150+ Best Quotes For Starting A New Business

Updated: January 19th, 2023

150+ Best Quotes For Starting A New Business

Starting a business can be equally exciting and stressful. Motivational quotes are an excellent way to look back and reflect upon the reasons why you started your venture.

Quotes are a great way to convey a feeling and the 'why' behind your brand. They can also be used as taglines, trademarks, slogans, and more.

The following quotes will help your business along and prepare you for the future ahead.

Inspirational Quotes For Starting A New Business

If you don’t build your dream, someone will hire you to build theirs. – Tony Gaskin


Great companies start because the founders want to change the world… not make a fast buck. – Guy Kawasaki


It’s hard to beat a person who never gives up. – Babe Ruth


Be yourself; everyone else is already taken. – Oscar Wilde


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


You must be the change you wish to see in the world. – Gandhi


Believe you can and you’re halfway there. – Theodore Roosevelt


Behold the turtle, he makes progress only when he sticks his neck out. – Bruce Levin


Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful. – Albert Schweitzer


Don’t worry about people stealing your design work. Worry about the day they stop. – Jeffrey Zeldman


No more romanticizing about how cool it is to be an entrepreneur. It’s a struggle to save your company’s life, and your own skin, every day of the week. – Spencer Fry


Trust your instincts. – Estee Lauder


The world hates change, yet it is the only thing that has brought progress. – Charles F.Kettering


Criticism is the best sign you’re onto something. – Michael Lopp


If there are nine rabbits on the ground and you want to catch one, just focus on one. – Jack Ma


Nothing is impossible, the word itself says I’m Possible – Audrey Hepburn


No matter how brilliant your mind or strategy, if you’re playing a solo game, you’ll always lose out to a team. - Reid Hoffman


If you have an urge to build something that could change the world, don’t focus on the money, but on the legacy, you’ll leave behind. – Alexander Tamas


Turn a perceived risk into an asset. – Aaron Patzer


Stop selling. Start helping. – ZigZiglar


Every day that we spent not improving our products was a wasted day. – Joel Spolsky


Learn early. Learn often. - Drew Houston


You don’t learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing and falling over. – Richard Branson


In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure. – Bill Cosby


The desire to reach for the stars is ambitious. The desire to reach hearts is wise. – Maya Angelou


You can’t make anything viral, but you can make something good. – Peter Shankman


Timing, perseverance, and ten years of trying will eventually make you look like an overnight success. – Biz Stone


Pick out associates whose behavior is better than yours and you’ll drift in that direction. – Warren Buffet


Chase the vision, not the money, the money will end up following you. – Tony Hsieh


Stay self-funded as long as possible. – Garrett Camp


A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step. – Lao Tzu


There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure. – Colin Powell


Be specific enough to be believable and universal enough to be relevant. – Ann Handley


I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been. – Wayne Gretzky


It’s never too late to be who you might have been. – George Eliot


Even if you don’t have a perfect idea, to begin with, you can likely adapt. – Victoria Ransom


Opportunity does not knock, it presents itself when you beat down the door. – Kyle Chandler


Don’t make decisions based on fear. – Jake Nickel


Price is what you pay. Value is what you get. - Warren Buffet


Don’t try to do it all. It’s better to be awesome on one of two-channel than to extend on six. – Cameron Chapman


You don’t need to have a 100-person company to develop that idea. – Larry Page


Success is what comes after you stop making excuses. – Luis Galarza


Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works. – Steve Jobs


If you’re going to put your product in beta, put your business model in beta with it. – Joe Kraus


Make mistakes faster. - Andrew Grove


Don’t limit yourself. Many people limit themselves to what they think they can do. You can go as far as your mind lets you. What you believe, remember, you can achieve. – Mary Kay Ash


The things you regret most in life are the risks you didn’t take. – Lewis Carroll


Money is like gasoline during a road trip. You don’t want to run out of gas on your trip, but you’re not doing a tour of gas stations. – Tim O’Reilly


If you’re going through hell, keep going. – Winston Churchill


Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever. – Mahatma Gandhi


Risk more than others think is safe. Dreaming more than others think is practical. – Howard Schultz


