Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple:

 

"I'm convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance."

Max Levchin, former CTO of PayPal:

"The very first company I started failed with a great bang. The second one failed a little bit less, but still failed. The third one, you know, proper failed, but it was kind of okay. I recovered quickly. Number four almost didn’t fail. It still didn’t really feel great, but it did okay. Number five was PayPal."

Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn:

"You jump off a cliff and you assemble an airplane on the way down."

Caterina Fake, co-founder of Flickr:

"So often people are working hard at the wrong thing. Working on the right thing is probably more important than working hard."

Pete Cashmore, founder of Mashable:

"We are really competing against ourselves. We have no control over how other people perform."
Jason Calacanis, founder CEO of Mahalo.com: "There is no luck, you work hard and study things intently. If you do that for long and hard enough you're successful."

Evan Williams, co-founder of Twitter :

"Be a user of your own product. Make it better based on your own desires. But don't trick yourself into thinking you are the user."

Mark Pincus, founder of Zynga:

"Not having a clear goal leads to death by a thousand compromises."

Mike Maples, managing partner at Floodgate:

"It's not the entrepreneur that failed. It's the business that failed. In life, you win some and lose some. The trick is to fail aggressively. And to not have everyone take it personally. Not leave regrets in the playing field. Not everything is going to work in life."

Dennis Crowley, co-founder of Foursquare:

"It there's something you want to build, but the tech isn't there yet, just find the closest possible way to make it happen."

Tony Hsieh, co-founder of Zappos:

"Don't be cocky. Don't be flashy. There's always someone better than you."

Fred Wilson, co-founder of Union Square Venture:

"Markets come and go. Good businesses don't."

Paul Graham, co-founder of Y Combinator:

"Running a startup is like being punched in the face repeatedly, but working for a large company is like being waterboarded."

Marc Benioff, co-founder of Salesforce:

"The secret to successful hiring is this: look for the people who want to change the world."

Steve Jobs:

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”