58 quotes
Winners understand why customers buy.
The Startup Owner’s Manual (2012)
You don't need to be the smartest person to be the most effective. Being effective means not just mastering the facts but figuring out how to move your agenda forward.
UC Santa Cruz, Rachel Carson College (2019)
Will you let darker angels win as you add fire to the flame, or will you seek out and spread real news?
Dalhousie University (2017)
Entrepreneurship is an art, not a job.
The measure of a life is not time or money. It’s the impact you make serving God, your family, community, and country. Your report card is whether you leave the world a better place.
UC Santa Cruz, Rachel Carson College (2019)
Light a path for the better angels. The world is counting on you.
Dalhousie University (2017)
Silicon Valley didn’t have smarter people; they just had people who were wired to take different risks, who actually came out to California to take risks and to get away from the status quo.
The question is whether you'll tell your children that this decade was the beginning of a new dark age, or whether it was the time of something new and wonderful.
Dalhousie University (2017)
A startup is in reality a 'faith-based enterprise' on day one. To turn the vision into reality and the faith into facts (and a profitable company), a startup must test those guesses, or hypotheses, and find out which are correct.
The Four Steps to the Epiphany (2013)
Most often, the idea is a small part of the overall company. That's what has been screwed up with the last 30 years of grant funding. A good idea is not going to help anyone unless it succeeds in getting to the commercialization stage.
I’ve watched how, in a blink of an eye, technology went from products used by the very few, to ending up in the pockets of billions, bringing social change and corporate disruption.
Dalhousie University (2017)
The Silicon Valley culture is "I can win and you can win" - it isn't a sum-zero game.
Interview with Steve Blank (2013)
Number one is "Do you have curiosity?" Number two is "Does it translate to imagination?" But number three is "Did it translate to action?" That’s the difference between someone with an idea and someone who is an entrepreneur.
Mentorship is a two-way street. While I was learning from them [brilliant mentors] - and their years of experience and expertise - what I was giving back was equally important. I brought fresh insights and new perspectives to their thinking.
Strategy Is not a to-do list.
The Silicon Valley entrepreneurial culture used to be limited to a few entrepreneurial clusters. Now the Internet has spread that culture everywhere.
Interview with Steve Blank (2013)
The safest bet about your new business is that you’re wrong... A startup is not about executing a series of knowns. Most startups are facing a series of unknowns — unknown customer segments, unknown customer needs, unknown product feature set, etc.
Start-ups are not smaller versions of large companies. They do not unfold in accordance with master plans. The ones that ultimately succeed go quickly from failure to failure, all the while adapting, iterating on, and improving their initial ideas as they continually learn from customers.