A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him. – David Brinkley


Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans. - John Lennon

Motivational Quotes For Starting A New Business

Learn everything you can, anytime you can, from anyone you can – there will always come a time when you will be grateful you did. – Sarah Cardwell


If you just work on stuff that you like and you’re passionate about, you don’t have to have a master plan for how things will play out. - Mark Zuckerberg


Make it simple. Make it memorable. Make it inviting to look at. Make it fun to read. – Leo Burnett


Get a mentor in the applicable field if you’re at all unsure of what you’re looking for. – Kyle Bragger


I never took a day off in my twenties. Not one. – Bill Gates


Above all, you want to create something you’re proud of. – Richard Branson


Don’t be cocky. Don’t be flashy. There’s always someone better than you. - Tony Hsieh


I don’t think an economic slump will hurt good ideas. – Rob Kalin


The only way to win at content marketing is for the reader to say, This was written especially for you. – Jamie Turner


Every piece of your content should be excellent, be excellent, enough that customers are compelled to share it. – Joe Pulizzi


The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity. – Peter Drucker


Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning. - Bill Gates


If you’re not a risk-taker, you should get the hell out of business. - Ray Kroc


You should never take more than you give. - Elton John


Get big quietly, so you don’t tip off potential competitors. – Chris Dixon


Anything that is measured and watched, improves. – Bob Parsons


When you’re ready to quit, you’re closer than you think. – Bob Parsons


The first step toward success is taken when you refuse to be a captive of the environment in which you first find yourself. – Mark Caine


Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. - Steve Jobs


Grow a thick skin and be prepared to take criticism. – Mark Forrester


Always look for the fool in the deal. If you don’t find one, it’s you. – Mark Cuban


Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working. – Pablo Picasso


Don’t worry about failure; you only have to be right once. – Drew Houston


Think big and don’t listen to people who tell you it can’t be done. Life’s too short to think small. – Tim Ferriss


If everything seems under control, you’re just not going fast enough. – Mario Andretti


Always treat your employees exactly as you want them to treat your best customers. – Stephen R. Covey


To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often. – Winston Churchill


It’s hard to do a really good job on anything you don’t think about in the shower. – Paul Graham


The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing. – Walt Disney


It’s not about ideas. It’s about making ideas happen. – Scott Belsky


Life is not always a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes playing a poor hand well. – Jack London


The best startups generally come from somebody needing to scratch an itch. – Michael Arrington


You’re not going to enjoy every minute of the journey, but the success you’ll find at the end will make it all worth it. – Muhammad Ali


Ideas are easy. Implementation is hard. - Guy Kawasaki


When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor. - Elon Musk


The key to success for everything in business, science, and technology is never to follow the others. – Masaru Ibuka


If you’re passionate about something and you work hard, then I think you will be successful. – Pierre Omidyar


A startup is a company that is confused about What its product is, Who its customers are, and How to make money. – Dave McClure


Be passionate about the culture and the business, and remain positive because it inspires others. – Barry Liber


Don’t worry about funding if you don’t need it. Today it’s cheaper to start a business than ever. – Noah Everett


Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people. – Eleanor Roosevelt


I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work. – Thomas A. Edison


I don’t look to jump over 7-foot bars I look for 1-foot bars that I can step over. - Warren Buffet


Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out. – Robert Collier


The secret to successful hiring is this look for the people who want to change the world. – Marc Benioff


I don’t measure a man’s success by how high he climbs but by how high he bounces when he hits bottom. – George S. Patton


For the next thirty days, think, talk, act, walk, smell, and feel like business is booming and it will. – Mark Victor Hansen


You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else. – Albert Einstein


Every worthwhile accomplishment, big or little, has its stages of drudgery and triumph: a beginning, a struggle, and a victory. – Mahatma Gandhi


I like to pride myself on thinking pretty long term, but not that long term. – Mark Zuckerberg


You just have to pay attention to what people need and what has not been done. – Russell Simmons


The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary. – Vince Lombardi


As long as you’re going to be thinking anyway, think big. – Donald Trump


Most people are searching for a path to success that is both easy and certain. Most paths are neither. – Seth Godin


It’s quite fun to do the impossible. – Walt Disney

Helpful Quotes For Starting A New Business

An entrepreneur is someone who has a vision for something and wants to create. – David Karp


