Andrew Yan Quotes
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Unfortunately, hardworking, academically gifted young people are kind of lazy when it comes to determining direction.
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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.
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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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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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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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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.
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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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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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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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One thing I disliked about being a lawyer was billing for my time.
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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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Non-profits should be looking to enlist and retain the best people to aggressively solve problems, not to perform adequately and persist. We should expect people to innovate and do the highest-quality work and then reward them accordingly.
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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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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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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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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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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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I've always believed that talking about something is not the same as doing something about it.
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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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It's hard to get started as a young entrepreneur - often much harder than one would ever realize.
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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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What was a profitable business in one era can become a public utility and a recognized public good in the next.
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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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The first thing I do when I wake up in the morning is push my dog off of me. He likes to sleep on top of me. I think it's because I'm warm and breathing.