The perfect target market for a startup is a small group of particular people concentrated together and served by few or no competitors. Any big market is a bad choice, and a big market already served by competing companies is even worse. This is why it’s always a red flag when entrepreneurs talk about getting 1% of a $100 billion market. In practice, a large market will either lack a good starting point or it will be open to competition, so it’s hard to ever reach that 1%. And even if you do succeed in gaining a small foothold, you’ll have to be satisfied with keeping the lights on: cutthroat competition means your profits will be zero.
- Peter Thiel
Notable Quotables
Concentrate your energies, your thoughts and your capital. The wise man puts all his eggs in one basket and watches the basket.
- Andrew Carnegie
I am concerned about any attrition in customer traffic at Starbucks, but I don’t want to use the economy, commodity prices or consumer confidence as an excuse. We must maintain a value proposition to our customers as well as differentiate the Starbucks Experience. That is the key.
- Howard Schultz
There are two kinds of companies, those that work to try to charge more and those that work to charge less. We will be the second.
- Jeff Bezos
This proves our strategy is working in terms of the convergence of voice, video and data.
- John Chambers
A culture of discipline is not a principle of business, it is a principle of greatness.
- James C. Collins
Business is never so healthy as when, like a chicken, it must do a certain amount of scratching around for what it gets.
- Henry Ford
Although personally I am quite content with existing explosives, I feel we must not stand in the path of improvement.
- Winston Churchill
I think my father is nearly perfect. I think he’s quite handsome, except a bit fat.
- Gina Rinehart
Oracle’s latest database, version 12c, was specifically designed for the cloud. Oracle 12c makes all your Oracle applications multitenant applications without you having to make any changes whatsoever to your applications.
- Larry Ellison
Percentage margins don’t matter. What matters always is dollar margins: the actual dollar amount. Companies are valued not on their percentage margins, but on how many dollars they actually make, and a multiple of that.
- Jeff Bezos
If you learn to pray bold prayers… it allows God to do big things in your life.
- Joel Olsteen
Take a chance! All life is a chance. The man who goes farthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare.
- Dale Carnegie
Cherish each hour of this day for it can never return.
- Og Mandino
Anyone with a Purpose Can Make a Difference.
- Zig Ziglar
We’re not in the hamburger business. We’re in show business.
- Ray Kroc
We don’t know a millionth of one percent about anything.
- Thomas Edison
I think the definition of a book is changing.
- Jeff Bezos
Nothing I do is done by popular demand.
- Steve Martin
We’ve had three big ideas at Amazon that we’ve stuck with for 18 years, and they’re the reason we’re successful: Put the customer first. Invent. And be patient.
- Jeff Bezos
The wars of people will be more terrible than those of kings.
- Winston Churchill
The chief cause of failure and unhappiness is trading what you want most for what you want right now.
- Zig Ziglar
With residential property prices having dropped by around two-thirds from their peak in 1997 and local interest rates dropping to their historic lows, mortgage payments currently falls below rental payment. This positive carry has led to property purchases by both home purchasers as well as investors. Further, with the local stock market becoming active again and reaching its highest level in the past 17 months, this has resulted in an increase in the number of transactions and a price for the luxury properties.
- Lee Shau Kee
We do benefit from the fact that once we say we’re going to do it, people believe we can do it, because we have the resources. Google helps in that way: There aren’t many funding mechanisms like that.
- Larry Page
The lessons of history would suggest that civilisations move in cycles. You can track that back quite far – the Babylonians, the Sumerians, followed by the Egyptians, the Romans, China. We’re obviously in a very upward cycle right now, and hopefully that remains the case. But it may not.
- Elon Musk
Not victory , Obi- Wan. The shroud of the Dark Side has fallen. Begun, this Clone War has.
- Yoda
Live to learn, and you will really learn to live.
- John C. Maxwell
I loved couriers. You had this transfer of physical information happening throughout the city and the world. Someone picking up the package, putting it in a bag, going somewhere, taking it out of the bag, giving it to someone else. I thought that was so cool. I wanted to map it, to see that flow on a big screen.
- Jack Dorsey
In the context of body redesign, there are two fundamental MEDs to keep in mind: To remove stored fat → do the least necessary to trigger a fat-loss cascade of specific hormones. To add muscle in small or large quantities → do the least necessary to trigger local (specific muscles) and systemic (hormonal2) growth mechanisms.
- Timothy Ferriss
God didn’t make a mistake when He made you. You need to see yourself as God sees you.
- Joel Olsteen
Let’s realize that the person we are going to correct and condemn will probably justify himself or herself, and condemn us in return; or, like the gentle Taft, will say: I don’t see how I could have done any differently from what I have.
- Dale Carnegie
Customers have different need states and life experiences.
- Howard Schultz
A lot of people assume that creating software is purely a solitary activity where you sit in an office with the door closed all day and write lots of code.
- Bill Gates
I have the best job I could possibly have.
- Michael Bloomberg
[On the three keys to Twitter’s success.] The first lesson: Draw. The most important thing you can do with an idea: get it out of your head. Second lesson: Luck. Be able to recognize when luck is happening around you. Third lesson: iteration. Originally Twitter asked ‘What’s your status?’ Bonus fourth lesson: know when to stop. Sometimes put the idea away, that idea will often emerge later.
