Top 50 Jay Samit Quotes

Companies with significant revenue (more than $100 million) have, by definition, significant traction. They have proven out their thesis and can scale up or down as investment capital becomes available.

Instead of focusing the traditional planning cycles where companies benchmark their businesses against existing competition, teams need to be developed to foster internal change and disruption. Self-disruption is akin to undergoing major surgery, but you are the one holding the scalpel.

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.

There is a huge difference between failing and failure. Failing is trying something that you learn doesn’t work. Failure is throwing in the towel and giving up. True success comes from failing repeatedly and as quickly as possible, before your cash or your willpower runs out.

Most companies overlook the most basic of all training functions: the onboarding of new employees into their corporate culture.

Use your development time to brief analysts and industry press. Use these influencers as your eyes and ears to let you know what else is being developed by competitors so that you can be the first to market, and don’t make the mistake of launching an also-ran product.

Never expect that your startup can cover every aspect of the market. The key is knowing what segment will respond to your unique offering. Who your product appeals to is just as important as the product itself.

The greatest challenge to most innovation centers around the world is many nations’ punitive attitudes towards failure. In most of the world, if your first business fails, no one will work with you again. But, trial and error is the genesis of innovation.

The answers to all a startup’s challenges are out there. By setting up the right mechanisms for gathering feedback, the road to success can be a less bumpy ride.

I’d been on the Internet since the 1970s when it was just for nerds. I started saying, ‘Who would benefit from this?’ I started imagining a world where young people could have their own email address, back in the days of family AOL accounts.

My job is to hire the best and brightest employees and empower them to do their best work. As a manager, I am not a mind reader nor an expert at every job function. Therefore, it is incumbent on all hires to feel empowered to tell me what resources they need to do their job.

Some of the most lasting contacts and friendships that I have developed began by just grabbing a drink or breaking bread with a stranger at an industry event.

Big ideas developed in a vacuum are doomed from the start. Feedback is the essential tool for building and growing a successful company.

To thrive, all businesses must focus on the art of self-disruption. Rather than wait for the competition to steal your business, every founder and employee needs to be willing to cannibalize their existing revenue streams in order to create new ones. All disruption starts with introspection.

What most entrepreneurs don’t understand is that it isn’t the economy that bursts a bubble, but investor psychology.

A successful entrepreneur is one who recognizes her blind spots. You may be the world’s best engineer, but you probably have never run a 10-person sales force. You may be a brilliant marketer, but how do you structure a cap table?

Consumers value their personal time and are loyal to those companies that make their lives more productive. Brands gaining some of the biggest successes in social media are engaging with millions of consumers through value exchange.

No matter how much we tweet, blog and post, nothing in business is as powerful as actual face time with prospective business partners and customers.

Every product you have ever loved was a compromise from the ideal vision of its creators to the realities of shipping on time, on budget, and on price point. Anyone who has ever manufactured a physical product that had to be on the shelves for Christmas shopping knows how painful these choices can be.

Silicon Valley’s long-running track record of creating globally disruptive startups is the envy of the world.

Get your product into users’ hands as quickly as possible and incorporate the crowd’s feedback to iterate. Your customers will provide the data you need to chart the best course for your company and bury any competitor that goes it alone.

Your innovation can create new winners and losers; or at the very least, make existing companies look fresh and innovative by partnering with you. Everyone wants to align with market makers.

New ideas for innovation grow out of the minds of each new generation. Having an institution of higher learning that can help young people put those ideas into action is critical.

I never understood why women wanted equality in the workplace when in fact, that would be selling them short.

While commercials interrupt consumers’ enjoyment of a TV program, social media allows video to enter the conversation between friends in a non-intrusive way with an opt-in choice.

Social media and personalization are providing both brand advertisers and end-users with hyper-targeted choices and opportunities for double-digit growth.

Pick a co-founder that communicates in the same fashion that you do. If you are a screamer, then the only way you will ever listen to a conflicting point of view is to find someone who is passionate enough to yell back at you.

As good and as smart as you may be, no one knows everything. I truly wish I was as smart as I thought I was when I started my first company.

The very first thing I tell every intern on the first day is that their internship exists solely on their resume. As far as I am concerned, they are a full-time member of my team. For all the negative stereotypes about millennials, you would be astounded by how hard they work when they believe their contribution matters.

Instagram, Swiffer, and Nest had to compete with consumer habits and perceptions. Breakout products face competition from the formidable inertia powering the status quo.

Distributers don’t need massive amounts of square feet to stock digital products. Retailers don’t need brick-and-mortar stores to sell them. The entire supply chain for these select items has been permanently dematerialized. The marketplace has been blown to bits.

So many of the major decisions that affect the entire future of your enterprise happen during its first year in business. In fact, most don’t make it because they don’t know how to get the resources they need to survive.

It doesn’t matter how good your product solution is if users don’t enjoy or understand how to use it.

For those that fear being taken advantage of by people working from home or on flexible schedules, I can say my experience is quite the opposite. Employees are so appreciative of these accommodations that they outperform their coworkers and are less likely to be poached by the competition.

The secret to fundraising comes down to three magic words: before, more, and strategic.

The Industrial Revolution was about making physical things. Many of the manufactured goods that were once tangible objects have now been reduced to bits and bytes of data.

Creating something that builds lasting value and changes the lives of millions of people requires forging a team that will work hard to overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles, stand up to the pressures of fame and fortune, and stay true to the original vision long after others stop believing.

When Thomas and John Knoll launched Photoshop 1.0 in 1990, the software couldn’t even handle color images. But their offerings got the startup noticed by Apple and Adobe, both of whom became key to the fledgling company’s later success.

Cable and satellite businesses are competing against fixed-line telephone companies and wireless companies.

As great as you believe your new product or company is, the world got along just fine without you. The greatest competition every startup faces is convincing consumers that there is a better solution to the problems that vex them.

In an era of endless innovation and constant disruption, what is any company really worth? How does a startup determine its valuation?

Networking is all about connecting with people. But then again, isn’t that what life is about? The more time you can find to get out of the office and build true friendships, the farther your startup will go. Entrepreneurs need to remember to spend as much time working on their business as they do in their business.

To truly launch a great product, you need partners. Channel and marketing partners share in your success and share in the costs of reaching your target audience.

Zuckerberg rejected $2 billion for Facebook and has successfully created a company worth nearly $200 billion.

As counterintuitive as it sounds, ‘speed to fail’ should be every entrepreneur’s motto. Success isn’t born wholly-formed like Venus from a clamshell; it’s developed through relentless trial and error.

All too often, new hires have a different expectation of their job and responsibilities than the organization does. Any miscommunication during the recruiting process needs to be cleared up ASAP. Whenever possible, give new employees a written plan of objectives and responsibilities.