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" I have to think my success in the VC business was due in no small part to seeing Larry Ellison in action back in the day. "

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" In corporations, the penalty for repeated failure on known tasks is being reassigned to other tasks or asked to leave the company. "

" Face-to-face customer feedback refines or validates every component of the startup's business model, not just the product itself. "

" At the commencements I attended, graduates were classified by their academic rankings. Outstanding academic performance was noted in the programs and awarded with special honors. "

" Understand that VCs are simply a sophisticated form of financial investors who, in turn, need to satisfy their own investors. "

" Unlike many other startup processes, Customer Development is deep, detailed, and rigorous. "

" Visionary CEOs are product- and business-model-centric and extremely customer focused. "

" Decades before we were able to articulate the value of 'getting out of the building' and the Lean Startup, the value in having skunk works controlling their own distribution was starkly evident. "

" Part of Customer Development is understanding which customers make sense for your business. "

" Market type influences everything a company does. Strategy and tactics for one market type seldom work for another. "

" If you've never founded a company, rest assured it never happens as elegantly and smoothly as articles in 'Inc.' and other business magazines or case studies suggest. "

" Normally when I have students over, we sit in the house and look at the fields to try to catch a glimpse of a bobcat hunting. "

" Startups have finite time and resources to find product/market fit before they run out of money. Therefore startups trade off certainty for speed, adopting 'good enough decision making' and iterating and pivoting as they fail, learn, and discover their business model. "

" Skunk works were emblematic of corporate structures that focused on execution and devalued innovation. "

" Once you establish what activities your company needs to do, the next question is, 'How do these activities get accomplished?' i.e. what resources do I need to make the activities happen? "

" What's been missing from regions outside of Silicon Valley is a 'playbook.' In American football, a playbook contains a sports team's strategies and plays. It struck me that every region needs its own industry playbook on how to compete globally. "

" My imagination ran 24/7, and to me, every problem was a challenge to solve and new product to create. It wasn't until I started teaching that I realized that not everyone's head worked the same way. "

" Watching an entrepreneur fail is sad, but watching him fail from lack of nerve is tragic. "

" The business model is both the starting point and the scorecard for Customer Development progress. "

" Companies that acquire startups for their intellectual property, teams, or product lines are acquiring startups that are searching for a business model. If they acquire later stage companies who already have users/customers and/or a predictable revenue stream, they are acquiring companies that are executing. "

" Startups are companies that are still in the process of searching for a business model. Ventures that are further along and executing their business models are no longer startups; they are early-stage companies. "

" For Customer Development to succeed, everyone on the team - from investor or parent company to engineers, marketers and founders - needs to understand and agree that the Customer Development process is different to its core. "

" At the end of the day, VCs have to provide their limited partners with great returns, or they aren't going to be able to raise another fund. "

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

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" While 'The Owner's Manual' is not a formula for guaranteed success by any means, we're confident it will help reduce the failure rate of most startups that use our Customer Development process. "

" As I've gotten older, I've come to grips that the unexamined life is what works for most people. Most take what they learned in school, get a job, marry, buy a house, have a family, become a great parent, serve their god, community and country, hang with friends, and live a good life. And for them that's great. "

" In a web/mobile startup, coding is not an outsourced activity. It's an integral part of the company's DNA. "

" Unfortunately, as you hire more people, the casual, informal 'do what it takes' culture, which worked so well at less than 40 people, becomes chaotic and less effective. "

" The music and movie business has been consistently wrong in its claims that new platforms and channels would be the end of its businesses. In each case, the new technology produced a new market far larger than the impact it had on the existing market. "

" For busy young adults, the lure of meal substitutes is simple - it's all about convenience - the level of effort to open a bottle or package is minimal, and the time from thinking you're hungry to eating is almost zero. "

" Measuring how hard your team is working by counting the number of hours they work or what time they get in and leave is how amateurs run companies. "