- Jack Dorsey
Direct your energy toward achieving a goal, and tackle the problems with an emphasis on edging closer to a successful result.
- Harvey Mackay
If what others say doesn’t match what God has put in your heart, let it go in one ear and out the other.
- Joel Olsteen
The Group recorded totals sales of around 3,300 property units from which approximately HK$6,810 million was generated from sales revenues attributable to the Group.
- Lee Shau Kee
Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Civilization had too many rules for me, so I did my best to rewrite them.
- Bill Cosby
I totally understand that people are upset about it and I think that is a reasonable point of view to take.
- Sergey Brin
Plan and execute your first failure so that you no longer have to fear it.
- John C. Maxwell
One of the statistics that always amazes me is the approval of the Chinese government, not elected, is over 80 percent. The approval of the U.S. government, fully elected, is 19 percent. Well, we elected these people and they didn’t elect those people. Isn’t it supposed to be different? Aren’t we supposed to like the people that we elected?
- Bill Gates
I like thinking big. If you’re going to be thinking anything, you might as well think big.
- Donald Trump
The greatest thing about being a comedian is knowing other comedians. And you get to talk to them. Its the most fun.
- Jerry Seinfeld
The great majority of people are “wandering generalities” rather than “meaningful specifics”. The fact is that you can’t bit a target that you can’t see. If you don’t know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else. You have to have goals.
- Zig Ziglar
I have always regarded Paine as one of the greatest of all Americans. Never have we had a sounder intelligence in this republic … It was my good fortune to encounter Thomas Paine’s works in my boyhood … it was, indeed, a revelation to me to read that great thinker’s views on political and theological subjects. Paine educated me, then, about many matters of which I had never before thought. I remember, very vividly, the flash of enlightenment that shone from Paine’s writings, and I recall thinking, at that time, ‘What a pity these works are not today the schoolbooks for all children!’ My interest in Paine was not satisfied by my first reading of his works. I went back to them time and again, just as I have done since my boyhood days.
- Thomas Edison
There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.
- Peter Drucker
Apart from consolidating our position as a major property developer in Hong Kong, we have also been diversifying into other activities such as hotel businesses, construction and engineering, container terminal services and television industry…
- Cheng Yu-tung
We bring together the best ideas – turning the meetings of our top managers into intellectual orgies.
- Jack Welch
Learning to be a CEO through classroom training would be like learning to be an NFL quarterback through classroom training.
- Ben Horowitz
There is only one excuse for a speaker’s asking the attention of his audience: he must have either truth or entertainment for them.
- Dale Carnegie
Fulfilling the vision of the Irvine Ranch master plan has been a lifetime dedication and lifetime passion, and I am hopeful the heritage of our Irvine stewardship will live on in many new ways.
- Donald Bren
It is a very big exaggeration to say I am a friend of Mr. Putin.
- Alexei Mordashov
I’m a voracious reader.
- Howard Schultz
The majority of men meet with failure because of their lack of persistence in creating new plans to take the place of those which fail.
- Napoleon Hill
As the Readers’s Digest once said: ‘Many persons call a doctor when all they want is an audience.
- Dale Carnegie
Every failure brings with it the seed of an equivalent benefit.
- Napoleon Hill
Magazines, trade publications and out outlets that relate specifically to your field of interest. If you’re a musician, Billboard, Rolling Stone and Spin top your list; if you’re a chef or restaurateur, the Gourmet or Bon Appetit and the food section of your local paper top yours.
- Michael Levine
The thing about information is that information is more valuable when people know it. There’s an exception for business information and super timely information, but in all other cases, ideas that spread win.
- Seth Godin
Never look back unless you are planning to go that way.
- Henry David Thoreau
Change is powerful, but change always comes with the possibility of failure as its partner. “This might not work” isn’t merely something to be tolerated; it’s something you must seek out.
- Seth Godin
How many companies have you encountered that articulate a clear ideology at the start of the company, yet cannot articulate a clear idea of what products to make?
- James C. Collins
Five percent of the people think;ten percent of the people think they think;and the other eighty-five percent would rather die than think.
- Thomas Edison
swept over me. Guiltily I came to your bedside. There are the things I was thinking, son: I had been cross to you. I scolded you as you were dressing for school because you gave your face merely a dab with a towel. I took you to task for not cleaning your shoes. I called out angrily when you threw some of your things on the floor. At breakfast I found fault, too. You spilled things. You gulped down your food. You put your elbows on the table.
- Dale Carnegie
I’m not a macroeconomics person.
- Bill Gates
Don’t limit yourself. Many people limit themselves to what they think they can do. You can go as far as your mind lets you. What you believe, remember, you can achieve.
- Mary Kay Ash
Isn’t it amazing how much stuff we get done the day before vacation?
- Zig Ziglar
Comedy may be big business but it isn’t pretty.
- Steve Martin
Every man lives in two realms: the internal and the external. The internal is that realm of spiritual ends expressed in art, literature, morals, and religion. The external is that complex of devices, techniques, mechanisms, and instrumentalities by means of which we live.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Windows 8 is key to the future, the Surface computer.
