Fred Wilson is an American businessman, venture capitalist, and blogger. As the co-founder of Union Square Ventures, Wilson has helped to back many Web 2.0 companies such as Twitter, FourSquare, Kickstarter, and more. Here is a look at some of the best Fred Wilson quotes ever documented.
“All markets have boom and bust cycles, and I think venture capital market has even more exaggerated boom and bust cycles.”
“Being an entrepreneur is hard. Having supportive and caring investors helps.”
“Blog-based businesses have lower cost structures and are more ‘authentic,’ and as a result are drawing larger shares of ad budgets.”
“Board meetings should not be for the benefit of the board. They should be for the benefit of the CEO and the senior team.”
“Building product is not about having a large team to manage. It is about having a small team with the right people on it.”
“Certainly anything that is news or opinion needs to be free on the Web, because the Web is this very fluid medium that is very much driven by links and the flow of visitors through a discussion via links.”
“Customers are a great way to finance a business for many reasons. First, customer financing is typically non dilutive.”
“Equity capital is expensive. Every time you do a raise, you dilute.”
“Facebook is not an unstoppable juggernaut. There are a lot of other things people can do on the web.”
“Games are the most social of all things on the web.”
“I believe Android will be stronger in the developing world than it is in the developed world.”
“I don’t like to talk about myself. I like to talk about stuff that’s happening, stuff that’s going to happen, and the people who are going to make it happen.”
“I would like to reiterate that I don’t want any profiles of me. I am not newsworthy.”
“Ideas that most people derided as ridiculous have produced the best outcomes. Don’t do the obvious thing.”
“If you have a native monetization system where the atomic unit of content is the ad unit, that scales down all the way to a small screen experience. That’s why Twitter is performing so well on mobile.”
“If you have an idea that you can’t get out of your head, do a startup. Otherwise join a startup.”
“I’m a free speech bigot. I don’t like censorship; I just don’t think it’s a good thing.”
“I’m really interested in the intersection between reputation, identity, and knowledge.”
“Investing in management means building communication systems, business processes, feedback, and routines that let you scale the business and team as efficiently as possible.”
“It’s not easy for an entrepreneur to find the time to blog. But for those who do it, it is a great tool to communicate with the various stakeholders in their business and build a reputation for thought leadership.”
“The best time to invest in something is when nobody wants to invest in it but you.And you have to believe in it and know why”
–@fredwilson pic.twitter.com/WdB3NqqeEf— Opatan | اپاتان (@opatan) May 4, 2017
“It’s upsetting to me that you have to be a millionaire to invest in your friend’s start-up.”
“Many artists stick to making and hire a manager to focus on their business. Artists that build websites and mobile apps can do that, too.”
“Markets come and go. Good business don’t.”
“Money is information, like bits.”
“Not acknowledging that beauty is complex-that’s the problem. I enjoy making it complex for people, because that’s my world.”
“Not only do you have to put yourself in harms way in service of your country, you have to leave your families at home. It is a great sacrifice.”
“People already love to play casual games. But when you take a casual game and stick it inside a social network, it becomes way more exciting.”
“Startups are rapidly changing systems. If you use an annual review cycle, you aren’t getting feedback at the same pace that you need to adapt and change the business.”
“The companies that do the best job on managing a user’s privacy will be the companies that ultimately are the most successful.”
“The entire world is now a rival to Silicon Valley. No country, state, region, nor city has a lock on innovation in technology anymore.”
“The fact is that the amount of money startups raise in their seed and Series A rounds is inversely correlated with success.”
“The Internet is a computing platform built on top of core technology. Applied technology is what gets built on top of that: It’s Web services.”
“The more entrepreneurs in the world that are getting their ideas financed, the more great companies there are going to be that we can all invest in.”
“There are so many startups out there raising money. I don’t think this is a bad thing. It’s a good thing. Entrepreneurship is in vogue. Innovators are innovating. Makers are making.”
“There is a difference between hiring a CEO and turning over control of the business.”
“To see things differently requires you to be wired a little differently.”
“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.”
“When I see people laughing at ideas and companies we have backed, I smile. It means we are going to make a lot of money on that investment.”
“You simply can’t be tentative in a startup. You have to go for it at every chance you get.”
Here is a special video with Fred Wilson as he discusses the impact of robotics and new technology on human society.
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