101 motivational quotes for startups

Being in a startup is tough, especially if you're the founders and you are struggling to keep the startup alive. But rest assured that you're not alone. Here are some quotes from people who have been there and know what it feels like. Be it words of advice, or just knowing that you're not alone, I hope some of these help you get through whatever down times! :)

1. “Chase the vision, not the money, the money will end up following you.” Tony Hsieh, CEO Zappos
2. “I try not to make any decisions that I’m not excited about.” Jake Nickell, Co-founder, Threadless
3. “Innovation is not about money. It’s about the people you have, how you’re led, and how much you get it.” Steve Jobs, CEO, Apple
4. “The value of an idea lies in the using of it” Thomas Edison, General Electric Co-founder
5. “Make every detail perfect and limit the number of details to perfect.” Jack Dorsey, Twitter co-founder
6. Always choose your investors based on who you want to work with, be friends with, and get advice from. Never, ever, choose your investors based on valuation.” Jason Goldberg, American film and television producer
7. “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” Tim O’Reilly, O’Reilly Media founder and CEO
8. “Be undeniably good. No marketing effort or social media buzzword can be a substitute for that” Anthony Volodkin, Hype Machine founder
9. “Get big quietly, so you don’t tip off potential competitors” Chris Dixon, Andreesen Horowitz investor
10. “If passion drives you, let reason hold the reins.” Benjamin Franklin, Founding Father, Entrepreneur
11. “It’s hard to do a really good job on anything you don’t think about in the shower” Paul Graham, YCombinator co-founder
12. “Entrepreneur is someone who has a vision for something and a want to create” David Karp, Tumblr founder and CEO
13. “Don’t worry about people stealing your design work. Worry about the day they stop” Jeffrey Zeldman, A List Apart Publisher
14. “If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late” Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn co-founder
15. “When you find an idea that you just can’t stop thinking about, that’s probably a good one to pursue” Josh James, Omniture CEO and co-founder
16. “I don’t look to jump over 7-foot bars — I look for 1-foot bars that I can step over” Warren Buffet, Berkshire Hathaway chairman and CEO
17. “Embrace what you don’t know, especially in the beginning, because what you don’t know can become your greatest asset. It ensures that you will absolutely be doing things different from everybody else” Sara Blakely, SPANX founder
18. “The most dangerous poison is the feeling of achievement. The antidote is to every evening think what can be done better tomorrow” Ingvar Kamprad, Founder of IKEA
19. “I never took a day off in my twenties. Not one” Bill Gates, Microsoft co-founder
20. “Being too early is worse than being too late for a new product” Don Norman, Author, Design of Everyday Things
21. “Diligence is the mother of good luck” Benjamin Franklin, Founding Father of the United States
22. “You don’t learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing and falling over” Richard Branson, Virgin Group founder
23. “Sustaining a successful business is a hell of a lot of work, and staying hungry is half the battle” Wendy Tan White, MoonFruit co-founder and CEO
24. “The day you start your company you are over your budget and behind schedule – Normans Law” Don Norman, Author, Design of Everyday Things
25. “Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits.” Thomas A. Edison, American inventor and businessman
26. “Always look for the fool in the deal. If you don’t find one, it’s you.” Mark Cuban, AXS TV chairman and entrepreneur
27. “It’s not about ideas. It’s about making ideas happen” Scott Belsky, Behance co-founder
28. “Don’t worry about failure; you only have to be right once” Drew Houston, American internet entrepreneur who is best known for being the founder and CEO of Dropbox
29. “Fail often so you can succeed sooner” Tom Kelley, Ideo partner
30. “Best startups generally come from somebody needing to scratch an itch” Michael Arrington, TechCrunch founder and co-editor
31. “The only thing worse than starting something and failing… is not starting something” Seth Godin, Squidoo founder, author and blogger
32. “When I’m old and dying, I plan to look back on my life and say ‘wow, that was an adventure,’ not ‘wow, I sure felt safe” Tom Preston-Werner, Github co-founder
33. “If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door” Milton Berle,  comedian and actor
34. “I doubt I’ll ever go back to corporate work. Once you see the light, there is no turning back” Magnus Jepson, WooThemes co-founder
