Quotes for Entrepreneurs – January 2010

January 31st, 2010 Sean Murphy

Get them while they are hot on http://www.twitter.com/skmurphy

“Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.”
G. K. Chesterton

“No amount of sophistication is going to allay the fact that all your knowledge is about the past and all your decisions are about the future.” Ian E. Wilson

“Just because you’re good at something doesn’t mean the market cares any longer.” Seth Godin “Learning from Groucho Marx”

• “Just because you’re good at something doesn’t mean the market cares any longer.  It’s extremely difficult to repair the market. Find a market that will respect and pay for the work you can do. Technology companies have been running this race for years. Now, all of us must.

“To sway an audience, you must watch them as you speak.” C. Kent Wright

• This is from the introduction to his book “Unaccustomed as I am…“  an anthology of quotes for “after dinner speakers.” He offers it as item 6 in a list of 7 “don’ts.”
• 6. Don’t in any circumstances read your speech, but speak from notes if you must. To sway an audience, you must watch them as you speak.”

“How did you go bankrupt?” “Two ways, gradually and then suddenly.”
Ernest Hemingway “The Sun Also Rises”

“It is not written anywhere that raising money is the first step in starting a company. Or any step at all.” Venture Hacks

• This was a tweet from their twitter feed that is not attributed and doesn’t appear on their site. I assume that it is original with Nivi or Naval.

“I’m not happy. I’m cheerful. There’s a difference. A happy woman has no cares at all. A cheerful woman has cares but has learned how to deal with them.” Beverly Sills

“A million man years has been spent on Artificial Intelligence.”
Monica Anderson in “Could AI Be Easy?”

“On average you have to earn 2.5X to be as happy working for someone else as working for yourself.” Scott Andrew Shane in “The Illusion of Entrepreneurship: the Costly Myths that Entrepreneurs, Investors, and Policy Makers Live By”

• Full quote “There’s another reason that people aren’t necessarily foolish when they start businesses, despite the poor financial performance of the average startup. Entrepreneurship provides a very important non-financial benefit: it makes people happier. [...] In fact, studies show that to be as satisfied when he is working for others as he is when he is working for himself, the average person needs to earn two-and-a-half times as much money!”
• What makes entrepreneurs more satisfied:
  • Flexibility to work and care for small children at the same time
  • Working in a small organization where they can interact directly with everyone in the company
  • the autonomy, flexibility, and greater control over their lives
• By implication, if entrepreneurs can offer flexibility, interaction with everyone on the team, autonomy they can compete more effectively for employees.

“We don’t encourage people to quit their jobs, gainful employment is a legitimate funding vehicle in this financial market.” Adeo Ressi of the Founder Institute in “Silicon Valley’s New Sport: Extreme Bootstrapping”

“The universe is run by the complex interweaving of three elements: energy, matter, and enlightened self-Interest.”
J. Michael Straczynski

• It’s a line Straczynski added for G’Kar speaking to Garibaldi in Babylon 5: “Survivors”

“In the future, everyone will be famous for 15 people”
Momus (Nick Currie) in “Pop Stars Neine Danke“

• Referenced in “Sean Murphy — I don’t read read him regularly but hear that I should.”

“I have been described as ‘impatient for action, but patient for results.’”
John Bogle in “On Leadership”

• There are a number of excellent speeches cataloged in the “Bogle Financial Markets Research Center“

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