107 Inspiring Startup Quotes for Entrepreneurs

A startup or business is similar to planting a seed and seeing it grow into a big tree.

You need the utmost commitment, tireless work, and a sizeable number of money to establish a business without expecting anything in return.

In order to transform a idea into a successful startup, you must have guts, tenacity, and a never-say-die mindset.

startup-quotes

As an entrepreneur, you need as much motivation and inspiration as possible.

As a result, we’ve produced a compilation of 107 motivational startup quotes from successful entrepreneurs, investors, and business executives such as Mark Zuckerberg, Oprah Winfrey, Guy Kawasaki and others.

These quotes will inspire you to pursue your ambitions, overcome challenges, and launch a successful business.

So be ready to get inspired and take your business to the next level!


Inspiring Startup Quotes for Entrepreneurs and Side Hustlers

3. “Ideas are easy. Implementation is hard.” ~ Guy Kawasaki.

1. “Ideas are easy. Implementation is hard.” ~ Guy Kawasaki.

2. “Life is a game. Money is how we keep score.” ~ Ted Turner.

3. “Coming together is the beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.” ~ Henry Ford.

4. “Wonder what your customer really wants? Ask. Don’t tell.” ~ Lisa Stone.

5. “Sustaining a successful business is a hell of a lot of work, and staying hungry is half the battle.” ~ Wendy Tan White.

6. “If everything seems under control, you’re not going fast enough.” ~ Mario Andretti.

7. “Done is better than perfect.” ~ Sheryl Sandberg.

8. “Every day that we spent not improving our products was a wasted day.” ~ Joel Spolsky.

9. “Always wake up with a smile knowing that today you are going to have fun accomplishing what others are too afraid to do.” ~ Mark Cuban

10. “When you find an idea that you just can’t stop thinking about, that’s probably a good one to pursue.” ~ Josh James

11. “Stay hungry. Stay foolish.” ~ Steve Jobs

11. “Stay hungry. Stay foolish.” ~ Steve Jobs.

12. “What would you do if you weren’t afraid?” ~ Sheryl Sandberg.

Also Read: 123 Famous Hard Work Quotes To Succeed In Life & Business and 49 Business Success Quotes to Motivate You Today

Inspirational Startup Quotes

13. “Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.” ~ Jim Rohn

14. “If you’re going to put your product in beta – put your business model in beta with it.” ~ Joe Kraus

15. “Forget about your competitors, just focus on your customers.” ~ Jack Ma

16. “Stay hungry. And bootstrap.” ~ Rob Kalin

17. “When you want to succeed as bad as you want to breathe, then you’ll be successful.” ~ Eric Thomas

18. “Always look for the fool in the deal. If you don’t find one, it’s you.” ~ Mark Cuban

19. “Genius is 1% inspiration, and 99% perspiration.” ~ Thomas A. Edison

20. “Don’t worry about failure; you only have to be right once.” ~ Drew Houston

21. “High expectations are the key to everything.” ~ Sam Walton

22. “The only thing worse than starting something and failing is not starting something.” ~ Seth Godin

23. “Waiting for perfect is never as smart as making progress.” ~ Seth Godin

24. “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

25. “The world is not changed by people who sort of care.” ~ Sally Hogshead

26. ““Make something people want” includes making a company that people want to work for.” ~ Sahil Lavingia

27. “Our industry does not respect tradition. It only respects innovation.” ~ Satya Nadella

28. “If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.” ~ Reid Hoffman

29. “A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” ~ Winston Churchill

30. “Make mistakes faster.” ~ Andrew Grove.

Motivational Startup Quotes

31. “Whatever you’re thinking, think bigger.” ~ Tony Hsieh.

32. “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

33. “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

34. “When you innovate, you’ve got to be prepared for people telling you that you are nuts.” ~ Larry Ellison

35. “Chase the vision, not the money. The money will end up following you.” ~ Tony Hsieh

36. “Timing, perseverance, and ten years of trying will eventually make you look like an overnight success.” ~ Biz Stone

37. “Don’t be afraid to assert yourself, have confidence in your abilities and don’t let the bastards get you down.” ~ Michael Bloomberg

38. “Not having a clear goal leads to death by a thousand compromises.” ~ Mark Pincus

39. “Don’t try to be original, just try to be good.” ~ Paul Rand

40. “I never took a day off in my twenties. Not one.” ~ Bill Gates

41. “Whether you think you can or you can’t, you’re right.” ~ Henry Ford

42. “If your only goal is to become rich, you will never achieve it.” ~ John D. Rockefeller

43. “80% of your sales come from 20% of your clients.” ~ Pareto Principle

44. “Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goals.” ~ Henry Ford

45. “If you are going through hell, keep going.” ~ Winston Churchill

46. “You just have to pay attention to what people need and what has not been done.” ~ Russell Simmons

47. “So often people are working hard at the wrong thing. Working on the right thing is probably more important than working hard.” ~ Caterina Fake

48. “I don’t focus on what I’m up against. I focus on my goals and I try to ignore the rest.” ~ Venus Williams

49. “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.” ~ Mark Twain

50. “Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.” ~ Elon Musk

51. “Diligence is the mother of good luck.” ~ Benjamin Franklin

52. “Nothing works better than just improving your product.” ~ Joel Spolsky

53. “Remember to celebrate milestones as you prepare for the road ahead.” ~ Nelson Mandela

54. “You jump off a cliff and you assemble an airplane on the way down.” ~ Reid Hoffman

55. “Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me. Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful, that’s what matters to me.” ~ Steve Jobs.

