Natalie Massenet quotes:

I graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, with an English literature degree and travelled for a year before going to work.

Never forget that you only have one opportunity to make a first impression - with investors, with customers, with PR, and with marketing.

To be a designer today is to be an entrepreneur. Whether you're a two-man operation in Shoreditch or a 3,000-person, vertically integrated brand, you need to have the wherewithal to run your business through investment, considering everything from start-up funds to your exit plan or what it takes to go public.

As much as I love to shop online, I also love walking the streets on a beautiful day and seeing what finds I can discover in a small shop or vintage store.

For Net-A-Porter and its customers, luxury means exceptional service, 24-7 - wherever they are, whenever they have time.

I believe that all brands will become storytellers, editors and publishers, all stores will become magazines, and all media companies will become stores. There will be too many of all of them. The strongest ones, the ones who offer the best customer experience, will survive.

It is a changing world with changing opportunities.

Having the positive belief that it will all be O.K. just means that you hustle and make it work because failure is not even an option in your own mind.

The United Kingdom has traditionally been a very small market, and even though you had such a creative group of designers, they represented a risk to department stores.

Always go into meetings or negotiations with a positive attitude. Tell yourself you're going to make this the best deal for all parties.

When I'm working, I have a hard time switching off, and when I'm not working, I have a hard time thinking of ever wanting to work again.

Success begins at that magical moment when you declare to yourself, your friends, and the universe that you believe you can do something different.

If you're a teenager in Palo Alto launching an app, you know from the outset how you plan to finance your business.

I have donated money to campaigns. And I have been known to take to the street in protest. But I am more committed to my immediate politics than general politics.

Even if I am predisposed to shop online, I see bricks and mortar as part of marketing.

In 13 years of doing my day job, I've learned a few things about motivating people. It's about setting a vision and, as long as everyone knows why they're doing what they're doing, you achieve that vision.

It's a false assumption that people with a lot of money have a lot of free time to shop.

Work means independence. It allowed me to shape my life on so many levels.

The British Fashion Awards gives us the chance to commend not only the winners but celebrate all of the individuals that contribute to the incredible achievements that make London the best fashion destination in the world.

I think I'm a better mother because of work, because I'm happy. If I wasn't working, I would just be waiting for the kids to come home every day, and living vicariously through their lives.

I'm supporting the School for Creative Startups because the project's ambition - to boost innovation and the culture of entrepreneurship - is something I feel strongly about.

When I was a teenager, a psychic told me, 'Your biggest challenge will be life-work balance.' That's certainly turned out to be true!

My father always had people around the house who were famous psychics.

Positivity is like a muscle: keep exercising it, and it becomes a habit.

I don't get manicures, pedicures. I don't get my hair done as often as I should.

I believe all positive things and negative things are valuable because they shape you.

You can no longer just have a magazine that shows you this glossy impervious image of women - in the studio, artificial, wearing a push-up bra.

I don't have a mentor in the strict definition. I take as much advice and inspiration as I can from the people I am close to.

When you love something, it doesn't feel like work.

The only time I can't sleep is on a plane, when I am literally keeping it in the air with my brain.

Once you start a business, you have to grow it and grow with it - starting a business is not just for Christmas.

Print is at the very, very top in the fashion business - of course it is.

Britain has the most creative, dynamic and nimble fashion industry in the world.

Net-a-Porter offers catwalk fashion and trend-driven shopping, but for Mr Porter, while fashion is still important, style is key.

As an entrepreneur, what drives you has to be the good news; otherwise, you just don't get out of bed.

Pre-Internet, maybe it took six months for a fashion message to get across to a customer base. Fashion messages are now being sent out overnight, simultaneously, to every market in the world.

I love that I love my job, and from what I'm told, that others who I work with do, too.

My personal ambition remains the same - to be creative, to be modern, to stay one step ahead, to enjoy life.

I think fashion is actually very good training for being in the tech world, because it's all about moving on to the next thing, looking for the next thing, not getting stuck in the past.

When I started Net-a-Porter, I knew nothing. And I was pregnant. Starting a new venture and being pregnant for the first time are pretty similar in many ways. If you knew what was going to happen to you, you wouldn't venture down that road.

