“It is there to establish a framework in which the society works; and lay down, first of all, the parameters which form this framework- and secondly provide objective and fair ways of determining whether these have been contravened- and if so? what should be done.”
— Lord Woolf of Barnes
Former Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales; judicial reform advocate

The quote archive

Entrepreneurship

A growing archive of 3,000+ moments, drawn from every interview.

Israel is not called 'the start-up nation' for nothing. We have great statistics to show the number of start-ups per capita, the number of PhD's per capita, V/C Dollars per capita, Patents per capita and more. Israel creates a huge amount of innovative start-ups which are often bought out before they are even revenue producing!

— Michael Freedman

Mathematician & Topologist, Solved the 4-Dimensional Poincaré Conjecture

In the same way that business entrepreneurship has transformed industry since the early 1970's, social entrepreneurship can transform the social sector by having people who are willing to take risks and innovate to help address social issues.

— Nick O’Donohoe

Early stage investing is very difficult and financially risky meaning that a lot of what we invest in won't work. A lot of what we do is, in effect, pilots to see if individual projects or funds can generate some positive return.

— Nick O’Donohoe

Impact investing starts from the other end. It starts with an issue… this could be a problem, a social issue or so on. Impact investors start with an issue and then try to build a viable, sustainable financial model around that.

— Nick O’Donohoe

If you don't spend a lot of money on something and it doesn't work out… is it really a 'failure'? Most entrepreneurs start a lot of different ventures. Some work better than others, but that's totally normal and expected.

— Chris Guillebeau

Author of "The $100 Startup" and lifestyle design expert

What really is risky?! In many ways I think it's actually much safer to take things into your own hands rather than trusting your destiny to an uncertain jobs market.

— Chris Guillebeau

Author of "The $100 Startup" and lifestyle design expert

Entrepreneurs have to focus on how a business makes money and focus on that rather than the expense side of the business. That also allows you to start quicker and instead of deferring your idea, you could get to market in 30 days.

— Chris Guillebeau

Author of "The $100 Startup" and lifestyle design expert

I think it's about usefulness! People talk of 'following your passion' but there are plenty of things people are passionate about that nobody will pay them money for, so you can't just tell someone to just follow their passion. The missing piece? usefulness… We say the magic formula is: Passion + Usefulness = Success.

— Chris Guillebeau

Author of "The $100 Startup" and lifestyle design expert

As soon as such actions are taken, I think a lot of entrepreneurs will see Greece as being the right place to invest.

— Nicholas Economides

Professor of Economics specializing in network economics and digital markets

The DME was a bit of a unique experiment, we created an exchange before all parts of the ecosystem were in place.

— Christopher Fix

The business plan is about management not exposition, it shows commitment to milestones.

— Tim Berry

Founder of Palo Alto Software and business planning expert

By far the most common is underestimating expenses. When industries do barely double-digits if their lucky, business plans ought not to be showing EBIT or EBITDA of 50-70% – that doesn't mean people are smart, it means they haven't understood the industry.

— Tim Berry

Founder of Palo Alto Software and business planning expert

All forecasts are wrong- all business plans are wrong- but they're very useful for management. It's not just a one-time picture, it's an on-going story. You're looking for lines not dots about how a company proceeds.

— Tim Berry

Founder of Palo Alto Software and business planning expert

The end of an X-Prize is the beginning of a new market, or a new market opportunity. We are nothing more than a distinct channel to that market.

— Eileen Bartholemew

We're taking capability from NASA that used to cost billions of dollars, and we're doing it for tens of millions of dollars. We want to learn that critical information necessary to develop those resources.

— Chris Lewicki

Many entrepreneurs are deluded about their odds of success, that evidence is very clear. This creates problems… Should a government subsidise entrepreneurs who greatly over-estimate their chances of success?

— Daniel Kahneman

Nobel Prize Winner in Economics for Behavioral Economics Research