Randy Komisar > Quotes

“And then there is the most dangerous risk of all -- the risk of spending your life not doing what you want on the bet you can buy yourself the freedom to do it later.”
― Randy Komisar, The Monk and the Riddle: The Education of a Silicon Valley Entrepreneur

“In theory, the risk of business failure can be reduced to a number, the probability of failure multiplied by the cost of failure. Sure, this turns out to be a subjective analysis, but in the process your own attitudes toward financial risk and reward are revealed.

By contrast, personal risk usually defies quantification. It's a matter of values and priorities, an expression of who you are. "Playing it safe" may simply mean you do not weigh heavily the compromises inherent in the status quo. The financial rewards of the moment may fully compensate you for the loss of time and fulfillment. Or maybe you just don't think about it. On the other hand, if time and satisfaction are precious, truly priceless, you will find the cost of business failure, so long as it does not put in peril the well-being of you or your family, pales in comparison with the personal risks of no trying to live the life you want today.

Considering personal risk forces us to define personal success. We may well discover that the business failure we avoid and the business success we strive for do not lead us to personal success at all. Most of us have inherited notions of "success" from someone else or have arrived at these notions by facing a seemingly endless line of hurdles extending from grade school through college and into our careers. We constantly judge ourselves against criteria that others have set and rank ourselves against others in their game. Personal goals, on the other hand, leave us on our own, without this habit of useless measurement and comparison.

Only the Whole Life Plan leads to personal success. It has the greatest chance of providing satisfaction and contentment that one can take to the grave, tomorrow. In the Deferred Life Plan there will always be another prize to covet, another distraction, a new hunger to sate. You will forever come up short.”
― Randy Komisar, The Monk and the Riddle: The Education of a Silicon Valley Entrepreneur

“Passion and drive are not the same at all. Passion pulls you toward something you cannot resist. Drive pushes you toward something you feel compelled or obligated to do. If you know nothing about yourself, you can't tell the difference. Once you gain a modicum of self-knowledge, you can express your passion.....It's not about jumping through someone else's hoops. That's drive.”
― Randy Komisar, The Monk and the Riddle: The Education of a Silicon Valley Entrepreneur

“Passion pulls you. It's the sense of connection you feel when the work you do expresses who you are. Only passion will get you through the tough times.”
― Randy Komisar, The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living

“Never shrink from making a difference.”
― Randy Komisar

“WHEN ALL IS SAID AND DONE, the journey is the reward.”
― Randy Komisar, The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living

“in the long run we're all dead. Time is the only resource that matters.”
― Randy Komisar, The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living

“Rather than working to the exclusion of everything else in order to flood our bank accounts in the hope that we can eventually buy back what we have missed along the way, we need to live life fully now with a sense of its fragility.”
― Randy Komisar, The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living

“Work hard, work passionately, but apply your most precious asset—time—to what is most meaningful to you.”
― Randy Komisar, The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living

“And then there is the most dangerous risk of all - the risk of spending your life not doing what you want on the bet you can buy yourself the freedom to do it later.”
― Randy Komisar, The Monk and the Riddle: The Education of a Silicon Valley Entrepreneur

“Management is a methodical process; its purpose is to produce the desired results on time and on budget. It complements and supports but cannot do without leadership, in which character and vision combine to empower someone to venture into uncertainty.”
― Randy Komisar, The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living

“it's the romance, not the finance that makes business worth pursuing.”
― Randy Komisar, The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living

“ We may well discover that the business failure we avoid and the business success we strive for do not lead us to personal success at all. Most of us have inherited notions of "success" from someone else or have arrived at these notions by facing a seemingly endless line of hurdles extending from grade school through college and into our careers. We constantly judge ourselves against criteria that others have set and rank ourselves against others in their game. ”
― Randy Komisar, The Monk and the Riddle: The Education of a Silicon Valley Entrepreneur

“Every moment some form grows perfect in hand or face; some tone on the hills or the sea is choicer than the rest; some mood of passion or insight or intellectual excitement is irresistibly real and attractive to us—for that moment only. Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end. A counted number of pulses only is given to us of a variegated, dramatic life. How may we see in them all that is to be seen in them by the finest senses? How shall we pass most swiftly from point to point, and be present always at the focus where the greatest number of vital forces unite in their purest energy? To burn always with this hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life. —Walter Pater, Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873)”
― Randy Komisar, The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living

“you have to be able to survive mistakes in order to learn, and you have to learn in order to create sustainable success”
― RANDY KOMISAR , The Monk and the Riddle: The Education of a Silicon Valley Entrepreneur

“VCs, I explained, want to know three basic things: Is it a big market? Can your product or service win over and defend a large share of that market? Can your team do the job?”
― Randy Komisar, The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living

