From the very first inkling of a concept, founders need to gather a target group of five to ten potential users to begin the feedback loop. We all think we know how the market will react to new ideas, but actual users live with the pros and cons of the existing market conditions every day. They are the market experts.
Books about technology start-ups have a pattern. First, there’s the grand vision of the founders, then the heroic journey of producing new worlds from all-night coding and caffeine abuse, and finally, the grand finale: immense wealth and secular sainthood. Let’s call it the Jobs Narrative.
We need to have more women founders stepping up to kind of own their own story and ask for what they want and tell success stories and start really building confidence that these stories are out there.
Our founders did not oust George III in order for us to crown Richard I.
The Founders who crafted our Constitution and Bill of Rights were careful to draft a Constitution of limited powers – one that would protect Americans’ liberty at all times – both in war, and in peace.
Most Fortune 500 companies began as small start-ups whose entrepreneurial founders slowly developed the infrastructure, hired the staff, sourced manufacturers or built their own factory, and created distribution, sales, and marketing plans.
Because of my upbringing, I believe in things like limited government, fiscal responsibility and personal accountability. I believe in the wisdom of our founders and the sanctity of our Constitution.
The better I get at investing in and helping companies, the result is more founders who are excited to work with me and more of my wonderful limited partners insisting I take piles of their loot to keep it all going.
The consensus of the founders was, we don’t want no government: we want limited but effective government.
He was born in 1741, a descendant of the Rhode Island equivalent of royalty. The first Benedict Arnold had been one of the colony’s founders, and subsequent generations had helped to establish the Arnolds as solid and respected citizens.
The founders had a strong distrust for centralized power in a federal government. So they created a government with checks and balances. This was to prevent any branch of the government from becoming too powerful.
In many ways, products are a reflection of their founders, and I consider myself a geek. But aside from that, Imgur just organically evolved into the epicenter of geek culture.
Interest in the Founders has risen and fallen over time, as has admiration for them and their accomplishments.
When the founders retire, it’s always difficult for the second generation and third generation.
We have this powerful lever at Google Ventures, which is to invest $200 million a year. This is a huge lever. It’s not all going into one place; it’s going into lots of start ups and founders and entrepreneurs, all of which are levers to try and change the world in one way or another.
‘Founder’ is a state of mind, not a job description, and if done right, even CEOs who join after day 1 can become founders.
In revering the Founders, we undervalue ourselves and sabotage our own efforts to make improvements – necessary improvements – in the republican experiment they began.
I do have some very strong thoughts on Glenn Simpson, who is one of the founders of Fusion GPS, based on his conduct in trying to discredit me and Sergei Magnitsky.
The best founders are extremely thoughtful and have an eye for quality. I don’t know if there’s any generic advice here that would be helpful. Startup knowledge is a moving target.
Every time a twenty-something CEO turns down a multibillion-dollar offer for a company that has little or no revenues, it hits a raw nerve in me. Unlike most professionals, I am not shocked by the seemingly bizarre behavior of those founders who pursue their vision beyond all rational thought or monetary reward.
Entrepreneurship is the very back bone of our country and what makes us great – we are a nation of founders.
Founders need sizable egos to believe that what they are creating is good enough to change the world. What makes for great co-founders is having those egos focused on complementary, not competing, skills.
As one of the founders of Three 6 Mafia, I would like to see the group get back together, you know. But I am definitely thinking about it and would like to see it happen.
One of the biggest mistakes that founders can make is doing something that maybe seems like a great idea, and seems like a good use of time, but actually isn’t measurable, significant, incremental growth.
Whatever America’s founders believed about Christianity – and they believed a wide range of things – they clearly rejected the idea of an established church.
Founders, presuming they know their customers, assume they know all the features customers need.
Something like a quarter of the founders that have gone through Excelerate and Techstars are women. I’m incredibly proud of that.
When our Founders created this great experiment in self-governance, the House of Representatives became, by design, the body closest to the people. We are the most accountable, and we must be the most transparent.
We do think founders should be treated like athletes, going for gold really hard.
Our Founders always wondered about how long it would last. The price of liberty is everlasting vigilance. You’ve got to be on your guard every minute or you will lose it.
My personal failures aside, 500 has long supported a diverse community of entrepreneurs including women, minorities, LGTBQ, international, and other overlooked founders.
I don’t think that our Founders would believe that America could long prosper if the people were not readers.
What I worry about would be that you essentially have two chambers, the House and the Senate, but you have simply, majoritarian, absolute power on either side. And that’s just not what the founders intended.
Because one of the main jobs of a CEO is to set the vision and strategy for the company, I’m a big believer in making one of the founders the default CEO.
Our Constitution exists to secure individual freedom, the essential condition of human flourishing. Liberty is not provided by government; liberty preexists government. It’s our natural birthright, not a gift from the sovereign. Our founders upended things and divided power to enshrine a promise, not a process.
The American people voted for a president, Donald Trump, who’s very tough, very strong, very aggressive on terrorism, but at the same time smart. At the same time sophisticated. At the same time, heeding the wisdom of our founders who warned about entangling foreign engagement.
There are certain historical figures of such importance that we need to know everything about them, which is why books about Napoleon, Lincoln, Julius Caesar, Joan of Arc, Queen Elizabeth I, and the great religious founders continue to proliferate; these lives require constant reevaluation and interpretation.
In life, in the media, and everything, people focus way too much on founders.
In essence, Clinton’s Anti-Terrorism Act would set up a national police force, over the long-dead bodies of the founders.
The challenge is always before us. Whenever we lose sight of the principles that mattered to our founders we run into trouble.
The biggest start-up successes – from Henry Ford to Bill Gates to Mark Zuckerberg – were pioneered by people from solidly middle-class backgrounds. These founders were not wealthy when they began. They were hungry for success, but knew they had a solid support system to fall back on if they failed.
Unlike people, companies outlive their founders and their leaders.
I think co-working spaces, incubators, and accelerators outside of the Bay Area do a lot to foster a local startup scene – which is really important for early founders, but I also think that exposure to the Bay Area is extremely valuable for startups.
I tell founders all the time, 99.9 percent chance of failure.
Too often, founders make decisions before determining whether they are the right thing to do. These decisions often create chaos in their companies where people are having to jump from the last ‘great idea’ to yet another unproven-and-about-to-be-poorly-executed one.
Men and women motivated by faith have every right and obligation to bring their belief and commitment to the public debate. However, that is very different from the governmental establishment of religion that our founders warned against and our constitution prohibits.
There’s nothing more invigorating than being deeply involved with a small company and a young team of founders out to do something incredibly special.
I joined the board of Etsy when it was just three founders, and I helped recruit the COO and CTO, Chad Dickerson, who later became the CEO.
One of the things that’s so interesting when talking to minority founders specifically is that there is really a knowledge gap in understanding what the risk-reward profile is for doing a startup.
I see the government operating the way the founders intended.
It is extremely gratifying to see success like exhibited by the founders of Instagram!
I am one of the founders of Hip-Hop along with my brothers Kool DJ Herc and Grandmaster Flash.
My parents were founders of the Cuban Communist Party, and I grew up extremely poor.
