Andrew Yan Quotes
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In most every business, you learn by doing. The apprenticeship model is much more effective than the classroom for cultivating entrepreneurs.
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I try not to bring my phone to the gym - it's too tempting to play with it.
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I remember looking up to most any venture capitalist as someone who could make my little company happen with a single million-dollar check.
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Many of the scrappy young people I meet who are the first in their family to go to college feel that they have to bring home a steady paycheck to make their family's sacrifices worthwhile.
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We need more women solving different problems, starting companies, and creating jobs to drive our economy and society forward.
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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.
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It's hard to get started as a young entrepreneur - often much harder than one would ever realize.
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Finding initial funds is the primary barrier most entrepreneurs face. Many people don't have three or six months' worth of savings to free themselves up to do months of unpaid legwork.
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One thing I disliked about being a lawyer was billing for my time.
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The vast majority of small business owners want nothing to do with figuring out a website. They are neck-deep in their business trying to keep it going.
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The image of entrepreneurship as the province of the unprivileged and un-entitled - the Horatio Alger, rags to riches myth - flies in the face of reality.
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If I need a pick-me-up, I pull up a memo file on my phone and type in three things I'm grateful for. The things I've typed on other days are still there. It's a long list. Always helps.
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Tell young girls they can be anything, including entrepreneurs and self-made billionaires. Encourage your friends/daughters/female students/yourself to take a shot.
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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.
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In my experience, entrepreneurship tends to be kind of cumulative, like a layer cake. Taking some time away can make it hard to rev up.
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If you go deep into a problem, you'll find most all of the time that there are yet more problems to be solved from the ground up.
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I've always believed that talking about something is not the same as doing something about it.
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The best organizations are filled with people who have a wealth of choices as to what work they choose to do. We need to give them every reason possible to solve the world's problems.
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Venture for America operates in communities that could generally use more innovation: Detroit, New Orleans, Baltimore, and other U.S. cities. So I'm obviously a big believer in innovation and progress as key drivers of economic growth and prosperity.
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Very few parents keep up with who the top professors are or whose classes their kids are taking, partially because most undergraduates interact more commonly with graduate students.
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At Venture for ,we've worked with hundreds of aspiring young entrepreneurs who want to build businesses and change things for the better.
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When I graduated from Brown, I had a very limited conception of jobs, careers, and what I wanted to do. Basically, I figured I should do some kind of thought work that paid well, but I wasn't sure what.
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I like most of the venture capitalists I know; they're smart, well-intended guys who genuinely enjoy helping entrepreneurs succeed. And I love venture capital and investment capital of all categories - its economic impact is proven. The more of it the better.
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We need people building companies all over the country to innovate in aviation, consumer products, education, health, cybersecurity, biotech, manufacturing, and everything in between.