35. “Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently” Henry Ford, American industrialist, the founder of the Ford Motor Company
36. “If you define yourself by how you differ from the competition, you’re probably in trouble” Omar Hamoui, AdMob co-founder
37. “A person who is quietly confident makes the best leader” Fred Wilson, Union Square Ventures co-founder
38. “The critical ingredient is getting off your butt and doing something. It’s as simple as that. A lot of people have ideas, but there are few who decide to do something about them now. Not tomorrow. Not next week. But today. The true entrepreneur is a doer, not a dreamer.” Nolan Bushnell, American engineer and entrepreneur who founded both Atari, Inc. and the Chuck E. Cheese’s Pizza-Time Theaters chain
39. “I don’t believe that old cliche that good things come to those who wait. I think good things come to those who want something so bad they can’t sit still” Ashton Kutcher, Actor and investor
40. “The secret to successful hiring is this: look for the people who want to change the world” Marc Benioff, Salesforce CEO
41. “Ideas are commodity. Execution of them is not.” Michael Dell, Dell chairman and CEO
42. “If you just work on stuff that you like and you’re passionate about, you don’t have to have a master plan with how things will play out.”  Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder
43. “A ‘startup’ is a company that is confused about – 1. What its product is. 2. Who its customers are. 3. How to make money” Dave McClure, 500Startups co-founder
44. “Energy and persistence conquer all things.” Benjamin Franklin, Founding Father, Entrepreneur
45. “In the end, a vision without the ability to execute it is probably a hallucination” Steve Case, AOL co-founder
46. “You’ve got to get up every morning with determination if you’re going to go to bed with satisfaction.”  George Lorimer, journalist and author
47. “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning” Bill Gates, Microsoft co-founder
48. “Well done is better than well said.” Benjamin Franklin, Founding Father, Entrepreneur
49. “I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance” Steve Jobs, American entrepreneur, marketer, and inventor, who was the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Apple Inc
50. “Wonder what your customer really wants? Ask. Don’t tell” Lisa Stone, BlogHer co-founder and CEO
51. “Behold the turtle, he makes progress only when he sticks his neck out” Bruce Levin
52. “Your reputation is more important than your paycheck, and your integrity is worth more than your career.” Ryan Freitas, About.me co-founder
53. “The best way to predict the future is to create it.” Peter Drucker, Austrian-born American management consultant, educator, and author
54. “There is no man living that can not do more than he thinks he can.” Henry Ford, American industrialist, the founder of the Ford Motor Company
55. “Its better to be late than to be early to Market. Late you can catchup.” Don Norman, Author, Design of Everyday Things
56. “Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere” Albert Einstein, German-born theoretical physicist
57. “You jump off a cliff and you assemble an airplane on the way down” Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn co-founder
58. “I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody” Bill Cosby, American comedian, actor, author, television producer, educator, musician and activist
59. “The most valuable thing you can make is a mistake- you can’t learn anything from being perfect.” Adam Osborne,  Thailand-born British-American author, book and software publisher, computer designer and entrepreneur
60. “To win without risk is to triumph without glory” Corneille
61. “To succeed… You need to find something to hold on to, something to motivate you, something to inspire you.” Tony Dorsett, Former NFL player
62. “We need to accept that we won’t always make the right decisions, that we’ll screw up royally sometimes – understanding that failure is not the opposite of success, it’s part of success.” Arianna Huffington, Co-founder, The Huffington Post
63. “Learn by doing. Theory is nice, but nothing replaces actual experience.” Tony Hsieh, American internet entrepreneur and venture capitalist. He is the CEO of the online shoe and clothing shop Zappos.com
64. “Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” Steve Jobs, CEO, Apple
65. “Quality means doing it right when no one is looking.” Henry Ford, American industrialist, the founder of the Ford Motor Company
66. “To be successful, you have to have your heart in your business, and your business in your heart.” Thomas Watson, Sr., Former chairman and CEO of International Business Machines
67. “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” Charles Darwin, English naturalist and geologist
