I'm the classic old-school entrepreneur that says let's build companies of lasting value.
Part of the challenge of being an entrepreneur, if you're going for a really huge opportunity, is trying to find problems that aren't quite on the radar yet and try to solve those.
Nobody does just one thing. But the real difference between being an entrepreneur and everyone else in the world is the ability to monetize. I am an entrepreneur in the classic mold.
I have always been driven by the ambition to solve every problem I face, whether as a scientist, engineer or entrepreneur.
I think I give myself high marks being an entrepreneur and entrepreneuring a big idea about how popular social gaming could be. But I learned a lot of hard lessons on the CEO front... and do not give myself very high marks as a CEO of a large-scale company.
A friend of mine, a Hispanic entrepreneur asked me a question sometime ago, he said, 'When is the last time you saw a Hispanic panhandler?' I think it's a great question. I'll tell you, in my life I've never once have seen a Hispanic panhandler, because in our community, it would be viewed as shameful to be out on the street begging.
My advice for any entrepreneur or innovator is to get into the food industry in some form so you have a front-row seat to what's going on.
I think I'm very much an entrepreneur, but I know I have the ability to start a company in a lot of ways than other people who are more qualified because I have this existing brand as an actress.
I try not to dwell on big mistakes but to move on when I make a mistake. I make mistakes most of the times and that's part of the risk profile being an entrepreneur. I guess one big mistake I did was not to start my own company earlier. I spent nine years working for others before starting Kazaa in 2000.
The median startup is a business that's capitalized with about $25,000. The financing of that business comes from the entrepreneur's savings. The business is a retail or personal service business, a hair salon or a clothing store, that kind of thing.
As an entrepreneur, in many ways it's like looking into the crystal ball for what my company will hopefully go through as it starts to think about bigger challenges - scaling internationally, getting ready to go public, and all those different things.
Russia is an amazing country to be an entrepreneur.
I wanted to create a toolkit which I would have wanted as an entrepreneur to use these principles of psychology in product design. Some startups totally forget the trigger. In some, the action is too complicated. Others don't have a variable reward, which maintains mystery.
An entrepreneur, whether man or woman, has to be willing to take help, whether financial or technical, to grow his or her business.
Don't buy into the 20-hours-a-day entrepreneur myth. You need to sleep 8 hours a day to have a focused mind.
Growing up in a family of doctors, I wanted to be a brain surgeon for a while. But ultimately, I get most excited about creating things, which is why I decided to become an entrepreneur.
If you can't admit a failure, you're not an entrepreneur. You are not a good business person. There's nothing brilliant about what you are doing.
When I came into the music, I was forced to be a CEO. I was forced to be an entrepreneur; I was forced to... because I was looking for a deal. I didn't have this grand scheme of starting a record company and then morphing into a clothing empire.
That's a tough question; I've been acting since I was 10. My dad was an entrepreneur, so I guess something along those lines. I wouldn't want a 9-5 job.
I said that if I were an industrialist or entrepreneur, I would invest in agriculture-based enterprises, for there is so much that can be done in manufacturing, in food preservation.
I've always been an entrepreneur, but it's never been about the money. I like a challenge, the harder the better.
It's much easier for a middle class Indian entrepreneur to start up a computer company than it is for an Indian company to build roads and transportation systems suitable for a population that is getting wealthier and demanding more basic services.
The opportunity for an entrepreneur to start a company from scratch today is abysmal.
Some people bring their work home with them. You might suppose that Sid Mashburn is one of those guys - the man was born with a name so brand-ready he basically had to become an entrepreneur.
About 10 million people start a business each year, and about one out of two will make it. The average entrepreneur is often on his or her third startup.
EBay gave me the framework to discover I was an e-commerce entrepreneur. I touched everything, from shipping to logistics.
A whole series of events pushed me towards meditation, and now it's become such an integral part of the way I manage myself. It's a tool for me; when you're an entrepreneur, and you're pulled in every direction, it is wonderful to have this discipline.
An entrepreneur must deal with more uncertainty than a professional with a well-defined role.
Knowing whose advice to take and on what topic is the single most important decision an entrepreneur can make.
The more I talk to people who are at a place I'd like to be at, whether its music or writing, or being a doctor or entrepreneur, sometimes you get lucky, and right away something happens. But for most people, the common denominator of success is just working really hard.
A successful entrepreneur can't be afraid of failures or setbacks. An initial setback can be a great opportunity to take a new and more promising approach to any problem, to come back stronger than ever.
I've never really thought of myself as an entrepreneur. I think of an entrepreneur as someone who wants to make a lot of money. That has never been at the top of my list.
Even as a college professor at Carnegie Mellon and Stanford, I saw myself as an entrepreneur, and I went out, took risks, and tried to invent new things, such as participating in the DARPA Grand Challenge and working on self-driving cars.
When it comes to brands and having the opportunity to be an entrepreneur, social media has really become a great outlet for people to become their own boss.
As a serial entrepreneur, angel investor and public company CEO, nothing irks me more than when a startup founder talks about wanting to cash in with an initial public offering.
Because I was poor I had one special advantage. When you are poor, and basic survival is your concern, you have no alternative but to be an entrepreneur. You must take action to survive just as you must take action to seize an opportunity.