101 Inspirational Startup Quotes

If you are just starting your business and you need some inspiration to keep you going, then we’ve got you covered. Here are 101 startup quotes for entrepreneurs. Keep in mind that starting your own business is not simply a sprint, but it’s a marathon!

Startup Quotes About Money

1. “Money is like gasoline during a road trip. You don’t want to run out of gas on your trip, but you’re not doing a tour of gas stations.” -Tim O’Reilly (CEO and Founder of O’Reilly Media)

2. “Chase the vision, not the money, the money will end up following you.” -Tony Hsieh (CEO of Zappos)

3. “Don’t play games that you don’t understand, even if you see lots of other people making money from them.” -Tony Hsieh (CEO 0f Zappos)

4. “Stay self-funded as long as possible.” -Garrett Camp (founder of Uber, Expa, and StumbleUpon)

5. “Fortunes are built during the down market and collected in the up market.” – Jason Calacanis (founder of LAUNCH Ticker)

6. “Don’t worry about funding if you don’t need it. Today it’s cheaper to start a business than ever.” – Noah Everett (founder of Twitpic)

Startup Quotes About Your Work

7. “Every time we launch a feature, people yell at us.” -Angelo Sotira (Co-Founder of DeviantART)

8. “Don’t worry about people stealing your design work. Worry about the day they stop.” -Jeffrey Zeldman (Publisher of A List Apart)

9. “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.” -Steve Jobs (CEO, Chairman, and Co-Founder of Apple Inc.)

10. “Make every detail perfect and limit the number of details to perfect.” -Jack Dorsey (Co-Founder of Twitter)

11. “The last 10% it takes to launch something takes as much energy as the first 90%.” -Rob Kalin (Founder of Etsy)

12. “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” – Steve Jobs (CEO, Chairman, and Co-Founder of Apple Inc.)

Startup Quotes About Ideas

13. “The value of an idea lies in the using of it.” -Thomas Edison (Co-Founder of General Electric)

14. “It’s not about ideas. It’s about making ideas happen.” -Scott Belsky (Co-Founder of Behance)

15. “Get five or six of your smartest friends in a room and ask them to rate your idea.” -Mark Pincus (CEO of Zynga)

16. “It’s not that we need new ideas, but we need to stop having old ideas.” -Edwin Land (Co-founder of Polaroid)

17. “I don’t think an economic slump will hurt good ideas.” -Rob Kalin (Founder of Etsy)

18. “Ideas are easy. Implementation is hard.” -Guy Kawasaki (Co-Founder of Alltop/Entrepreneur)

19. “Ideas are commodity. Execution of them is not.” – Michael Dell (CEO and chairman of Dell)

20. “You don’t need to have a 100-person company to develop that idea.” – Larry Page (Co-Founder of Google)

21. “Even if you don’t have the perfect idea to begin with, you can likely adapt.” – Victoria Ransom (Co-Founder of Wildfire Interactive)

22. “When you find an idea that you just can’t stop thinking about, that’s probably a good one to pursue.” – Josh James (CEO and Co-Founder of Omniture)

Startup Quotes About Reputation

23. “Your reputation is more important than your paycheck, and your integrity is worth more than your career.” – Ryan Freitas (Co-Founder of About.me)

24. “Be undeniably good. No marketing effort or social media buzzword can be a substitute for that.” -Anthony Volodkin (Founder of Hype Machine)

25. “Nothing works better than just improving your product.” -Joel Spolsky, Stack Overflow co-founder Click to Tweet

26. “Don’t try to be original, just try to be good.” -Paul Rand (Graphic Designer)

Startup Quotes On Teamwork

27. “If you can’t feed a team with two pizzas, it’s too large.” -Jeff Bezos (CEO and Founder of Amazon)

28. “There’s nothing wrong with staying small. You can do big things with a small team.” -Jason Fried (Founder of 37signals)

29. “No matter how brilliant your mind or strategy, if you’re playing a solo game, you’ll always lose out to a team.” -Reid Hoffman (Co-Founder of LinkedIn)

Startup Quotes On Achievement

30. “The most dangerous poison is the feeling of achievement. The antidote is to every evening think what can be done better tomorrow.” -Ingvar Kamprad (founder of IKEA)

31. “Get big quietly, so you don’t tip off potential competitors.” -Chris Dixon (Investor of Andreesen Horowitz)

32. “It’s more effective to do something valuable than to hope a logo or name will say it for you.” – Jason Cohen , Smart Bear Software founder Click to Tweet

33. “In the end, a vision without the ability to execute it is probably a hallucination.” -Steve Case (Co-Founder of AOL)