68. “There’s a way to do it better – find it.” Thomas A. Edison, American inventor and businessman
69. “Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it’s really how it works” Steve Jobs, CEO, Apple
70. “Honesty is the best policy.” Benjamin Franklin, Founding Father, Entrepreneur
71. “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, Nothing is going to get better. It’s not.” Henry Ford, American industrialist, the founder of the Ford Motor Company
72. “User experience is the whole experience, the closest i can think of is a trip to disneyland” Don Norman, Author, Design of Everyday Things
73. “The golden rule for every business man is this: “Put yourself in your customer’s place.” Orison Swett Marden, Successful hotel owner and spiritual author in the New Thought Movement
74. “Always deliver more than expected.” Larry Page, Google co-founder
75. “You’ve got to say, I think that if I keep working at this and want it badly enough I can have it. It’s called perseverance.” Lee Iacocca, Businessman, 18th-greatest American CEO of all time
76. “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” Bill Gates, American business magnate, investor, programmer, inventor and philanthropist, co-founder Microsoft
77. “Fearlessness is like a muscle. I know from my own life that the more I exercise it the more natural it becomes to not let my fears run me”  Arianna Huffington, The Huffington Post Media Group president and EIC
78. “Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do.” Steve Jobs, CEO, Apple
79. “The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.” Peter F. Drucker, Austrian-born American management consultant, educator, and author
80. “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” Thomas Edison, American inventor and businessman
81. “Theory is splendid but until put into practice, it is valueless.”  James Cash Penney, J.C. Penney founder
82. “You don’t need to have a 100-person company to develop that idea.” Larry Page, Google co-founder
83. “Hell, there are no rules here – we’re trying to accomplish something.” Thomas A. Edison, American inventor and businessman
84. “One today is worth two tomorrows.” Benjamin Franklin, Founding Father, Entrepreneur
85. “The one thing Startups need is Focus” Don Norman, Author, Design of Everyday Things
86. “It’s better to make a few people really happy than to make a lot of people semi-happy.” Paul Graham, YCombinator co-founder
87. “Turn a perceived risk into an asset.” Aaron Patzer, Founder, Mint
88. “Don’t find fault, find a remedy. Anybody can complain.” Henry Ford, American industrialist, the founder of the Ford Motor Company
89. “If you’re going to be thinking anything, you might as well think big.” Donald Trump, American business magnate, investor, television personality and author. He is the chairman and president of The Trump Organization and the founder of Trump Entertainment Resorts
90. “The important thing is not being afraid to take a chance. Remember, the greatest failure is to not try. Once you find something you love to do, be the best at doing it.” Debbi Fields,  founder and current spokesperson of Mrs. Fields Bakeries
91. “The second most important thing for entrepreneurs is to build what people need” Don Norman, Author, Design of Everyday Things
92. “An invention that is quickly accepted will turn out to be a rather trivial alteration of something that has already existed.”  Edwin Land, Polaroid co-founder
93. “I knew that if I failed I wouldn’t regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not trying.” Jeff Bezos, American Internet entrepreneur and investor. He is a technology entrepreneur who has played a key role in the growth of e-commerce as the founder and CEO of Amazon.com
94. “There is no substitute for hard work.” Thomas A. Edison, American inventor and businessman
95. “A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.” Henry Ford, American industrialist, the founder of the Ford Motor Company
96. “Make your team feel respected, empowered, and genuinely excited about the company’s mission.” Tim Westergren, Founder, Pandora
97. “We try to solve very complicated problems without letting people know how complicated the problem was.” Jonathan Ive, Senior Vice President, Apple
98. “Make every detail perfect and limit the number of details to perfect.”  Jack Dorsey, American web developer and businessman widely known as a co-founder and co-creator of Twitter, and as the founder and CEO of Square
99. “Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.” Steve Jobs, CEO, Apple
100. “Before everything else, getting ready is the secret of success.” Henry Ford, American industrialist, the founder of the Ford Motor Company
101. “Make the world a better place one green dot at a time” Don Norman, Author, Design of Everyday Things

