Fred Wilson Quotes
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Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr are all 'User First, Brands Second' services. The brands are all over these services now. But for the most part, these services didn't do much to bring them. The engaged users did.
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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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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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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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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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When people laugh at a company or say, 'This is the stupidest thing I have ever heard,' you are listening.
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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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Being an entrepreneur is hard. Having supportive and caring investors helps.
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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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Facebook is not an unstoppable juggernaut. There are a lot of other things people can do on the web.
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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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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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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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The best talent in the venture industry doesn't work in large companies and won't work in large companies.
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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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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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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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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 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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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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Given New York City's cultural diversity, it has always attracted creative people.
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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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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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The Web is going to capture an increasing share of people's attention, and billions of dollars are going to flow in. What Web 2.0 is about is harnessing those dollars in highly leverageable ways.