34. “As long as you’re going to be thinking anyway, think big.” – Donald Trump (President of The Trump Organization)

35. “The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.” – Walt Disney (founder of Disney)

36. “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 (founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics)

37. “I never took a day off in my twenties. Not one.” – Bill Gates (Co-Founder of Microsoft)

38. “You jump off a cliff and you assemble an airplane on the way down.” – Reid Hoffman (Co-Founder of  LinkedIn)

39. “I made a resolve then that I was going to amount to something if I could. And no hours, nor amount of labor, nor amount of money would deter me from giving the best that there was in me. And I have done that ever since, and I win by it. I know.” – Harland Sanders (Founder of KFC)

40. “An invention that is quickly accepted will turn out to be a rather trivial alteration of something that has already existed.” -Edwin Land (Co-Founder of Polaroid)

Startup Quotes About Deals

41. “Always look for the fool in the deal. If you don’t find one, it’s you.” -Mark Cuban (Chairman of AXS TV/Entrepreneur)

Startup Quotes About Failure

42. “Don’t worry about failure; you only have to be right once.” -Drew Houston (CEO and Founder of Dropbox)

43. “Fail often so you can succeed sooner.” -Tom Kelley (Partner of Ideo)

44. “The only thing worse than starting something and failing… is not starting something.” -Seth Godin (founder of Squidoo/Author/Blogger)

45. “I knew that if I failed I wouldn’t regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not trying.” – Jeff Bezos (CEO and founder of Amazon)

46. “Fearlessness is like a muscle. I know from my own life that the more I exercise it the more natural it becomes to not let my fears run me.” – Arianna Huffington (President and EIC of The Huffington Post Media Group)

47. “You don’t learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing and falling over.” – Richard Branson (founder of Virgin Group)

Startup Quotes About Challenges

48. “If there’s something you want to build, but the tech isn’t there yet, just find the closest possible way to make it happen.” -Dennis Crowley (Co-Founder of Foursquare)

49. “We are currently not planning on conquering the world.” -Sergey Brin (Co-Founder of Google)

50. “When I’m old and dying, I plan to look back on my life and say ‘wow, that was an adventure,’ not ‘wow, I sure felt safe.’ – Tom Preston-Werner (Co-Founder of Github)

51. “If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.” – Reid Hoffman (Co-Founder of LinkedIn)

52. “Embrace what you don’t know, especially in the beginning, because what you don’t know can become your greatest asset. It ensures that you will absolutely be doing things different from everybody else.” – Sara Blakely (founder of SPANX)

Startup Quotes On Doing A Good Job

53. “It’s hard to do a really good job on anything you don’t think about in the shower.” -Paul Graham (Co-Founder of YCombinator)

54. “If you’re interested in the living heart of what you do, focus on building things rather than talking about them.” -Ryan Freitas (Co-Founder of About.me)

55. “You can’t make anything viral, but you can make something good.” – Peter Shankman (founder of HARO)

56. “I don’t look to jump over 7-foot bars — I look for 1-foot bars that I can step over.” -Warren Buffet (CEO and Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway)

57. “Diligence is the mother of good luck.” – Benjamin Franklin

58. “You shouldn’t focus on why you can’t do something, which is what most people do. You should focus on why perhaps you can, and be one of the exceptions.” – Steve Case (Co-Founder of AOL)

59. “A person who is quietly confident makes the best leader.” – Fred Wilson (Co-Founder of Union Square Ventures)

60. “Always deliver more than expected.” – Larry Page (Co-Founder of Google)

61. “If you just work on stuff that you like and you’re passionate about, you don’t have to have a master plan with how things will play out.” -Mark Zuckerberg (founder of Facebook)

Startup Quotes On Being An Entrepreneur

62. “Entrepreneur is someone who has a vision for something and a want to create.” -David Karp (CEO and Founder of Tumblr)

63. “Best startups generally come from somebody needing to scratch an itch.” -Michael Arrington (Founder and Co-Editor of TechCrunch)

64. “I doubt I’ll ever go back to corporate work. Once you see the light, there is no turning back.” -Magnus Jepson (Co-Founder of WooThemes)

65. “Timing, perseverance, and ten years of trying will eventually make you look like an overnight success.” -Biz Stone (Co-Founder of Twitter)

66. “No more romanticizing about how cool it is to be an entrepreneur. It’s a struggle to save your company’s life – and your own skin – every day of the week.” – Spencer Fry (Co-Founder of CarbonMade)

67. “A ‘startup’ is a company that is confused about – 1. What its product is. 2. Who its customers are. 3. How to make money.” – Dave McClure (Co-Founder of 500Startups)

