Andrew Yan Quotes
- All Quotes
-
One could argue that our national university system has become a de facto talent drain for much of the country. Many states and communities send their top students away to great schools, never to hear from them again.
-
All you need is self-driving cars to destabilize society.
-
Every parent pursues the best possible opportunities for their child while climbing over obstacles and limitations each day. So in a way, all parents are entrepreneurs.
-
In a professional service environment, you often work on one engagement or deal after another, with one ending before the next begins.
-
Technology companies tend to operate in winner-take-all spaces and thus adopt a very high-commitment culture.
-
Retail businesses have narrow margins. If you cut off a flow of young consumers, it's only a matter of time before the businesses struggle and fail.
-
We need more women solving different problems, starting companies, and creating jobs to drive our economy and society forward.
-
People can grow from adversity as much as they do from prosperity.
-
A company can set off in one direction, figures out that it's not the right way to go, and then go in an entirely new direction. Over time, the product or service improves, and the company gets better at executing and delivering.
-
If a company is growing, then people's roles often grow and change, and opportunities abound.
-
I wear a suit most days, in part because it's suitable for any type of meeting and in part because it takes the thought out of it.
-
All of us, and particularly young people, have a tendency to view ourselves and our natures as static: you'll choose to do something for a few years, and you'll still be the same you.
-
Technology can create needs even as it addresses them.
-
We're conditioned to let businesses fail, regardless of how much we like them. We believe that if the market doesn't want that bookstore to exist, then it shouldn't exist.
-
When I was growing up, I'd study for days trying to get good grades. When I'd get an 'A,' I'd feel elation for about 30 seconds, and then a feeling of emptiness.
-
I remember looking up to most any venture capitalist as someone who could make my little company happen with a single million-dollar check.
-
In most every business, you learn by doing. The apprenticeship model is much more effective than the classroom for cultivating entrepreneurs.
-
I sometimes compare starting a business to having a child. You have a moment of profound inspiration, followed by months of thankless hard work and waking up in the middle of the night.
-
Starting a company is rough. It's even harder when you're young - I know this firsthand, because my first company flopped when I was 25.
-
I try not to bring my phone to the gym - it's too tempting to play with it.
-
The problems that you see startups tackling are dramatically different in different cities. Silicon Valley is unlikely to produce the same set of companies as New York or Cleveland because the region has a different set of strengths and defining institutions.
-
Organizations relying upon young, idealistic, and mission-driven people to work at below-market compensation over the long-term will burn them out and find the best people leaving over time.
-
If you're positioned to start your own organization, that's great - but rare.
-
Professional services industries like finance, consulting, and legal services are, by definition, meta-industries. That is, they serve to help large companies raise money, buy and sell each other, reorganize, implement new systems, conduct complex transactions, and so forth.