Powerful Startup Quotes

56. “Move fast and break things. Unless you are breaking stuff, you are not moving fast enough.” ~ Mark Zuckerberg

57. “You can be comfortable in your career or extraordinary. Which one are you going to be?” ~ Sally Hogshead

58. “The very first company I started failed with a great bang. The second one failed a little bit less, but still failed. The third one, you know, proper failed, but it was kind of okay. I recovered quickly. Number four almost didn’t fail. It still didn’t really feel great, but it did okay. Number five was PayPal.” ~ Max Levchin

59. “Micromanage the process, not the people.” ~ Joe Apfelbaum

60. “Any time is a good time to start a company.” ~ Ron Conway

61. “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” ~ Thomas A. Edison

62. “You don’t learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing and falling over.” ~ Richard Branson

63. “A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” ~ Steve Jobs

64. “Life is not always a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well.” ~ Jack London

65. “Make every detail perfect and limit the number of details to perfect.” ~ Jack Dorsey

66. “There is only one boss: the customer. And he can fire everybody in the company, from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.” ~ Sam Walton

67. “It’s not that we need new ideas, but we need to stop having old ideas.” ~ Edwin H. Land

68. “Don’t start a company unless it’s an obsession and something you love. If you have an exit strategy, it’s not an obsession.” ~ Mark Cuban

69. “We are really competing against ourselves, we have no control over how other people perform.” ~ Pete Cashmore

70. “No business plan survives first contact with customers.” ~ Steve Blank

71. “The last 10% it takes to launch something takes as much energy as the first 90%.” ~ Rob Kalin

72. “I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.” ~ Steve Jobs

73. “Running a startup is like being punched in the face repeatedly, but working for a large company is like being waterboarded.” ~ Paul Graham

74. “Eliminate all the unimportant opportunities.” ~ Mike Markkula

75. “Every worthwhile accomplishment, big or little, has its stages of drudgery and triumph: a beginning, a struggle and a victory.” ~ Mahatma Gandhi

76. “If your sole focus is money, you may create a successful startup. But if it’s impact, you can probably create history.” ~ Sharad Vivek Sagar

77. “Real artists ship.” ~ Steve Jobs.

Great Startup Quotes

78. “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

79. “We often miss opportunity because it’s dressed in overalls and looks like work.” ~ Thomas A. Edison

80. “Ideas are commodity. Execution of them is not.” ~ Michael Dell

81. “80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.” ~ Pareto principle

82. “Sweat equity is the most valuable equity there is.” ~ Mark Cuban

83. “Starting your own business is like riding a roller coaster. There are highs and lows and every turn you take is another twist. The lows are really low, but the highs can be really high. You have to be strong, keep your stomach tight, and ride along with the roller coaster that you started.” ~ Lindsay Manseau

84. “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.” ~ Wayne Gretzy

85. “I think the single most reassuring thing about doing a startup is knowing in advance how difficult it is going to be.” ~ Jared Tame

86. “Unless you are a fortune-teller, long-term business planning is a fantasy.” ~ Jason Fried

87. “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” ~ Parkinson’s law

88. “The cost of hiring someone bad is so much greater than missing out on someone good.” ~ Joe Kraus

89. “The most important thing is not to let fundraising get you down. Startups live or die on morale. If you let the difficulty of raising money destroy your morale, it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.” ~ Paul Graham

90. “A year from now you may wish you had started today.” ~ Karen Lamb

91. “I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can’t accept not trying.” ~ Michael Jordan

92. “Entrepreneurs are willing to work 80 hours a week, to avoid working 40 hours a week.” ~ Lori Greiner

93. “Having a great startup pitch has more to do with setting up and running a great company than optimizing some type of sales process to investors. Great investors can see through most tactics that you will use in the pitch process, so the best fundraising strategy is to build a great company.” ~ Ken Howery

94. “If your dreams do not scare you, they are not big enough.” ~ Ellen Johnson Sirleaf95. “Believe in your dreams and dream big. And then after you’ve done that, dream bigger.” ~ Howard Schultz

95. “Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.” ~ Henry David Thoreau

96. “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” ~ Bill Gates.

Ultimate Startup Quotes

97. “Failure is simply an opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.” ~ Henry Ford

98. “The way to get started is to quit talking and start doing.” ~ Walt Disney

99. “Opportunities are usually disguised as hard work, so most people don’t recognize them.” ~ Ann Landers

100. “Even if you are on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” ~ Will Rogers

101. “Every day I get up and look through the Forbes list of the richest people in America. If I’m not there, I go to work.” ~ Robert Orben.

102. “It’s hard to beat a person who never gives up.” ~ Babe Ruth

103. “Always deliver more than expected.” ~ Larry Page

104. “I could either watch it happen or be a part of it.” ~ Elon Musk

105. “You should set goals beyond your reach so you always have something to live for.” ~ Ted Turner

106. “Customers don’t care about your solution. They care about their problems.” ~ Dave McClure.

107. “Don’t worry about failure; you only have to be right once.” ~ Drew Houston.



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References and Sources:

  1. 50 Inspirational Quotes For Startups And Entrepreneurs – Forbes
  2. 101 Inspirational Quotes For Startups – Drop Desk
  3. 11 Inspirational Startup Quotes – StartupXs
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Chandan Negi
Chandan Negi

I’m the Founder of Internet Pillar - I love sharing quotes and motivational content to inspire and motivate people - #quotes #motivation #internetpillar