68. “All humans are entrepreneurs not because they should start companies but because the will to create is encoded in human DNA.” -Reid Hoffman (Co-Founder of LinkedIn)

69. “Before dreaming about the future or marking plans, you need to articulate what you already have going for you – as entrepreneurs do.” -Reid Hoffman (Co-Founder of LinkedIn)

Startup Quotes On Starting A New Company

70. “What do you need to start a business? Three simple things: know your product better than anyone. Know your customer, and have a burning desire to succeed.” – Dave Thomas (Founder of Wendy’s)

71. “There’s lots of bad reasons to start a company. But there’s only one good, legitimate reason, and I think you know what it is: it’s to change the world.” -Phil Libin (CEO of Evernote)

Startup Quotes About Improvement

72. “Every day that we spent not improving our products was a wasted day.” -Joel Spolsky (Co-Founder of Stack Overflow)

73. “Anything that is measured and watched, improves.” – Bob Parsons (founder of GoDaddy)

74. “The fastest way to change yourself is to hang out with people who are already the way you want to be.” -Reid Hoffman (Co-Founder of LinkedIn)

75. “Don’t be cocky. Don’t be flashy. There’s always someone better than you.” -Tony Hsieh (CEO of Zappos)

76. “Whether you think you can, or think you can’t – you’re right.” – Henry Ford (founder of Ford Motor Company)

77. “Behold the turtle, he makes progress only when he sticks his neck out.” – Bruce Levin

78. “We are really competing against ourselves, we have no control over how other people perform.” – Pete Cashmore (CEO and Founder of Mashable)

Startup Quotes On Hiring People

79. “The secret to successful hiring is this: look for the people who want to change the world.“ – Marc Benioff (CEO of Salesforce)

Startup Quotes On Making Decisions

80. “I try not to make any decisions that I’m not excited about.” – Jake Nickell (CEO and Founder of Threadless)

81. “See things in the present, even if they are in the future.” – Larry Ellison (Co-Founder of Oracle)

82. “If you’re going to put your product in beta – put your business model in beta with it.” – Joe Kraus (Partner of Google Ventures)

83. “Data beats emotions.” – Sean Rad (founder of Adly and Tinder)

84. “I like to pride myself on thinking pretty long term, but not that long term.” – Mark Zuckerberg (Founder of Facebook)

85. “So often people are working hard at the wrong thing. Working on the right thing is probably more important than working hard.” – Caterina Fake (Co-Founder of Flickr)

Startup Quotes On Expectations

86. “High expectations are the key to everything.” – Sam Walton (founder of Walmart)

87. “You just have to pay attention to what people need and what has not been done.” – Russell Simmons (founder of Def Jam)

Startup Quotes On Advice

88. “Don’t take too much advice. Most people who have a lot of advice to give — with a few exceptions — generalize whatever they did. Don’t over-analyze everything. I myself have been guilty of over-thinking problems. Just build things and find out if they work.” – Ben Silbermann (founder of Pinterest)

89. “Get a mentor in the applicable field if you’re at all unsure of what you’re looking for.” – Kyle Bragger (founder of Forrst)

Startup Quotes On Confidence

90. “Don’t be afraid to assert yourself, have confidence in your abilities and don’t let the bastards get you down.” – Michael Bloomberg (founder of Bloomberg L.P.)

91. “Every time you state what you want or believe, you’re the first to hear it. It’s a message to both you and others about what you think is possible. Don’t put a ceiling on yourself” – Oprah Winfrey (OWN founder /Harpo Productions)

92. “Trust your instincts.” – Estee Lauder (founder of Estee Lauder)

Startup Quotes On Taking Risks

93. “If you’re not a risk taker, you should get the hell out of business.” -Ray Kroc (founder of McDonald’s)

94. “Turn a perceived risk into an asset. – Aaron Patzer (founder of Mint)

95. “Risk more than others think is safe. Dream more than others think is practical.” – Howard Schultz (CEO of Starbucks)

96. “Theory is splendid but until put into practice, it is valueless.” – James Cash Penney (founder of J.C. Penney)

97. “If you define yourself by how you differ from the competition, you’re probably in trouble.” – Omar Hamoui (Co-Founder of AdMob)

Startup Quotes On Being Successful

98. “Sustaining a successful business is a hell of a lot of work, and staying hungry is half the battle.” -Wendy Tan White (CEO and Co-Founder of MoonFruit)

99. “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” Bill Gates (Co-Founder of Microsoft)

100. “Wonder what your customer really wants? Ask. Don’t tell.” – Lisa Stone (CEO and Co-Founder of BlogHer)

101.“If you’re passionate about something and you work hard, then I think you will be successful.” – Pierre Omidyar (Founder and Chairman of eBay)