“Everybody here brags about valuation, but Silicon Valley really operates on momentum. Many times I caution a company not to take the largest valuation they can in a financing, because it sets the wrong expectations and probably attracts the wrong investors. Peg the round at the highest reasonable price necessary to raise the desired amount from the right investors. The right investors bring credibility, experience, and networks. They support you with enthusiasm in later rounds. They raise your valuation merely by their presence in the deal.”
― Randy Komisar, The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living

“asked softly, “Your holiness, with your great age, experience, and wisdom you have encountered many things. You have certainly answered many questions. What question still perplexes you? When you sit in meditation, what question do you still ask yourself?”
― Randy Komisar, The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living

“VCs like to target markets with big potential, especially tiny markets growing quickly into big markets, like the Internet. If it's a small market, the chance for a portfolio-levitating, reputation-making home run isn't there.”
― Randy Komisar, The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living

“VCs invest first and foremost, I explained, in people. The team would have to be intelligent and tireless. They would need to be skilled in their functional areas, though not necessarily highly experienced. Moreover, they would need to be flexible and capable of learning quickly. Heaps of information about the market and the competition would be streaming in after they launched. They would have to course-correct, on the fly. Refine the strategy, maybe even radically. This team would have to be comfortable with uncertainty and change. That's why VCs look for people with some startup experience, people who have proven they can thrive in chaos. It significantly reduces the risk of failure.”
― Randy Komisar, The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living

“No matter how hard we work or how smart we are, our financial success is ultimately dependent on circumstances outside our control.”
― Randy Komisar, The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living

“As my legs spun, my mind churned on the idea of risk. Everything in this Valley turns on risk. Lenny had been hedging, unwilling to expose the big idea, because he suspected it had a substantial chance of failing as a business. Cheaper caskets seemed straightforward as a moneymaker, and he wouldn't have to stretch hard to try it. Proposing a business with higher aspirations seemed too risky because it wasn't clear how that business, the one he and Allison first discussed, the one that had excited them, could work. So Lenny focused on the bottom line in an attempt to appeal to what he presumed to be Frank's greed. He underestimated Frank and the importance of vision, passion, and the big idea. The question he seemed to have answered was not, How can I make a difference? but, What's the least risky path to financial success? Ironically, he had assumed the biggest risk of all in Silicon Valley, the risk of mediocrity. He had dug his own grave.”
― Randy Komisar, The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living

“Playing it safe” may simply mean you do not weigh heavily the compromises inherent in the status quo.”
― Randy Komisar, The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living

“Lenny, you're selling known products to an existing market. Your competitors—at least your brick-and-mortar competitors—are identifiable. That all says you're probably a Better-Faster-Cheaper startup, and your goal is to unseat the brick-and-mortar incumbents. Your biggest bet is that people will buy these things on-line. A big bet indeed, but there is no brain surgery in it. So the rocket ship model is probably the right one for Funerals.com. You should get on and go as far and as fast as possible.”
― Randy Komisar, The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living

“Work hard, work passionately, but apply your most precious asset—time—to what is most meaningful to you. What are you willing to do for the rest of your life? does not mean, literally, what will you do for the rest of your life? That question would be absurd, given the inevitability of change. No, what the question really asks is, if your life were to end suddenly and unexpectedly tomorrow, would you be able to say you've been doing what you truly care about today? What would you be willing to do for the rest of your life? What would it take to do it right now?”
― Randy Komisar, The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living

“And then there is the most dangerous risk of all — the risk of spending your life not doing what you want on the bet you can buy yourself the freedom to do it later.”
― Randy Komisar, The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living

“Good entrepreneurs are passionate visionaries, usually with one or more exceptional talents, but rarely have they actually built a company from scratch. I fill in the gaps in their experience. The actual CEO is ultimately responsible for all the company decisions. As a Virtual CEO, I simply provide the team with guidance and leadership when necessary. I can be very outspoken, if I fear that we don't have room for a misstep. But the CEO is in charge; I'm there to make him or her successful.”
― Randy Komisar, The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living

“What interest do you have, then?” “Four or five VCs say it's a great idea. They want me to get back to them when I'm further along. If I can produce a credible lead investor, others will follow.” Ah, it was what I thought. VCs have no percentage in telling you “no” outright. A “no” from a venture capitalist is as rare as the “no” of a Japanese salaryman. Unless you mug the receptionist on the way out or spray graffiti all over their German sedans, VCs seldom turn you down outright.”
― Randy Komisar, The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living

“Apprentices work furiously to learn the rules; journeymen proudly perfect the rules; but masters forget the rules.”
― Randy Komisar

“It's not clear that being the first-mover will provide the rash of Internet startups a sustainable competitive advantage. Ultimately being right, or better positioned, may be more important than being first.”
― Randy Komisar, The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living