When everyone starts sounding the same, that's when you know the words and phrases have become clichés. Instead of speaking in clichés, I encourage people just to be themselves, let their passion burn brightly, and go work on things they love spending their time on.

I'm very comfortable in the U.S. and Europe, but I feel completely out of place in the rest of the world, mostly because I never spent time outside the U.S. and Europe until I was in my 30s.

The only thing that we know about financial predictions of start-ups is that 100 percent of them are wrong

Startups are transforming our society. Over the past 100 years, we've gone from an industrial era, where a hierarchical structure dominated business and society, to a post information era where the network is rapidly disrupting the hierarchy and transforming the way we work and live.

You can’t motivate people, you can only create a context in which people are motivated.

I no longer really ever like to be pitched. Instead, I prefer to engage in a relationship as part of learning the other person.

Make sure the thing you are working on is something you love.

The most challenging thing for a young entrepreneur is to think long-term. When you are 22 years old, it’s hard to think in 22-year increments since that’s as long as you’ve been alive. But it’s really important to view your life as an entrepreneur as a long journey that consists of many short-term cycles.

From pitch perspective, the more you wear your idea, the more it fits you and your comfortable with it, the easier it is for somebody like me to say tell me more.

Failure is sometimes the best option if you view the process of entrepreneurship as a lifelong journey.

While I'm a venture capitalist who invests in early-stage tech companies, I often feel like a professional emailer and conference call maker. I try to spend most of my time doing whatever the companies we are investors in need me to do.