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" Politics and government have been a terrible place to invest; education has been a terrible place to invest, but that is because the entrenched interests make it a terrible place to invest. The way you invest in those sectors is you go against the entrenched interests; you try and disrupt the entrenched interests, not to service them. "

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" I'm not saying M.B.A.s can't be great entrepreneurs. They can. But you don't need a degree to figure out it's costing you $5,000 per month to run your business, so you need $30,000 to keep it going for six more months. "

Fred Wilson

Run

Business

Need

" My venture investing career has three phases, all roughly 6-8 years long. The first, at Euclid, was software to Internet. The second, at Flatiron, was Internet to bubble. And the third, at USV, has been web 2 to mobile. I have always used a new firm to denote a new investment phase for me. Throw away the old. Start with the new. "

Fred Wilson

Career

Start

" Start-ups should be hunch-driven early on and data-driven as they scale. "

" I believe the mobile OS market will play out very similarly to Windows and Macintosh, with Android in the role of Windows. And so, if you want to be in front of the largest number of users, you need to be on Android. "

" Internet and mobile product development cycles are measured in months, not years. And the capital required to get a product built and into the market is less than $1 million. And the returns, when things work out, can be enormous. "

" Twitter wasn't planned. It just happened. "

" When there were not very many Internet companies, the supply of Internet companies to the market was small and the appetite for them was large. Therefore, if you were in the business of creating Internet companies in 1996-98, you had a market that provided massive demand for that. "

" The most common way customer financing is done is you sell the customer on the product before you've built it or before you've finished it. The customer puts up the money to build the product or finish the product and becomes your first customer. Usually the customer simply wants the product and nothing more. "

" Investing in management means building communication systems, business processes, feedback, and routines that let you scale the business and team as efficiently as possible. "

" People already love to play casual games. But when you take a casual game and stick it inside a social network, it becomes way more exciting. "

" There is a difference between hiring a CEO and turning over control of the business. "

" I don't like to talk about myself. I like to talk about stuff that's happening, stuff that's going to happen, and the people who are going to make it happen. "

" Certainly anything that is news or opinion needs to be free on the Web, because the Web is this very fluid medium that is very much driven by links and the flow of visitors through a discussion via links. "

" When I see people laughing at ideas and companies we have backed, I smile. It means we are going to make a lot of money on that investment. "

" The Web is going to capture an increasing share of people's attention, and billions of dollars are going to flow in. What Web 2.0 is about is harnessing those dollars in highly leverageable ways. "

" 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'm really interested in the intersection between reputation, identity, and knowledge. "

" Money is information, like bits. "

" Foursquare's adoption of a game dynamic when it launched is a particularly clever implementation of a social hook. "

" When people laugh at a company or say, 'This is the stupidest thing I have ever heard,' you are listening. "

" I believe Android will be stronger in the developing world than it is in the developed world. "

" When my dad was in Vietnam, we lost a parent for a year. Thank God we didn't lose a parent for good. "

" The venture business is a bit of an apprenticeship business, so the firm I worked for didn't let me make an investment until I was 30. That was probably a very smart thing. "

Fred Wilson

Smart

Business

" To see things differently requires you to be wired a little differently. "

" Profiles aren't journalism. "

Fred Wilson

Journalism

Profiles

" It's upsetting to me that you have to be a millionaire to invest in your friend's start-up. "

" Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr are all 'User First, Brands Second' services. The brands are all over these services now. But for the most part, these services didn't do much to bring them. The engaged users did. "

" I think 'crazy' is a compliment. I think you make money with people who are crazy. "

" The more entrepreneurs in the world that are getting their ideas financed, the more great companies there are going to be that we can all invest in. "

" Building product is not about having a large team to manage. It is about having a small team with the right people on it. "