How Elon Musk does it

How Elon Musk does it

With the news of the hyperloop being in the horizon of the next 2 years, Elon Musk's new muse has suddenly become reality. When I first heard about the hyperloop idea a few years back, I thought this was a joke from someone who has gotten too rich and was investing in something that was way too far into the future. Yet, with the latest news of the hyperloop filing for a building permit in California, Elon Musk and his team proved me wrong. This is just one of the many reasons that I loop up to Elon Musk as another role model for entrepreneurs. Here are some of his characteristics that I believe brought him thus far (but not sure how much further, considering his investment in literally out-of-the-world technologies)

1. Diversify your investments. Contrary to Buffett's school of thought (of being focused, and going all the way for a single bet), diversification still works best for most people. It minimizes risk. Musk once said that he saw the future in 3 areas - internet, environment, space. Despite the 3 areas being barely similar in any aspect, he dedicated his time, money and life into all 3 areas - PayPal, Tesla and SpaceX. 
2. Think BIG!  What more to say, with Elon Musk's big scale ideas that made Hyperloop, SpaceX and SolarCity. Dare to be different, Dare to disrupt, Dare to change the world. 
3. Be technically strong. Elon Musk taught himself computer programming, received a Bachelor's in Physics (and attempted a PhD in Applied Physics). His technical background made him not afraid of developing new technology, and placed him CTO of his own company. The future evolves all around technology. The wildest and most successfully disruptive companies involved a new technology. Think computers, cell phones, light bulbs. Don't be afraid of technology. Instead, embrace it more dearly than your life. 
4. Don't stop trying. Musk is well known for his wildly successful PayPal and Tesla stories. But less known is that he started entrepreneurship at a very young age. Musk created a video game at age 12 and sold it for approximately $500.
5. Move to the ideal location. Despite the internet and virtual workplaces becoming all part and parcel of our lives, there are still "ideal" places for starting companies. Elon was born in South Africa, but spent a large part of his entrepreneurial life in the United States of America - mainly California. Not saying that anything non-American place is not good for starting companies, but there are certain regions that are better suited for certain types of startups. For Musk, the entrepreneurial and tech-savvy Californians definitely played a major role in kick-starting his technology-based companies. 

PR hacking -- getting your first hundred media coverage

I recently attended another meetup on PR hacking, and how to get 200+ media outlets in 21 countries to love your startup. The speaker was Ben Kaplan, founder and CEO of PR Hacker, which basically helps startups hack their way through marketing their product. It was a very interesting session, and I had some great takeaways from Ben:

1. Relate your product to timely news or generate the news yourself. Why wait for news to match your product, when you can create your own? For example, if your product is about how to help improve posture of office workers, link it to a recent piece of news that mentioned a celebrity getting ill from poor posture. If there are no relevant news available, generate your own news about how facing the computer for long hours results in bad posture and poor health. Do surveys and interview people to get statistics of how many people get back aches, and how many of those work at a desk-bound job. (Of course, do make sure that your news are reliable) 
2. Make it easy for media outlets to say "Yes!" Customize your tactic of contacting media outlets to each one of them. For example, find the best times to contact a morning show producer, which would probably be different from the best times to contact an evening news producer. Measure the response rates with the various methods, and use the best ones for other similar media outlets. And of course, leverage the numbers game in your favor -- the more you contact, the more positive response you will receive. Another trick to increasing the number of "yes"es, is to choose email over a phone call. Why? Because if you were contacting the wrong person, it is much easier to forward an email than to pass your phone number to the right contact.
3. Create strong "traction steps". A media hit is not the ultimate goal -- it is essential to follow up after the exposure. A traction step would be the next step of action you hope the viewer would take, be it visit your website, sign up for a beta, or call a phone number. Include that action step in your media exposure, so your 'contact' with the audience does not end right there. 
4. Adapt your approach to the specific media type. To make an impact, tell a good story, and optimize it! Optimization is done largely by trial and error, and takes a lot of time. However, the effort is definitely worth it, because reaching out to media without an optimal story line is almost as good as not getting any media exposure at all! Try different ways of telling stories, try different stories, basically try, try, and try more! You'll definitely get better as you go (and remember to measure the impact of each iteration)
5. Create waves of media coverage. Having one giant wave of media coverage is not sufficient. Instead, when the ripples from that first wave has almost died down, start another wave, with a different / wider set of media. When that dies down, start yet another one. Such multiple waves not only keep your customers coming, but may also serve to interest potential investors, when they realize there's always something new whenever they meet with you. An active startup is definitely much better than a stale one ;)