My dad taught me never to be afraid of what's on the other side of the mountain.

As a woman, I feel it's important to support causes that are important to my core customer, who is also a woman, as well as causes that resonate with me personally.

I cry at anything remotely touching - smile at me warmly and I'm off... television also does it, everything from 'X-Factor' to cereal commercials. I cry when I am tired. I also cry when I laugh.

I envision a day when a businesswoman will be having lunch, and then her phone will ring. When she opens it up, she will see an image of the latest Marc Jacobs coat that just arrived in stock. With a click of a button, she can purchase it and then find it waiting for her when she gets back to her office.

I think the fashion industry was slightly put off by people they didn't know. They were presented with things like 20-gatefold color brochures.

In order to stay relevant, you have to stay open to new trends and keep educating yourself. You have to keep evolving.

There is no recipe for success - it is as unique as you are

We haven't even begun to see just how many transactions are going to take place online.

People always say to me, 'You've really strived to redefine retail.' But the reality is, I wanted to redefine magazines.

The power of your thoughts can influence how events turn out. I'm a positive person - when bad things happen, I can see the silver lining. As a result I think I am very lucky, even though I probably have as much bad luck as anyone else, and that translates into seeing opportunity.

I'm an accidental entrepreneur.

A tendency to focus on art over business has meant that too many designers have failed to make the most of their critical acclaim.

Don't let the American accent fool you. I am British.

Audrey Hepburn has influenced me.

One of my goals is that, at a dinner party some time in the future, someone will say, 'Oh, my nephew is starting a ready-to-wear brand', and 20 people will turn around and say, 'Is he? Can we invest?' in the same way that, now, if you were to say, 'My nephew is starting a mobile app,' everyone would say, 'Oh, smashing! Can I invest?'

I attended private Catholic schools in Paris and Los Angeles through high school.

It's interesting to see how some of the womenswear designers that we have long worked with at Net-A-Porter are developing menswear collections - Christopher Kane, Jonathan Saunders and Richard Nicoll.

I always thought I looked kind of like Keith Richards, and sometimes I think I look like Michael Jackson in his mug shot. But as I think Keith Richards is pretty great-looking, I'm embracing that part of me.

Brands will increasingly handle their own e-commerce and rely less and less on local distribution partners. Why should they give away their profit margins?

My experience is in merging extraordinary creative content with innovative global commerce.

I think there will be an increasing convergence between content and commerce, that it will be about following consumers instead of making consumers come to you, and I am especially excited about the various platforms that will allow more and more access to customers.

Even without an economic downturn, women sometimes want to keep their shopping habits to themselves.

What seems like a crazy idea today eventually grows. It's a 'with hindsight' thing. One day, someone will turn around and say, 'That was genius.'

I am honoured and excited to be taking on the role of chairman of the British Fashion Council.

Moving to L.A. when I was 11 was when my entrepreneurialism started because it's the land of the American dream.

You can still wear trousers and show off your ankles - which are a nice body part on everyone.

If you want success, be unique.

Every year I go to the Google Zeitgeist conference, which is invite-only, and I'm one of about 20 women and five fashion people out of the 400 there.

Be the smartest at the table and you can wear whatever you want.

British fashion is a serious business. The British fashion industry is worth £21bn to the U.K. economy and employs 819,000 people across the country.

I always thought I looked kind of like Keith Richards, and sometimes I think I look like Michael Jackson.

I attend Internet conferences all the time, and they literally make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

I just wear what I like and lots of it is British,

Im an accidental entrepreneur.

Only twice I let people talk me out of good ideas.

Part of creating the future is to follow this consumer. Women are working; we've moved the store to the desk. Now though, she's is in the back of a cab with her iPhone or her iPad, she's tweeting an outfit that her friend is wearing and desperately trying to find out where she got her shoes online.

Point out the problems, as long as you have a solution. I don't like critics who aren't doers themselves.

There's no right time to have kids and no perfect formula. The good news is there isn't a wrong way, either.

Touching clothes is just shopping foreplay, but it's changing. After all, you don't need to try a Mercedes to know that you'd like one.