Overheard: Top 5 Quotes This Week
Every so often I hear some great quotes that I just have to write down. Here are a few from the past week that you’re sure to enjoy.
5. “That’s a high burn market timing experiment.”
How long can your company wait it out until the market breaks? Don’t think in terms of quarters. Think in terms of your team, how lean they can be, and how long you’re willing to wait until the market breaks.
4. “It’s like a fistful of sand. The harder you squeeze the more flows out.”
Don’t put too much control on something you can’t control, or you’ll ruin the essence of what you’re trying to control.
3. “It’s a lot harder to get from zero to a penny than from a penny to a dollar.”
To get a user or customer to take their credit card or checkbook out is really, really hard. Once you’ve done so, it’s a lot easier to incrementally improve the monetization of that user or customer than it was to get the initial money.
2. “Keep taking risk.”
Don’t take venture money and then stop taking risk. Funding can cause entrepreneurs to worry too much about taking risk, rather than continuing to do what got them to were they are.
And my favorite this week…
1. “So, what was YOUR favorite indicator that we’re in a bubble?”
When I was in third grade, I had to walk back and forth to school everyday, at least a mile roundtrip, which is quite a distance for such short legs. So I imagined up my own personal see-through bubble that lightly carried me from place to place. I loved that daydream and evoked it often. I made the mistake of telling it to my older sister one day, who said something like “Bubbles burst, you idiot.” So then I started imagining myself falling from the sky when my bubble burst. Funny thing was, that itself sounded like fun, and I’d never get hurt, because I’d stick out my big bubble wand as I was falling and the air rushing through it would create tons more bubbles. I just had to choose a new one to pop into, which was always exciting, because it would be a whole new ride that started from a different place.
Comment by Dawn — April 26, 2007 @ 8:06 am
No doubt, my favorite bubble indicator is the attractiveness of the booth babes at the business sector trade shows. Nothing screams bubble louder than 9’s and 10’s working the booths of recently funded companies. Call it the Booth Babe Predictive Index, or BBPI.
Comment by David — May 11, 2007 @ 12:57 am