quotes via @hnshah on Twitter from Startup School 2009 at UC Berkley (my comments are beneath the quote)
- Set VERY high goals, and then be willing to take unexpected pathways to get there. –Mark Pincus (CEO of Zynga)
- “First time entrepreneurs get first time VC’s – Mark Pincus
- This is similar to the problem in a BigCo where the most junior employees are managed by the least experienced managers in the company. Add an inexperienced entrepreneur to an inexperienced VC and you don’t get good things to say the least.
- “Without a clear goal, you get death by a thousand compromises. You say ok to everything.” – Mark Pincus
- It’s all about sequencing. It’s rare for a startup to be successful by only doing one thing. Since you can’t do it all at the same time, the critical challenge is sequencing. You’ve got to make hard decisions and invest not in those things that add value in the absolute but rather those things that add the MOST value; it’s a relative assessment, not an absolute one. (think comparative advantage)
- “Chase the vision, not the money.” – Tony Hsieh (CEO of Zappos)
- Mercenaries run out of steam during the marathon. Missionaries truly believe in making something great and don’t take advice that gets in the way of that.
- “Whatever you’re thinking, think bigger.” – Tony Hsieh
- Zappos could have, after all, just been a small online shoe store. There are lots of those.
- “Not all investors are created equal. Some are much more aligned with the entrepreneur.” Mitch Kapor
- And some are much better at it than others. Also, don’t get fooled by the brand name of the firm – it’s the individual you are working with that matters as VC is an individual contributor business (with rare exceptions). It’s not the only variable that matters but if you can, find an investor who has been an operator or entrepreneur before being an investor. That being said, many entrepreneurs make very bad investors.
- “Take more risk, move faster, be more open and have more dialog inside of the company.” Mark Zuckerberg
- Very often you can’t learn whether something will work without trying.
- Saying at Facebook: “The biggest risk you can take is to take no risk.” Mark Zuckerberg
- Similarly, no decision is a decision.
- “A lot of the best stuff that we’ve done is tried not to take all the advice from other people.” Mark Zuckerberg
- This is incredibly true. Advice is cheap and easy to give and is most dangerous when it’s given by someone who you want to impress or please and who gives the advice to you with great conviction (independent of how deeply they’ve thought about the problem). What BigCo often suffers most from is consensus building which yields mean regression. Why are Apple’s products great? Because Steve Jobs makes sure they are. They are not built by committee. If you take all the advice you get, you will inevitably end up with a product built by the dumbest person (or the one who has thought about the problem the least) in the room.
- Have a vision and thesis and stick to it. Adapt and change not when you get advice from so called experts but rather based on customer feedback. Pleasing customers (who pay you for doing so) is the only thing that matters.
- “Eventually you get judged not by how things look, but the value you provide to people.” Mark Zuckerberg
- If you don’t create value, you don’t get rewarded. Be wary of people offering simpler or faster solutions no matter evidence they claim to bear.
- “Investors are employees you can never fire”
- Not sure who said this (might have been Biz Stone of Twitter) but it’s fantastic and incredibly true. Raising VC money is not about them approving of you and giving you money – it’s about your being sure that you are getting money that will help – or not get in the way of – you execute on your vision.
- “toxic to think that when you’re done with school, you’re done learning” – Paul Buchheit (creator of Gmail – Founder of Friendfeed (bought by Facebook))
