Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Government does create prosperity and growth by creating the conditions that allow both entrepreneurs and their customers to thrive; balancing the power of capitalists like me and workers isn't bad for capitalism - it's essential to it.
True innovation takes at least 10 to 15 years, whereas the longest that private venture capitalists are routinely willing to wait is five years. They don't join the game until all the riskiest plays have already been made - by governments.
When Japan was on the rise, American governors would come to inspect Toyota City and study 'just in time' manufacturing to increase efficiency; when America was at its peak in the late 1990s, the world beat a path to its venture capitalists.
During my 30 years on Wall Street, taxes on 'unearned income' have bounced up and down with regularity, and I've never detected any change in the appetite for hard work and accumulating wealth on the part of myself or any of my fellow capitalists.
Hollywood wants its heroes to be virtuous, but it defines virtue in a way that excludes any action that is self-interested. If virtue means putting others ahead of self, then it's clear that most people, let alone most capitalists, aren't very virtuous.
The power dynamic that exists in venture capital is despicably unfair. The gap of influence between male venture capitalists and female entrepreneurs is frightening, and I hate that my behavior played a role in perpetrating a gender-hostile environment.
Investors are always biased to invest in things they themselves understand. So venture capitalists like Uber because they like driving in black town cars. They don't like Airbnb because they like staying in five-star hotels, not sleeping on people's couches.
The people of Nicaragua were suffering oppression. This made us develop an awareness which eventually led us to commit ourselves to the struggle against the domination of the capitalists of our country in collusion with the U.S. government, i.e. imperialism.
I like most of the venture capitalists I know; they're smart, well-intended guys who genuinely enjoy helping entrepreneurs succeed. And I love venture capital and investment capital of all categories - its economic impact is proven. The more of it the better.
The mistake the apartheid government made was they gave the black people nothing, so they had nothing to lose. But now a lot of the former freedom-fighters are big-time capitalists. They've been given directorships in every major company. They're billionaires!
A general charge of crony capitalism is easy to make. But dividing the 'bad' crony capitalists from the 'good' innovative entrepreneurs is much harder to do. And sorting them out without creating a new group of crony capitalists may be the hardest thing of all.
The Tea Party in the United States' biggest fight is with the the Republican establishment, which is really a collection of crony capitalists that feel that they have a different set of rules of how they're going to comport themselves and how they're going to run things.
Venture capitalists are professional money managers. We are provided capital to invest as long as we can return it to our investors with a strong return in a reasonable amount of time. A strong return is three times cash on cash. A reasonable amount of time is ten years max.
President Obama's assault on the free-enterprise market and venture capitalists is anti-American and shows his greatest insecurity: his lack of private sector experience and his inability to understand the economy and help businesses thrive in these uncertain economic times.
There's something about China and its rush to capitalism that I find confusing. At the same time, we live in an America where capitalists oppose any government interference with free markets, while in China you have a very controlled, state-planned market where economic growth is better than ours.
The part of capitalism that doesn't work for me is when capitalists make decisions in the way that Adam Smith suggested, which is that as long as you do everything in the interest of the investor, you're going to actually make the best decisions for all other stakeholders. I don't happen to agree with that.
Most startup entrepreneurs unnecessarily spend half their time and give up half their equity in search of funding from angel investors and venture capitalists. Tens of millions of dollars are available to them for free from partners who not only don't want their equity, they don't even want to be paid back.
We had this unbelievable faith that no business has done, quite frankly, and we tripped along the way doing it, but within two years, we were in 40-plus countries. So we ran at an amazing pace, and this is where venture capitalists play a role. Making Groupon into what it is today, we had no role in it; the entrepreneurs did it.
You've got athletes who are politicians, venture capitalists, musicians, rappers, etcetera. It's becoming more of a popular thing to have other interests outside of basketball, and I think that's normal. Just like when people work day jobs, they have interest in sports, they do investments, they do all these other types of things.
President Yeltsin's instincts were decent: he encouraged the marketplace, the press flourished, and everything started to open - even the KGB archives. Yeltsin reburied Nicholas II. Free from Soviet anti-semitism, he surrounded himself with Jewish capitalists and advisers who returned to public life for the first time since the 1920s.
That first company I started made a lot of money for the venture capitalists - nearly $30 million - but next to nothing for the founders. The companies I started after that varied between failures and mediocre successes. But at no point did I ever consider getting a 'real job.' That felt like a black and white world, and I wanted Technicolor.
Capitalists make money by exploiting labor and by externalizing the costs of the wastes produced by the productive process by imposing the wastes on the environment.
Many venture capitalists say they're looking for the next big idea. But they aren't, really; they're looking for something derivative, because derivative is safe.
Capitalists seem uninterested in capitalism, even as eager entrepreneurs can't get financing. Businesses and investors sound like the Ancient Mariner, who complained, 'Water, water everywhere - nor any drop to drink.'
The environmentalists say capitalism is killing our oceans, air, land, and forests. Capitalists argue that they provide food, fuel, and building materials for a growing world.
I want to kill the president because I no like the capitalists. I have the gun in my hand, I kill kings and presidents first and next all capitalists.
The capitalists speculate on the two following factors: the female worker must be paid as poorly as possible and the competition of female labour must be employed to lower the wages of male workers as much as possible.
A startup job is an investment, after all: Venture capitalists may wager money, but you're staking something more precious - your time. And unlike VCs, you can't spread your risk by betting on a bunch of companies at once. Start with TAM. That's 'total addressable market,' and if it's not big enough, there's no point in talking.
When only a minority consisting of capitalists can enjoy the good life, while the majority of workers must endure hardship, they will naturally not be able to live together in peace and harmony.
You see, we capitalists will never actually ask you to work overtime. I don't even track your hours. I just make it clear that I trust you to get your job done in the time allotted. And then I hand you twice as much work as you can reasonably do in a 40-hour week.
Capitalists work hard to produce what consumers want. Artists who work too hard to produce what consumers want are often accused of selling out. Thus, even the languages of capitalism and art conflict: a firm that has 'sold out' has succeeded, but an artist that has 'sold out' has failed.
Venture capitalists buy minority positions in young companies they think will grow quickly; buy-out investors buy most or all of companies they think can be turned around by fixing a few basic things.
In antiquity, agriculture and industry depended completely on human labor; but now, with the development of natural forces that human labor cannot match, agriculture and industry have fallen completely into the hands of the capitalists. The greater the amount of capital, the more abundant the resources that can be utilized.