From Bench to Boardroom

Published in the journal Nature Biotechnology, Bassil Dahiyat describes his journey from being a PhD student at California Institute of Technology, to being CEO of a life science startup. He offers the following advice to anyone trying to follow a similar path:

1. Establish credibility. 'Nuff said. 
2. Develop business model for CUSTOMERS, not your product/technology/service. A big tendency for entrepreneurs with academic backgrounds is to have the product ready before even considering the market or the customers. The product is usually their expertise, and was developed from grad school / postdoc and the like, instead of finding a customer and market need first. This reversal of sequence sometimes leads to not having a product-market-fit, which is essential for success. (More about how to develop product-market-fit next time)
3. Network, network, network!! No matter how well known you are in the academic field where you developed your product, the business will involve many other people -- partners, investors, customers, payers etc. Don't imagine that being well known in academia equates to being well known everywhere else. Attend conferences, join meetups, speed dating, talk to everyone. Some say 80% of the start-up effort should go into marketing. Not only will this network get you investors and customers, it will also bring extremely valuable feedback to make the product better. 
4. Embrace change. Sometimes, academia trains a person to become very rigid (faithful?) and stubborn. That has to be relaxed a little. Pivoting a start-up is very common, and may often lead to something much better. Be agile and adapt to opportunities. Recognize quickly when something is not going right, and restructure. 

Dahiyat (2012). Stranger in a strange land? Nature Biotechnology. 30(11), 1030-1032.

Growth Hacking -- getting your first 1000 customers

Being involved in early-stage startups, we always think about getting 100,000 customers, 1 million customers etc, when we pitch to investors. Because that's where the money is. However, what REALLY is difficult (and one of the many major reasons startups don't even get past the initial phase), is how to even get your first 100 and first 1000 customers. Customer / User traction builds upon EXISTING customers/users. Virality, no matter how inherent and how great, also builds upon existing relationships. But why doesn't anyone talk about the initial growth? The first 1000 customers cannot be obtained by virality nor networks. After the first 50-100 customers that are usually family/friends, where do we get the remaining 900 people to start building traction?

Finally, this very important but often forgotten topic was addressed at a recent meetup I attended, organized by a team of students from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, called "Igniters". The speaker was James Kennedy, founder of piehole.tv. They had recently obtained their first 1000 customers, so James was a perfect person to speak about the topic -- both success and fresh in mind. A few take home points that I personally felt were new and useful:

1. Brainstorm on 30 different ways to get leads, and 30 different ways to get conversion. Getting leads (the connection and the list of people) and conversion (leads becoming sales) is very different, so methods for both need to be brainstormed separately. 
2. Delete the 1st 20 things on both lists. WHY!??!?! Didn't you just brainstorm 30, why delete 20 of those now? The reason being -- the first 20 is probably extremely common, and everyone else is already doing it! Not to say that you shouldn't use any of them anymore (tried and tested), but if you want to be different, or if you aim to disrupt, go for the last 10 that you had to squeeze dry your brains to get to. 
3. Test only a couple of methods each month, using a metric to measure effectiveness of each method. Discard the ineffective ones after each month, and test new methods. Keep using the effective ones, and eventually dedicate most of your resources to the most effective.
4. A/B testing. Optimizely is a useful site to help you do your A/B test. (Hey, they have big-name customers such as Walt Disney Company, Fox media, Starbucks, techcrunch!) 

Let me know if any of these were useful in helping YOU get your first 1000 customers! :)