It’s useful to be able to recognize whether you’re on track or not. To have that belief, but also paranoia about am I tracking against my investment thesis.
World-changing startups need to be premised on accurate contrarian theories.
When you have an idea, a classic entrepreneurial impulse is to hold the idea close to you and not tell people and that’s almost always a mistake.
The challenge when you think about product distribution is: how are you competing for potential customers or potential members time.
It is impossible to dissociate an individual from the environment of which he is a part. No story of achievement should ever be removed from its broader social context.
Great opportunities almost never fit your schedule.
The real secret of Silicon Valley is that it’s really all about the people.
The question is: how you cross uneven ground, how you assemble networks around you.
The reality is: a founder is someone who deals with a ton of different headaches and no one is universally super powered.
By 2030 over 2 billion jobs will disappear.
When you’re doing work you care about, you are able to work harder and better.
People who take risk intelligently can usually actually make a lot more progress than people who don’t.
A product needs to be sufficiently innovative to distinguish itself from the pack, but not so forward thinking as to alienate the user.
Be persistent, and hang on to your vision. And at the same time, be flexible.
You remake yourself as you grow and as the world changes. Your identity doesn’t get found. It emerges.
One of the ways they run forward is by viewing the thing they’re doing as something that’s going to be the whole world.
What makes the meaning of life is people, so you try to be good to people immediately around you and in your broader community. So a lot of my projects are about how I can affect the world in the hundreds of millions.
Good ideas need good strategy to realize their potential.
Entrepreneurship is a life idea, not a strictly business one; a global idea, not a strictly American one.
One thing I learned in ’97, when I thought the right time to found a company was during a swing-up, is that it’s much better to start during an economic downturn. Partnerships are easier; hiring is easier; and the competition starts later.