Interesting quotes

Just a bunch of some of my favorite quotes.

"The best is often the enemy of the good." — Voltaire

"A business should be run like an aquarium, where everybody can see what's going on." — Jack Stack, The Great Game of Business (Currency/Doubleday)

"As a good rule of thumb, proprietary technology must be at least 10 times better than its closest substitute in some important dimension to lead to a real monopolistic advantage." — Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

"In a startup no facts exist inside the building; only opinions." — Steve Blank

"Not every opportunity arises from something that can be quantified and measured. As Henry Ford supposedly said, 'If I had asked people what they wanted, they would've said a faster horse.'" — The Product Book

"Launch isn't the end of development but rather the beginning of selling." — The Product Book

"Features always have hidden costs. More features mean more tests, more screenshots, more videos, more coordination, more complexity, and more distractions. Start With No." — Running Lean

"The three A's of metrics are: Actionable, Accessible, and Auditable." — Eric Ries

"A startup can focus on only one metric. So you have to decide what that is and ignore everything else." — Noah Kagan

"While you might be aiming to build a mainstream product, you need to start with a specific customer in mind. Even Facebook, with its now 500 million+ users, started with a very specific user in mind: Harvard University students." — Running Lean

"While revenue is the first form of validation, retention is the ultimate form of validation." — Running Lean

"Content precedes design. Design in the absence of content is not design, it's decoration." — Jeffrey Zeldman, A List Apart

"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything—all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure—these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked." — Steve Jobs

"In order for connection to happen, we have to allow ourselves to be seen—really seen." — Brené Brown

"Whatever we say, we're always talking about ourselves." — Alison Bechdel

"When people realize they're being listened to, they tell you things." — Richard Ford

"Put yourself, and your work, out there every day, and you'll start meeting some amazing people." — Bobby Solomon

"Teamwork makes the dream work, but a vision becomes a nightmare when the leader has a big dream and a bad team." — John Maxwell

"Lead through influence and not authority." — Unknown

"If you do not know where you are going, every road will get you nowhere." — Henry A. Kissinger

"All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make, the better." — Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The premature outlay of huge amounts of money in pursuit of the wrong strategy is the thing to avoid. You need to have an experimental mindset." — Clayton Christensen

"I loved that business ideas could be tested with minimal coding required." — Jaime Levy

"Instead of becoming a champion for one possible explanation or hypothesis or model, collect as many as possible. Consider all of them to be plausible until you find some evidence that causes you to rule one out. That way you will be emotionally able to see the evidence that rules out an assumption that may become entangled with your own identity." — Donella H. Meadows

"Most of my advances were by mistake. You uncover what is when you get rid of what isn't." — R. Buckminster Fuller

"At its core, all business is about making bets on human behavior." — "The Power of 'Thick' Data," The Wall Street Journal

"Fail often, fail fast." — Don Norman

"Focus on creating value, think long term, don’t be transactional." — Guillermo Rauch

"Learn to ship. Shipping is a skill distinct from coding. Shipping is designing, coding, QAing, story-telling, teaching, marketing, selling, pivoting, iterating…

It used to be that coding dominated in importance because of coding ability scarcity. AI will push you to go further." — Guillermo Rauch

"There’s a contagion effect to good habits. When you watch your friends or relatives exercise, you want to exercise.

Same is true for shipping, giving back, eating well… Surround yourself with people who raise your bar." — Guillermo Rauch

"One of my favorite lessons I’ve learnt from working with smart people:

Action produces information. If you’re unsure of what to do, just do anything, even if it’s the wrong thing. This will give you information about what you should actually be doing.

Sounds simple on the surface - the hard part is making it part of your every day working process." — Brian Armstrong

"Marketing is a creative and adversarial game. Channels get discovered, exploited, and discarded. New products need new distribution.

It’s hard to hire rule-breakers, so the best marketers tend to be the founders themselves." — @naval

"major cheat code in life: be the one who reaches out. text first. call first. plan first. initialize first. most people wait to be chosen. be the chooser. connection requires initiative. friendship requires effort. love requires action. stop waiting to be picked. start picking. initiative is attractive" — @omgsidewalks

“Everyone is shy. Other people are waiting for you to introduce yourself to them; they are waiting for you to send them an email; they are waiting for you to ask them on a date. Go ahead.” ― Kevin Kelly

"I see a common theme between successful indie hackers:

They built dozens of projects before one took off. And they ship fast and often." — @FlorinPop17

"Major cheat code in life:

Master the graceful exit. From conversations. From parties. From opportunities. “This has been wonderful, but I need to go.” No elaborate excuses. No fake emergencies. Just clear kind departure. Most people don’t know how to leave. They stay too long or leave badly. Master the exit." — @libriscent

"speed is the single most important trait in business and i will die on this hill. every successful founder i know moves at a pace that makes normal people uncomfortable. they reply to emails in minutes not days. they make decisions with 70% of the information instead of waiting for 100%. they ship products that aren’t perfect because they know a live product beats a perfect idea sitting in your head. most people spend weeks thinking about doing something while the fast movers already did it learned from it and iterated twice. analysis paralysis has killed more businesses than bad ideas ever have. the guy who launches a shitty version today will beat the guy who launches a perfect version in 6 months every single time because he’s already gotten feedback already pivoted already built relationships while the other guy is still tweaking his logo. i’ve seen mediocre ideas win because the founder moved fast and great ideas die because the founder moved slow. speed creates momentum and momentum creates luck and luck creates opportunities you never could have planned for. when in doubt just move faster" — @pipelineabuser

“To ask the right questions, you need to understand your risks and assumptions.” — Talking to Humans