A biography for Fred Wilsonhasn’t been written yet.
“Startups are rapidly changing systems. If you use an annual review cycle, you aren't getting feedback at the same pace that you need to adapt and change the business.”
“Yahoo is free, it's fast and it's Web-centric. AOL is slow, it costs money and requires proprietary software.”
“I would like to reiterate that I don't want any profiles of me. I am not newsworthy.”
“I'm really interested in the intersection between reputation, identity, and knowledge.”
“Twitter wasn't planned. It just happened.”
“Venture capital is about capturing the value between the startup phase and the public company phase.”
“Certainly anything that is news or opinion needs to be free on the Web, because the Web is this very fluid medium that is very much driven by links and the flow of visitors through a discussion via links.”
“Many artists stick to making and hire a manager to focus on their business. Artists that build websites and mobile apps can do that, too.”
“Facebook is not an unstoppable juggernaut. There are a lot of other things people can do on the web.”
“The entire world is now a rival to Silicon Valley. No country, state, region, nor city has a lock on innovation in technology anymore.”
“I'm a free speech bigot. I don't like censorship; I just don't think it's a good thing.”
“To see things differently requires you to be wired a little differently.”
“Start-ups should be hunch-driven early on and data-driven as they scale.”
“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.”
“Investing in management means building communication systems, business processes, feedback, and routines that let you scale the business and team as efficiently as possible.”
“I'm not saying M.B.A.s can't be great entrepreneurs. They can. But you don't need a degree to figure out it's costing you $5,000 per month to run your business, so you need $30,000 to keep it going for six more months.”
“Blog-based businesses have lower cost structures and are more 'authentic,' and as a result are drawing larger shares of ad budgets.”
“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.”
“Most adults I know start their Internet session at Google, and most kids I know start their Internet session at either Facebook or MySpace.”
“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.”