Social networks do best when they tap into one of the seven deadly sins. Facebook is ego. Zynga is sloth. LinkedIn is greed.
It’s better to be the best connected than the most connected.
This is classic when you begin thinking about what is a great founder is, you navigate what is apparent paradoxes.
Opportunities do not float like clouds in the sky. They’re attached to people. If you’re looking for an opportunity, you’re really looking for a person.
It’s actually pretty easy to be contrarian. It’s hard to be contrarian and right.
It’s nice to be happy. But the meaning of life is meaning – what’s the impact you’re having on the world. Suffering to accomplish that is a perfectly fine thing.
All human beings are entrepreneurs.
Data only exists within the framework of a vision you’re building to, a hypothesis of where you’re moving to.
We believe that when the right talent meets the right opportunity in a company with the right philosophy, amazing transformation can happen.
You should have an investment thesis that essentially says why you think this is potentially a good idea.
You gotta be both flexible and persistent.
Pay attention to your culture and your hires from the very beginning.
Part of the entrepreneurial thing is there are lots of ways to die.
So usually you have to have product distribution as more fundamental than what the actual product is.
The underpinnings of the alliance: the company helps the employee transform his career; the employee helps the company transform.
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.