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

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" With clear definitions and a taxonomy that illustrates their relationships, the Inventure Cycle defines the pathway from inspiration to implementation. This framework captures the skills, attitudes, and actions that are necessary to foster innovation and to bring breakthrough ideas to the world. "

" The food replacement category is what it sounds like - companies are substituting plants or food grown in a lab to replace meat, fish, eggs, milk - or, like Soylent, to package nutritionally complete meals into a drink. "

" On Day One, a start-up is a faith-based initiative built on guesses. "

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

" Very often, if a founder is waiting around for someone else to tell him what to do, the company is near death. "

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

" Long hours don't necessarily mean success. "

" 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. "

" At some major events - your birth and death, for example - while you may be the center of attention, the events are managed by others and are more important to the people around you. "

" VCs like acquisitions as much as IPOs because the acquiring companies often can rationalize paying large multiples over the current valuation of the startup. "

" One of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make is not understanding the relationship they have with their investors. At times, they confuse VCs with their friends. "

" 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. "

" Great founders live for chaotic moments. "

" The Lean Startup process builds new ventures more efficiently. It has three parts: a business model canvas to frame hypotheses, customer development to get out of the building to test those hypotheses, and agile engineering to build minimum viable products. "

" Companies that get started and built in New York City tend to be applied technology. "

" You can get a good handle on a company's culture before you even get inside the building. For example, when companies say, 'We value our employees' but have reserved parking spots, a private cafeteria, and over-the-top offices for the executives, that tells you more than any PR spin. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Founders, presuming they know their customers, assume they know all the features customers need. "

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

Venture Capital

" Products are sold because they solve a problem or fill a need. Understanding problems and needs involves understanding customers and what makes them tick. "

" The convergence of digital trends, along with the rise of China and globalization, has upended the rules for almost every business in every corner of the globe. "

" 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. "

" Commencement Day has a sobering finality in that it's the end of the prescribed path. "

" Failure will happen. It's a normal part of the startup process. "

" By the beginning of the 21st century, entrepreneurs, led by Web and mobile startups, began to seek and develop their own management tools. "

" Innovation in an existing company is not just the sum of great technology, key acquisitions, or smart people. Corporate innovation needs a culture that matches and supports it. "

" 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. "

" Founders have continually struggled with and adapted the 'big business' tools, rules, and processes taught in business schools when startups failed to execute 'the plan,' never admitting to the entrepreneurs that no startup executes to its business plan. "