maintain focus: they explore many options but say yes to only a few.”
Sean Murphy
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“I wonder if one of the penalties of growing older is that you become more and more conscious that nothing is very permanent.”
Eleanor Roosevelt
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“When your toil has been a pleasure, you have not earned money merely, but money, health, delight, and moral profit, all in one.”
Robert Louis Stevenson
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“Blessed is the man who has found his work.
Let him ask no other blessedness.”
Thomas Carlyle
h/t Gretchin Rubin Daily Quotes
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“Treat social capital with the same care as cash: trust doesn’t scale, it’s knit by aligning actions with prior commitments.”
Sean Murphy in “Treat Social Capital With The Same Care As Cash“
Similar to this observation
“Trust doesn’t scale, it’s built up by repeated interactions over time.
That’s what makes it so important.”
Sean Murphy commenting in “Seth Godin: Trust is Even More Scarce Than Attention“
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“They are ill discoverers that think there is no land when they see nothing but sea.”
Francis Bacon (1561-1626) – The Advancement of Learning, bk. 2, ch. 7, sect. 5 (1605).
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“Simple, not easy. There’s a difference.”
Ron Jeffries (@RonJeffries)
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“A fact is a simple statement that everyone believes.
It is innocent, unless found guilty.
A hypothesis is a novel suggestion that no one wants to believe.
It is guilty, until found effective.”
Edward Teller, Conversations on the Dark Secrets of Physics, 1991, p. 69
h/t Kevin Kelly
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“No one wants advice–only corroboration.”
John Steinbeck
This is true for some but not even for most entrepreneurs in my experience.
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“In the mind of the entrepreneur the future is obvious and imminent.”
Sean Murphy in “The Mind of the Entrepreneur“
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“What is a trick the first time one meets it
is a device the second time
and a method the third time.”
W. J. Leveque
h/t Mark Zimmerman in “Creative Devices”
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“The only courage that matters is the kind that gets you from one moment to the next.”
Mignon Mclaughlin
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“Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that, but simply growth.
We are happy when we are growing.”
William Butler Yeats
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“Fields can lie fallow but we can’t; we have less time.”
Mignon Mclaughlin
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“Ability proceeds from a fusion of skills, knowledge, understanding and imagination, consolidated by experience.”
Jonathan Rez
h/t Quotes on Design
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“Anything that won’t sell, I don’t want to invent. Its sale is proof of utility, and utility is success.”
Thomas Edison
quoted in Daniel Boorstin’s “Cleopatra’s Nose: Essays on the Unexpected”
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“More people would learn from their mistakes if they weren’t so busy denying them.”
Harold J. Smith
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“Acorns were good till bread was found.”
Francis Bacon
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