‘Lose sleep on creating value, not valuation’  – 50 quotes from Indian startup journeys

From value to valuation, witness the memorable journey of Indian entrepreneurship in these excerpts and stories! StoryBites is a weekly feature from YourStory, featuring notable quotable quotes in our articles of this past week (see the previous post here). Share these 50 gems and insights from the week of December 18-24 with your colleagues and networks, and check back to the original articles for more insights.

The ones who can see the vision when no one else can, and work on it like there is no tomorrow, will succeed. The rest will follow. - Ajay Naik, Letcetra Agritech

Believe in your ability to make your dreams come true. - Pamela Malhotra, Sai Sanctuary

Success is about having vision and direction, and not just making money. - Premilla Baid, Sumukha

A good support system is a must for anyone to succeed. - Amrita Vaswani, BumChum

Social business is a powerful avenue for self-discovery, self-exploration, and self-definition. – Muhammad Yunus, ‘Banker to the Poor’

If a user is not interested in making a purchase, no discount will entice them. People buy and stick to you because of brand and quality. - Burhanuddin Pithawala, OYO

E-commerce only works when customer mindset moves from pricing to convenience. - Amit Agarwal, Amazon

Buying patterns are tied to the culture of the country. - Suresh Radhakrishnan Nair, Festivya

No one can say no to biriyani. - Shankar Subramanian, Madrasi Biriyani

We will see a plethora of AR games hitting us in 2018. – Ankit Rawal, Greedy Game

We do expect Scaled Tech Companies to acquire young emerging companies; this is healthy for the ecosystem. - Sudhir Sethi, IDG Ventures India

Over time, society seems to have cast the humble bicycle as the least desirable vehicle whereas it is a human being’s best friend. - Deenanath Harapanahalli, Cykul

In India, given our roads, climate, and lack of cycle lanes, scooter sharing is the right solution and not cycles. - Anand Ayyadurai, Vogo

India is one of the most vibrant and explosive places for gaming across the entire world. – Mark Skaggs, Moonfrog

There is a rising competition looking at all the VCs who are interested in moving into cryptocurrencies. – Anjli Jain, EVC Ventures

A venture capitalist is, at best, a catalyst or a coach and partakes in the journey with the entrepreneurs. - Sateesh Andra, Endiya Partners

Lose sleep on creating value, not valuation. – Deep Kalra, MakeMyTrip

Culture doesn’t shift overnight. – Meera Vijayan, Social Good

When you are looking to scale up, it is imperative to build a well-defined product management function. – Sateesh Andra, Endiya Partners

If the sales team’s mantra is “Always be closing,” then the product leader’s is “Always be learning. - Richard Banfield, ‘Product Leadership’

Customers must have access to a human-curated channel at any point in their journey, either through a phone or a travel consultant. – Varun Gupta, Goomo

40 percent of professionals believe affiliate marketing is the most desired digital skill. – Sahil Chopra, iCubesWire

Communications is the biggest driver of the frequency of use of anything. – Marissa Mayer, ex-Yahoo

As more and more people are given the chance to try their hand at entrepreneurship, the world will never be the same. – Eric Ries, ‘The Startup Way’

For any partnership, a shared value and culture is important. - Rahul Ganju, IKEA

Poor childcare leads to poor adult outcomes. - Gloria Benny, Guardians of Dreams

Children are the most important facilitators of change as they truly implement ideas and concepts taught in schools in the right spirit and enthusiasm. - Shalini Singh, Tata Power

We need teachers who can be mentors to our children, who can interpret the complex world for them, connect concepts, and diagnose learning difficulties. – Arghya Banerjee, LevelField

Great products require amazing empathy with the end user. – Neil Joglekar, BrowserStack

A continued faith that every problem is solvable is the key to making this world a better place. – TN Hari, Fundamentum

You should know who is growing your food, where is it coming from, and how is it being grown. - Kavya Chandra, A Green Venture

AI can create a flywheel effect 'liberating' people to create long term economic and societal value. - Rekha M Menon, Accenture India

AI can make our legal systems more fair and efficient if we can figure out how to make robo-judges transparent and unbiased. – Max Tegmark, ‘Life 3.0’

Mobile search, AI, digital assistants, and smart speakers are having a dramatic impact on the future of search. – Pratik Dholakiya, E2M

We will soon see techniques enabling chatbots to “plug” augmented reality into conversations. – Purushottam Darshankar, Persistent Systems

China has become breeding ground for the adoption of new technologies and innovation. - Karthikeyan Natarajan, Tech Mahindra

To a large extent, mobile internet strategy will separate the winners from the rest of the pack in their competition for Chinese customers. - Winston Ma, 'China's Mobile Economy'

At the heart of leadership lies persuasion. At the heart of persuasion lies storytelling. -Esther Choy, ‘Let the Story Do the Work’

If we help startups and entrepreneurs scale, it will impact and help the society. - Harsh Mariwala, Marico

Startup founders need to recognise that their biggest strength can also be their greatest downfall. - Jeff DeGraff, ‘The Innovation Code’

If at first, the idea is not absurd, there is no hope for it! - Rishav Kanoi, The Tea Trove

Only acceptance is not crucial, saleability is. – Dev Vig, Cerebrahm

Management is more about agility and outcomes and less about control. - Rekha Sethi, AIMA

The happiness and satisfaction one receives while saving a life cannot be compared to anything else in the world. - Dr Jeyachandran

70 percent of our nation, which is rural, has still not benefitted from organised retail. - Alok Misra, Socents

With a lot of freedom, comes great responsibility. - Murali Vivekanandan, Ideas2IT

Founders with a working knowledge of contract negotiation have a serious competitive advantage and a higher chance of success. – Rounak Chaki, IPleaders

Guerrilla marketing is all about the ambush and shock that it creates, so planning and execution are of the essence. – Matthew Maniyamkott, Fitversity

India has the third highest number of startup incubators and accelerators in the world, after China and the US. The number of startups and incubators grew by 40 percent in 2016-17. – BV Naidu, StartupXSeed Ventures

In the absence of a migrant labour workforce, our economy would come to a standstill. - Divya Varma, Ajeevika Bureau

Banks are reinventing themselves and starting to experiment with IT that impacts the customer side of the business. - Nitin Rakesh, Mphasis

Now is a great time to be an entrepreneur. Great technologies have launched billion dollar companies. - Sanket Atal, Oracle

What has also happened thanks to the smartphone is the rise of consumer parallelism—consumers have different avatars as they shift channels. - Kamini Rupani, Netcore Solutions

Infrastructure is very important to popularise a sport. Then comes equipment and coaches in that order. - Prakash Padukone

There’s actually more responsibility involved in starting a business versus having a regular job. You must relentlessly chase perfection. You have to be able to adapt to crazy, unexpected things. - Sindhuja K, Young Trendz

Entrepreneurs are those who act upon an opportunity they see or foresee rather than just be knowledgeable about it. - Vijaya Kumar Ivaturi, ‘The Manual for Indian Startups’

YourStory has also published the pocketbook ‘Proverbs and Quotes for Entrepreneurs: A World of Inspiration for Startups’ as a creative and motivational guide for innovators (downloadable as apps here: Apple, Android).