Entrepreneurship

I've been fortunate not to be formally trained in any of these disciplines. I don't know how to play music, nor do I know how to code, but I have a strong sense of what the market wants. Around that, I build a team of people who are skilled at execution.

I believe it boils down to confidence and fearlessness—believing in yourself and your own perspective. When you fail to follow your vision and instead listen to the consensus, it dilutes your vision. Consensus tends to pull everything towards mediocrity.

My favourite question when evaluating a startup idea is, 'Is this from the future?' I'm not interested in your ideas about the future; I want to understand why you are living in it today. Why are you living in a different future right now than other people are?

Venture capitalist and early-stage investor, founder of Founders Fund

If you want to have a great startup idea, don't try to think of a startup. If you focus on creating a startup, you'll be grounding yourself in the present, studying customers living in the present, their problems in the present, and their unmet needs in the present.

Venture capitalist and early-stage investor, founder of Founders Fund

Most of the time, startup ideas don't work. Most of the time, the world stays as it is. The status quo has an advantage; it has a built-in upper hand. For a startup to win, it has to be not merely better than what's there; it has to propose something radically different, something that never could have existed before.

Venture capitalist and early-stage investor, founder of Founders Fund

My first ask in any meeting wasn't for money or to put their name on something; it was simply for a second meeting, an opportunity to show them what we're doing and what we're building.

I woke up every day both inspired and terrified by the thought of building something from scratch and helping to save lives. It's a pretty good way to live, being both inspired and terrified.

I even had my wife convince my in-laws to mortgage their property, for Christ's sake, so I could produce these cartridges. I knew I had something special. Game Boy was coming out at that time, and I thought Tetris was the perfect game for it.

Tetris video game rights holder & Blue Planet Project founder

Being an entrepreneur, or even running a large organization, is like being a society builder. The system is bigger than any individual. When you build a business, you're architecting and constructing something substantial.

Founder and former CEO of Panera Bread Company

The job of an entrepreneur or a competitive leader is to create the conditions that make your organisation the better competitive alternative. All your efforts should be directed towards marshalling and channelling resources—human and intellectual capital—towards being the best competitive alternative.

Founder and former CEO of Panera Bread Company

If you don't love the act of doing, you'll never find happiness. If your motivation is glory or money, you're bound to be disappointed. If you're more excited about lunch with investment bankers than dealing with the day-to-day realities, you'll end up unhappy.

Founder and former CEO of Panera Bread Company

The reality is that most consumers aren't excited by incremental changes. To capture consumers' attention and make the market take notice, you need meaningful innovation—something genuinely new.

Opportunities come, sometimes very subtly, gently floating by. The typical response is, 'Yeah, cheers mate,' and back to Middlesbrough you go. But if your antenna is up — if you're someone who listens, runs with things, and grabs hold of opportunities — they can lead somewhere.

I'm also a fighter – I'm fighting to build PFL. I'm all-in on PFL, just like they are. I have the world say my company is no good or won't succeed, just like they deal with negativity and doubters.

Above all, great entrepreneurs have completed and undivided commitment to their company and doing what it takes to make it successful. Building any new major company is much harder than most realize, so if requires a very high pain threshold – great entrepreneurs are so tough mentally and emotionally.

We started with an approval and a business case—a blank sheet of paper. There was no one with a motorsports job title in the company, so we had to build all the building blocks from scratch.