Top 45 Venture Capital Quotes

Venture capital is about capturing the value between the startup phase and the public company phase.

I often say Policy Planning is very analogous to a venture capital firm. A venture capital firm sees an interesting idea and puts money behind it; in Policy Planning, we look for promising ideas and then put contacts and relationships behind it.

I succeeded at venture capital because, for years, I rarely thought about or spent time on anything else. Anything less than that unmitigated full commitment leaves me feeling frustrated and ineffective.

One of the fun things about venture capital is you are constantly learning new ideas and strategies from one business and then applying them to others.

Solyndra’s failure isn’t a reason for the government to give up on alternative energy, any more than the failure of Pets.com during the Internet bubble means that venture capital should steer clear of tech projects.

Where micro-finance focuses on small loans to individual, low-income women, think of Acumen Fund more like a venture capital fund.

I am a partner at CrunchFund, a venture capital firm with investments in many startups around the world. I am also a limited partner in many other venture funds which have their own startup investments.

Clearly, there is a gender imbalance when it comes to venture capital and entrepreneurship.

I like most of the venture capitalists I know; they’re smart, well-intended guys who genuinely enjoy helping entrepreneurs succeed. And I love venture capital and investment capital of all categories – its economic impact is proven. The more of it the better.

I’d been a great angel investor, but professional venture capital was clearly not the right thing for me.

So much of venture capital is pattern recognition.

We need to divorce ourselves from venture capital as an occupation and focus on using capital as a way to take really big bets on things that just seem totally audacious.

Finance is critical. If sufficient investment is made in infrastructure and venture capital is made available, there will be a big improvement in the situation.

There are lots of ways to make money in venture capital, and there are even more ways to be mediocre. The industry has too much money and too many smart people chasing too few great entrepreneurs.

There’s nothing wrong with raising venture capital. Many lean startups are ambitious and are able to deploy large amounts of capital. What differentiates them is their disciplined approach to determining when to spend money: after the fundamental elements of the business model have been empirically validated.

So many folks in the venture capital business are sheep that just want to follow the herd. They are momentum investors purchasing highly illiquid investments. That is a recipe for disaster.

I try getting in front of as many opportunities as possible, but in the late ’90s, I had no idea that I’d end up being CFO of a technology company. I’d no idea what venture capital was.

Inspirational content really resonates, like how to raise venture capital.

While it won’t solve all the world’s ills – and ideas such as a rent cap and more social housing are necessary in places where housing is scarce – a basic income would work like venture capital for the people.

The venture capital world is completely stacked against minority entrepreneurs.

Venture capital is a dynamic and people-driven business.

When people start talking about venture capital and finances and how to create this and do that, a lot of it, I swear, it’s like sitting in an escrow meeting when all you want to do is buy a house, and you’re signing 50 pieces of paper, but you have no idea what they’re talking about.

One can make the case that the New York venture capital industry is rooted in the 21st century, not the 20th.

I’ll say this: I can’t think of one instance in my 20 years in venture capital in which I have wanted to sell a company before the entrepreneur.

In 2014, Utah cities Salt Lake City and Provo both surpassed Silicon Valley in per-deal venture capital averages. From large, multi-campus companies to promising start-ups, Silicon Slopes offers a promising climate for businesses. The entire tech industry has its eyes on Utah.

When the venture capital industry invests, it’s usually because they sense there is money in them hills. And often it takes a high-profile winner to wake everyone up in the category. SpaceX is that company.

Historically venture capital funds have only allowed elite investors in.

If your business had no risk, you could go get a bank loan and call it a day. VCs like risks – without them, venture capital wouldn’t exist. But they need to be risks that VCs are good at assessing and managing.

The best early-stage venture capital investments appear obvious in retrospect; however, very few of them are actually obvious when you make them.

I don’t think a lot of people have been entrepreneurial about venture capital.

When I started Biocon in 1978, the obstacles I needed to navigate were manifold – ranging from infrastructural hurdles to issues related to my credibility as a business woman. With no access to venture capital, money was scarce and high-cost, debt-based capital was all I had.

From NASA putting a man on the moon to DARPA developing what later became the Internet, the U.S. government, through a host of different public agencies, has provided direct financing not only of basic research but also public venture capital; both Apple and Tesla have received direct public funding.

For a first-time entrepreneur, there’s nothing better than being in Silicon Valley because there is so much going on, and there’s such a large number of inventors, that even a B level idea or a C level idea could be nurtured and be given venture capital there.

Techstars has done a great job accelerating and providing venture capital to the most promising companies to make the biggest long-term economic impact.

Arcadia was a typical venture capital deal, but I’m the adventurer and the capitalist.

Prior to SunRun, I was headed toward a career in venture capital and then realized I wanted to apply my knowledge of finance more directly to helping change the world.

I meet young people all the time who say something like, ‘I want to work in venture capital.’ And I can see why. Who wouldn’t want to be smart, well-paid, dispense large sums of money, and tell people what to do?

One thing I’m so grateful for is sidestepping the usual venture capital, private equity route. My friends who have gone that way are many times beholden to their boards of directors, to ‘sell’ ideas to a team.

After Secretary Clinton announced in January 2010 that Internet freedom would be a major pillar of U.S. foreign policy, the State Department decided to take what Clinton calls a ‘venture capital’ approach to the funding of tools, research, public information projects, and training.

Venture capital is an inherently optimistic form of investment – which is both its primary strength and its primary weakness.

Given my venture capital background, I know the tech sector well.

There are not many people from top-tier venture capital firms who are focused on the seed stage.

I’m hard-pressed to think of companies that don’t need venture capital that are going after big opportunities. I think, in almost all cases, if they’re going after big opportunities, they are going to need to raise quite a bit of money.

When you – when you – and this is still going on today – are making your money by pushing paper around, when you should be making your money by investing venture capital in various job-creating things, that makes it much harder to recover.

The problem with taking venture capital is if you take $5m from someone, it may feel great; you may feel like they’re validating your business model. But they’re giving $5m out to 20 different people, hoping one of them will be a hit. They don’t really care if it’s you.