Fred Wilson Quotes
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Yahoo is free, it's fast and it's Web-centric. AOL is slow, it costs money and requires proprietary software.
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It's upsetting to me that you have to be a millionaire to invest in your friend's start-up.
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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.
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The entire world is now a rival to Silicon Valley. No country, state, region, nor city has a lock on innovation in technology anymore.
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Being an entrepreneur is hard. Having supportive and caring investors helps.
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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.
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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. A strong return is three times cash on cash. A reasonable amount of time is ten years max.
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When people laugh at a company or say, 'This is the stupidest thing I have ever heard,' you are listening.
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I would like to reiterate that I don't want any profiles of me. I am not newsworthy.
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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.
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Facebook is not an unstoppable juggernaut. There are a lot of other things people can do on the web.
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The best talent in the venture industry doesn't work in large companies and won't work in large companies.
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I'm a free speech bigot. I don't like censorship; I just don't think it's a good thing.
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Skyping with your spouse works well enough, but apparently it is hard to get the kids to hang out on Skype for long.
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The companies that do the best job on managing a user's privacy will be the companies that ultimately are the most successful.
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My venture investing career has three phases, all roughly 6-8 years long. The first, at Euclid, was software to Internet. The second, at Flatiron, was Internet to bubble. And the third, at USV, has been web 2 to mobile. I have always used a new firm to denote a new investment phase for me. Throw away the old. Start with the new.
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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.
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Building product is not about having a large team to manage. It is about having a small team with the right people on it.
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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.
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The venture business is a bit of an apprenticeship business, so the firm I worked for didn't let me make an investment until I was 30. That was probably a very smart thing.
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Given New York City's cultural diversity, it has always attracted creative people.
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Politics and government have been a terrible place to invest; education has been a terrible place to invest, but that is because the entrenched interests make it a terrible place to invest. The way you invest in those sectors is you go against the entrenched interests; you try and disrupt the entrenched interests, not to service them.
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When my dad was in Vietnam, we lost a parent for a year. Thank God we didn't lose a parent for good.
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So many folks in the venture capital business are sheep that just want to follow the herd. They are momentum investors purchasing highly illiquid investments. That is a recipe for disaster.