You jump off a cliff and you assemble an airplane on the way down. – Reid Hoffman


Forget about your competitors, just focus on your customers. – Jack Ma


If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late. – Reid Hoffman


Always deliver more than expected. – Larry Page


It’s better to be happy doing something you love, even if you don’t find success right away. – George Burns


Don’t spend so much time trying to choose the perfect opportunity, that you miss the right opportunity. – Michael Dell


We are really competing against ourselves, we have no control over how other people perform. – Pete Cashmore


All humans are entrepreneurs not because they should start companies but because the will to create is encoded in human DNA. - Reid Hoffman


When it gets difficult is often right before you succeed. – Chris Garrett


The only thing worse than starting something and failing… is not starting something. – Seth Godin


A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty. – Winston Churchill


Fearlessness is like a muscle. I know from my own life that the more I exercise the more natural it becomes to not let my fears run me. – Arianna Huffington


Don’t let the fear of losing be greater than the excitement of winning. – Robert Kiyosaki


When you find an idea that you just can’t stop thinking about, that’s probably a good one to pursue. – Josh James


Embrace what you don’t know, especially in the beginning, because what you don’t know can become your greatest asset. It ensures that you will absolutely be doing things differently from everybody else. – Sara Blakely


Make every detail perfect and limit the number of details to perfect. – Jack Dorsey


Before dreaming about the future or making plans, you need to articulate what you already have going for you as entrepreneurs do. - Reid Hoffman


Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. – Mark Twain


If you set your goals ridiculously high and it’s a failure, you will fail above everyone else’s success. - James Cameron


The value of an idea lies in the using of it. – Thomas Edison


Theory is splendid but until put into practice, it is valueless. – James Cash Penney


Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. – Steve Jobs


If you’re not failing every now and again, it’s a sign you’re not doing anything very innovative. – Woody Allen


Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me. Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful that’s what matters to me. - Steve Jobs


Defeat is not the worst of failures. Not to have tried is the true failure. – George Edward Woodberry


If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door. – Adrienne Gusoff


Fortunes are built during the down market and collected in the upmarket. – Jason Calacanis


It is never too late to be what you might have been. – George Eliot


I’m convinced that about half of what separates successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance. – Steve Jobs


We are our choices. Build yourself a great story. - Jeff Bezos


In between goals is a thing called life, that has to be lived and enjoyed. – Sid Caesar


Journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. – Lao-tzu


Diligence is the mother of good luck. – Benjamin Franklin


We have a strategic plan its called doing things. - Herb Kelleher


Stay hungry. And bootstrap. - Rob Kalin


Remember to celebrate milestones as you prepare for the road ahead. – Nelson Mandela


An invention that is quickly accepted will turn out to be a rather trivial alteration of something that has already existed. - Edwin Land


High expectations are the key to everything. – Sam Walton


I knew that if I failed I wouldn’t regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not trying. – Jeff Bezos


Waiting for perfect is never as smart as making progress. – Seth Godin


It’s more effective to do something valuable than to hope a logo or name will say it for you. – Jason Cohen


Any time is a good time to start a company. – Ron Conway


Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing about. – Benjamin Franklin


Don’t think of pitching. Think of offering. The offer is better than a pitch. – Sonia Simone


See things in the present, even if they are in the future. – Larry Ellison


Your reputation is more important than your paycheck, and your integrity is worth more than your career. – Ryan Freitas


I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed. – Michael Jordan


Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect. – Mark Twain


When I’m old and dying, I plan to look back on my life and say wow, that was an adventure, not wow, I sure felt safe. – Tom Preston-Werner


Sustaining a successful business is a hell of a lot of work, and staying hungry is half the battle. - Wendy Tan White


A person who is quietly confident makes the best leader. – Fred Wilson


You shouldn’t focus on why you can’t do something, which is what most people do. You should focus on why perhaps you can, and be one of the exceptions. – Steve Case


Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. – Thomas A. Edison

meet the author
Ankita Ghosh

I'm Ankita Ghosh and I am working with Starter Story as a content creator for more than a year. I write content around various business-related topics with the goal of helping small businesses launch and grow.