Put your competitors in your deck.
 -- Dave Mc Clure

Talk about the problem. You need to earn the right to pitch the solution.
Core members: tech founder, so. w/ Internet Marketing experience, designer
 -- Dave Mc Clure

If you don't care about your (existing) users, you're gonna lose.
 -- Gary Vaynerchuk 

Stop thinking you understand your users. Build, release, iterate and repeat.
 -- Kevin Rose

Hack the press, do invite-only services
 -- Kevin Rose

Think big, act small. Have a vision but get sh*i done.
 -- Leslie Koch

Do consulting work. Charge enough to keep your hours below 4h/day.
 -- Gabriel Weinberg (@yegg)

You need ideas, brains, perseverance, and cash flow. Osborne had the 
first three, but not the fourth. Many of today’s startups are neglecting 
the fourth because they have a big bank account from funding. That’s a 
mistake. Cash flow will always get you.
 -- Thom Hogan (Osbourne)

Trying to build a billion dollar a year business is like going to the 
casino and betting everything on Red 5. Trying to build a million dollar 
a year business is like being a fairly skilled poker player and sitting 
at a table. You have a chance.
 -- David Heinemeier Hansson (@dhh)

The best thing to show to investors is a working product.
You have to instrument (measure) everything.
You have to make every single detail perfect and limit the number of details.
Expect the unexpected, and whenever possible be the unexpected.
 -- Jack Dorsey (Twitter, Square)

You should be working on your best idea to date.
 -- David Heinemeier Hansson (@dhh)

The difference between Vision and Imagination is that other people can 
see the Vision.
 -- Mark Andreessen

Your hiring process should be turning people off instead of turning them 
on.
 -- Mark Andreessen

Approach to solve any problem: add the best minds, the power of ideas, 
the fuel of entrepreneurial energy and a dash of greed.
 -- Vinod Khosla

Stay focused on the main customer need. *Wow* the customers, just making 
them happy will not make them want to talk about the product to their 
friends.
 -- Mari Baker (PlayFirst)

We are stubborn on vision. We are flexible on details.
We are willing to think long-term.
We are willing to be misunderstood for long periods of time.
-- Jeff Bezos (Amazon)

Being an entrepreneur is not about being in love with an idea, it's 
about being in love with running a company.
 -- Max Levchin (PayPal)

Board meeting should never be product strategy debates. Double true that 
for product tactics.
 -- Max Levchin (PayPal)

In a world that changing really quickly, the only strategy that is 
guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.
 -- Zuckerberg (Facebook)

Q: "Two years ago, you bought Zappos. Was that an attempt to absorb 
their so-called culture of happiness and customer service?"
A: "No, no, no. Our version of a perfect customer experience is one in 
which our customer doesn’t want to talk to us. Every time a customer 
contacts us, we see it as a defect. I’ve been saying for many, many 
years, people should talk to their friends, not their merchants. And so 
we use all of our customer service information to find the root cause of 
any customer contact."
 -- Jeff Bezos (Amazon)

Welcome to Flatland. A flat structure removes every organizational 
barrier between your work and the customer enjoying that work.
Engineers: code is only the beginning. Non-Engineers: program or be 
programmed.
We value people who are both generalists and among the best in their 
field within a narrow discipline.
 -- Valve Handbook

The users marketed the site for us, because what we let them do is show 
other people how awesome they are, and everybody wants to feel 
important.
 -- Chris Wanstrath

You have all these ideas, and one of the questions is to pick the right 
decade to build the right project.
 -- Stephen Wolfram

I am myself more motivated by the intellectual side of things, but I am 
interested in people and the strategical side of things. And I do own a 
suit!
 -- Stephen Wolfram

You can do a lot to facilitate serendipity. Because frankly, a lot of 
this is luck.
 -- Alexis Ohanian

[Business types] are less and less relevant. Any time one approaches you 
with a great startup idea, you have to remember the wise words of 
Admiral Ackbar: "This is a trap!"
 -- Alexis Ohanian

While most companies directed input from market research and from their 
sales force to their R&D sections, Yamauchi in those days insisted that 
R&D was sacrosanct: no one told his creative people what to create. The 
marketing department saw games only when they were completed. "He 
believes the marketing people will only look at what's popular right 
now," Hiroshi Imanishi says. "And iw we make the game based on what's 
popular right now, the game will not be new and fresh."
 -- David Sheff, "Game Over: How Nintendo Conquered The World"

If this trajectory is carried to its logical extreme, the problem the 
United States faces becomes clear. As it loses the ability to produce, 
it ultimately loses the ability to consume—regardless of easy credit—in 
an asset-based economy that is long on debt and becoming short on an 
internal ability to add value. As the United States moves from adding 
value to becoming the world’s distribution center, its standard of 
living will stagnate, as its now robust profit margins move to where 
the “valueadded” is. Moreover, the nation will become less able to 
afford the military requirements intrinsic to remaining a world power. 
America’s power to negotiate deals, let alone control its destiny, will 
fade as it brings less and less to the table.
 -- Richard Elkus, "Winner Take All"