The Startup Playbook Quotes

“Money Is a Magnifying Glass Money makes you more of who you already are. If you are a jerk, it will make you a bigger jerk; if you’re insecure, you become even more insecure; if you are generous, you become even more generous; if you are nice, you become even nicer. Making money is like holding up a magnifying glass to who you are, personally and professionally. It creates a lot of energy and power, and it’s up to you to use that in a really good way.”
― David Kidder, The Startup Playbook: Secrets of the Fastest-Growing Startups from their Founding Entrepreneurs

“Find Something Nobody Else Can Do Selection is critical. When you launch a venture, you have to be comfortable with the idea that this is what you’re going to do for the rest of your professional life. It has to be awesome; it has to be ten times better than anything in the marketplace. Also, it can’t just be better because nobody else is doing it currently. It has to be something that nobody other than you can do, especially once you’re up to scale. Show”
― David Kidder, The Startup Playbook: Secrets of the Fastest-Growing Startups from their Founding Entrepreneurs

“Focus on People, Perseverance, and Passion These “Three P’s” are the keys to successful entrepreneurship. People are the most important, particularly in the first year of a venture. To maximize their value, spend as much time as you can assembling the best possible team that really complements your skill set and can lead a little bit into where you’re heading, not just where you are. Creating the right kind of dynamic in terms of culture and commitment is really critical. Perseverance: never underestimate the value of really caring about your idea and being unwilling to drop it. If you have a big idea, and you know in your heart it’s going to happen (Passion), but know there will be roadblocks and challenges along the way. In this regard, a high degree of passion and commitment is extremely important. In my experience, really big ideas often take a decade to reach fruition. Sign”
― David Kidder, The Startup Playbook: Secrets of the Fastest-Growing Startups from their Founding Entrepreneurs

“Don’t Suffer from the Sin of Comparison. Follow Your Own Path.”
― David Kidder, The Startup Playbook: Secrets of the Fastest-Growing Startups from their Founding Entrepreneurs

“HIRING Find Producers Who Are Also Visionaries One of the tricky things about being an entrepreneur is finding people who can engineer and deliver on schedule, but who are also willing to take intellectual risks. If you’re doing something radically new, you need a team that’s willing to go on a ride that’s very different from anything they’ve encountered before. It’s hard to find people who can both deliver and try something quite radical and stay with the vision.”
― David S. Kidder, The Startup Playbook: Secrets of the Fastest-Growing Startups from their Founding Entrepreneurs

“Your entire organization must focus on an area of strength where you can defeat your competitors and radically differentiate your company by being ten times better than anyone else in the world. This is the bar you set for your team; you must own and be known for this value.”
― David Kidder, The Startup Playbook: Secrets of the Fastest-Growing Startups from their Founding Entrepreneurs

“The idea that everybody can be an entrepreneur and create a startup is simply false. Building a startup is a ton of work. It’s brutal. If you want to do it, sign up for a brutal experience and sign up to be brutal. You need the ability to see the future and manage your way through a crisis.”
― David Kidder, The Startup Playbook: Secrets of the Fastest-Growing Startups from their Founding Entrepreneurs

“MARKET DEVELOPMENT Be Your Own Competitor Creating an organization of provocateurs means creating an organization that contains its own competition. You need people who are open to failure and willing to rewrite the industry rules if they feel that the marketplace is moving in a different direction. If those ideas aren’t being generated within your organization, they’re being generated outside of it. I’d rather compete with myself than with someone else in the marketplace. TALENT”
― David Kidder, The Startup Playbook: Secrets of the Fastest-Growing Startups from their Founding Entrepreneurs

“Start small, and be open to the idea that the beta test may take two or three years. In some industries, that’s hard to do. But if you can do it, you’ll see the concrete reality of your business every day. CHIP”
― David Kidder, The Startup Playbook: Secrets of the Fastest-Growing Startups from their Founding Entrepreneurs

“Change happens on the margins. It’s usually outsiders who identify the unrecognized need that customers and competitors within the industry have not been able to see.”
― David Kidder, The Startup Playbook: Secrets of the Fastest-Growing Startups from their Founding Entrepreneurs

“Over and over again, creative thinking comes from outside the core of an industry.”
― David Kidder, The Startup Playbook: Secrets of the Fastest-Growing Startups from their Founding Entrepreneurs

“The risk of our current business climate is that we’ve created a generation of entrepreneurs with a form of attention-deficit disorder.”
― David Kidder, The Startup Playbook: Secrets of the Fastest-Growing Startups from their Founding Entrepreneurs

“Find a Match Between Your Talents and Your Customers’ Needs”
― David Kidder, The Startup Playbook: Secrets of the Fastest-Growing Startups from their Founding Entrepreneurs

“If we’re not doing something that’s game-changing, then frankly I’m not interested in doing it.”
― David Kidder, The Startup Playbook: Secrets of the Fastest-Growing Startups from their Founding Entrepreneurs

“A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both.—L.P. Jacks, Education through Recreation”
― David Kidder, The Startup Playbook: Secrets of the Fastest-Growing Startups from their Founding Entrepreneurs

“If you look at our history over the last 235 years, you’ll find that America was built by entrepreneurs. We don’t have the largest economy in the world by accident. Cities were built by entrepreneurs, industries were built by entrepreneurs, the economy was built by entrepreneurs.”
― David Kidder, The Startup Playbook: Secrets of the Fastest-Growing Startups from their Founding Entrepreneurs

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― David Kidder, The Startup Playbook: Secrets of the Fastest-Growing Startups from their Founding Entrepreneurs

“Don’t Be Afraid to Fail When I was growing up, my dad would encourage my brother and me to fail. We would be sitting at the dinner table and he would ask, “So what did you guys fail at this week?” If we didn’t have something to contribute, he would be disappointed. When I did fail at something, he’d high-five me. What I didn’t realize at the time was that he was completely reframing my definition of failure at a young age. To me, failure means not trying; failure isn’t the outcome. If I have to look at myself in the mirror and say, “I didn’t try that because I was scared,” that is failure.”
― David Kidder, The Startup Playbook: Secrets of the Fastest-Growing Startups from their Founding Entrepreneurs