- Bill Gates
It’s important that the company be a family, that people feel that they’re part of the company, and that the company is like a family to them. When you treat people that way, you get better productivity.
- Larry Page
Nothing tells in the long run like a good judgment, and no sound judgment can remain with the man whose mind is disturbed by the mercurial changes of the stock exchange. It places him under an influence akin to intoxication. What is not, he sees, and what he sees, is not.
- Andrew Carnegie
Lectures should go from being like the family singing around the piano to high-quality concerts.
- Bill Gates
The man who does more than he is paid for will soon be paid for more than he does.
- Napoleon Hill
If a hurricane strikes, we can blame the president for not being there; we can blame Congress and FEMA; we can blame the state governments; but in the end, it’s the mayors and the local city governments that have to be prepared for emergencies and be prepared to act.
- Michael Bloomberg
I don’t like to look back, and I’m always worried about the next thing rather than resting on the laurels or the degradations of the last thing.
- Steve Martin
I think everything I have done in my life, my reasons at the time were right no matter how things worked out.
- Steve Wozniak
Keep doing the right. God is building character in you, and you are passing that test. Remember, the greater the struggle, the greater the reward.
- Joel Olsteen
I sold my most valuable possession, but I knew that because I worked at Hewlett Packard, I could buy the next model calculator the very next month for a lower price than I sold the older one for!
- Steve Wozniak
I got into retailing because I wanted a real job.
- Sam Walton
People going nowhere want company.
- Brian Tracy
When we are harassed and reach the limit of our own strength, many of us then turn in desperation to God-There are no atheists in foxholes. But why wait till we are desperate? Why not renew our strength every day? Why wait even until Sunday? For years I have had the habit of dropping into empty churches on weekday afternoons. When I feel that I am too rushed and hurried to spare a few minutes to think about spiritual things, I say to myself: Wait a minute, Dale Carnegie, wait a minute. Why all the feverish hurry and rush, little man? You need to pause and acquire a little perspective. At such times, I frequently drop into the first church that I find open. Although I am a Protestant, I frequently, on weekday afternoons, drop into St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue, and remind myself that I’ll be dead in another thirty years, but that the great spiritual truths that all churches teach are eternal. I close my eyes and pray. I find that doing this calms my nerves, rests my body, clarifies my perspective, and helps me revalue my values. May I recommend this practice to you?
- Dale Carnegie
In Riyadh, there’s going to be a huge project that will house at least 12,000 units with inhabitants of approximately 150,000 people. It’s like a city within a city.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
Although my spelling is still sometimes poor, I have managed to overcome the worst of my difficulties through training myself to concentrate.
- Richard Branson
If you wake up deciding what you want to give versus what you’re going to get, you become a more successful person. In other words, if you want to make money, you have to help someone else make money.
- Russell Simmons
I’d work in the store all day, then take off around closing and drive that windy road over the Mississippi River, and then into Tennessee with an old homemade trailer I had hitched to my car. I’d stuff that car and trailer with whatever I could get good deals on – usually on soft lines, ladies panties and nylons, men’s shirts and I’d bring them back, price them low and just blow that stuff out of the store.
- Sam Walton
To do the most good requires saying no to pressures to stray, and the discipline to stop doing what does not fit.
- Peter Drucker
One who knows God is going to bless them, despite the fact that they have no idea how to actually raise capital or solve a real problem that people have in exchange for monetary compensation. They love the idea of business ownership, yet fear working, as though doing any actual work or rendering any tangible service or product might ruin their lives on this planet and for eternity.
- Clay Clark
When you’re building a business or joining a company, you have to be transparent; you can’t have two sets of information for two sets of people.
- Howard Schultz
No one lives long enough to learn everything they need to learn starting from scratch. To be successful, we absolutely, positively have to find people who have already paid the price to learn the things that we need to learn to achieve our goals.
- Brian Tracy
DAY TWENTY I DECLARE that I am calm and peaceful. I will not let people or circumstances upset me. I will rise above every difficulty, knowing that God has given me the power to remain calm. I choose to live my life happy, bloom where I am planted, and let God fight my battles. This is my declaration.
- Joel Olsteen
Speeches will not distribute the future.
- Jack Dorsey
Everything important to us—the universe, the planet, the country, your company, your life, and this very moment—is singular.
- Peter Thiel
Many persons call a doctor when all they want is an audience.
- Dale Carnegie
Success is one thing — but impact is another.
- Ray Lewis
WHY 20 MILE MARCHERS WIN 20 Mile Marching helps turn the odds in your favor for three reasons: 1. It builds confidence in your ability to perform well in adverse circumstances. 2. It reduces the likelihood of catastrophe when you’re hit by turbulent disruption. 3. It helps you exert self-control in an out-of-control environment.
- James C. Collins
A man, as a general rule, owes very little to what he was born with.
- Alexander Graham Bell
I always saw myself wanting to do something deemed successful and good at the same time.
- Howard Schultz
If your only goal is to become rich, you will never achieve it.
- John D. Rockefeller
