There’s almost too much venture capital in India—there are issues with seed capital, but for venture capital, there’s a lot of money chasing deals here.
—Ram Shriram
It’s clear to me, when you do private equity well, you’re making companies more efficient and helping them grow and become more profitable. That success means our investors—such as public pension funds—benefit, which contributes to the economic wealth of society.
—David Rubenstein
In the ’70s and ’80s, what private equity did is it changed corporate America. It started holding companies accountable, and for the first time managers started thinking
like owners.
—Henry Kravis
The role of private equity as fiduciaries is certainly to make money.
—Thomas G Stemberg
All markets have boom and bust cycles, and I think venture capital market has even more exaggerated boom and bust cycles.
—Fred Wilson
The problem with taking venture capital is if you take $5 million from someone, it may feel great; you may feel like they’re validating your business model. But they’re giving $5 million out to 20 people, hoping one of them will be a hit. They don’t really care if it’s you.
—Jon Oringer
The most contrarian thing of all is not to oppose the crowd but to think for yourself.
—Peter Thiel
It’s not whether you’re right or wrong that’s important, but how much money you make when you’re right and how much you lose when you’re wrong.
—George Soros
Not all private equity people are evil.
Only some.
—Paul Krugman
We need to divorce ourselves from venture capital as an occupation and focus on using capital as a way to take really big bets on things that just seem totally audacious.
—Chamath Palihapitiya
Bootstrap for as long as you can.
—Ron Conway
I think good private equity investors create a lot more economic value than they destroy.
—Bill Ackman
The venture capital business is a 100 percent game of outliers—it’s extreme exceptions.
—Marc Andreessen
(This story appears in the 29 January, 2021 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)