A couple of weeks ago I stumbled upon a cool website called startupquote.com. As I was examining the site I noticed encouraging words of wisdom from some very successful people such as Larry Page, co-founder of Google, Seth Godin, founder of Squidoo, and Pete Cashmore, founder of Mashable. I thought to myself, wouldn’t it be great to create a post and bring together a collection of great inspirational quotes to get us motivated for some of our own projects that we are working on? What’s also nice about startupquote.com is that you can submit your own words of wisdom and they will tweet it for you. So with no further ado here are my favorite start-up quotes from some of the most influential people in the tech and design industry. Enjoy!
Want more articles on inspiration? Check out some of my previous posts:
I love well-designed products that combine form and functionality.
Larry Page
Always deliver more than expected.
Biz Stone
Creativity comes from constraint.
Edwin Catmull
If everyone is trying to prevent error, it screws things up.
Jason Calacanis
Be amazing, be everywhere, be real.
Rob Kalin
The last 10% it takes to launch something takes as much energy as the first 90%.
Pierre Omidyar
Whatever future you’re building, don’t try to program everything.
MG Siegler
Most users have no imagination. They want what they know. When they say they want the future, what they are really saying is that they want a moderately updated version of the past.
Alexis Ohanian
If you want to succeed, you’ve got to be okay to just lose control.
Michael Dell
Don’t spend so much time trying to choose the perfect opportunity, that you miss the right opportunity.
Mark Forrester
Grow a thick skin and be prepared to take criticism.
Bob Parsons
When you’re ready to quit, you’re closer than you think.
Garrett Camp
Stay self-funded as long as possible.
Andrew Grove
Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive.
Joe Kraus
Set measurable goals, measure relative to competition.
Angelo Sotira
Every time we launch a feature, people yell at us.
Walt Disney
We don’t make movies to make money, we make money to make more movies.
Mark Zuckerberg
I like to pride myself on thinking pretty long term, but not that long term.
Evan Williams
Be a user of your own product. Make it better based on your own desires. But don’t trick yourself into thinking you are your user.
Reid Hoffman
If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.
Mark Cuban
Make your product easier to buy than your competition, or you will find your customers buying from them, not you.
Aaron Patzer
Observe the world around you - everything you do, and especially everything you hate to do.
Jake Nickell
Don’t make decisions based on fear.
Gregg Spiridellis
We won’t risk the integrity of our brand by putting a can of soda in the foreground.
Iain Dodsworth
In deciding whether to include a service, look at how it fits in with the overall vision.
Caterina Fake
Working on the right thing is probably more important than working hard.
Matt Brezina
Starting a company is like getting married and having a kid.
Rands
Criticism is the best sign you’re onto something.
Joshua Schachter
If you need scale in order to create value, it’s hard to get scale, because there’s little incentive for the first people to use the product.
Michael Arrington
We live in a world where you’re not being eaten by a lion when you fail, you just have to get another job.
Scott Belsky
Among idealists and visionaries, there is no shortage of good intent, but there’s often a shortage of discipline.
Pete Cashmore
We are really competing against ourselves, we have no control over how other people perform.
Masaru Ibuka
The key to success for everything in business, science and technology is never to follow the others.
Seth Godin
There are lots of good reasons to abandon a project. Having a little competition is not one of them.
Larry Page
Always deliver more than expected.
Mark Pincus
Not having a clear goal leads to death by a thousand compromises.
Marco ArmentArment
Making a product better often requires removing features.
Andrew Mason
It takes some experimentation to figure out what people like and don’t like.
Omar Hamoui
If someone asks you for something, provide them with a clear “No” or a delivery date.
Jason Fried
Projections are bullshit. They’re just guesses.
Chris Dixon
People capable of making enough money to never work again are the same people who will never quit working.
Jack Ma
Forget about your competitors, just focus on your customers.
Jason Cohen
Branding is what you do, not what you call it.
Warren Buffet
Pick out associates whose behavior is better than yours and you’ll drift in that direction.
Sam Tarantino
It’s in everyone’s nature to say “You can’t do this”. The world will see.
Mark Frauenfelder
To be successful, you have to have quantity of quality.
Sam Altman
The startups that do well are the ones that are working all the time.
Andrew Lacy
When you have rich exchange of ideas, stuff happens.
Ben Horowitz
Planning is valuable, tho the plan is usually useless.
Tim O’Reilly
Money is like gasoline during a road trip. You don’t want to run out of gas on your trip, but you’re not doing a tour of gas stations.
Anthony Volodkin
Be undeniably good. No marketing effort or social media buzzword can be a substitute for that.
Dina Kaplan
You need to keep your head down and build a great product before you raise money.
Paul Farnell
To us it’s not just about money, it’s about enjoying what we do and believing in it.
Ryan Freitas
Your reputation is more important than your paycheck, and your integrity is worth more than your career.
Salman Khan
Don’t throw out buzz words without really knowing what is going on behind it.
Dave McClure
Features are like having sex. You make one mistake and you have to support it for life.
Gary Vaynerchuk
We’re not really good at knowing what we want, and we are very quick to say “this sucks”. That’s where the opportunity lies.
Marc Andreessen
The difference between a vision and a hallucination is that other people can see the vision.
Adam Smith
Expect and hope that a quarter of your projects fail. If not, you’re not taking enough risks.
Spencer Fry
When bootstrapping, you need to find a team that’s willing to work for nothing and spend their off hours with you.
Drew Houston
Learn early, learn often.
Noah Everett
Don’t compromise what you wouldn’t want for a quick buck.
