Surrounding yourself with inspiring people is now just as important as being talented or working hard.

One misconception is that entrepreneurs love risk. Actually, we all want things to go as we expect. What you need is a blind optimism and a tolerance for uncertainty.

The happiest and most successful people I know don't just love what they do, they're obsessed with solving an important problem, something that matters to them.

Learn early, learn often.

Instead of trying to make your life perfect, give yourself the freedom to make it an adventure, and go ever upward.

Don't worry about failure you only have to be right once.

You need that hunger no matter what, because eventually the honeymoon period wears off. Somewhere between printing your business cards that say 'founder' on them and everything else you have to do, you realize, 'Oh, actually this is a ton of work.'

Software touches all of these different things you use, and tech companies are revolutionizing all different areas of the world...from how we shop to how farming works, all these things that aren't technical are being turned upside down by software. So being able to play in that universe really makes a difference.

I'd be like, alright, I don't know anything about sales. So I would search for sales on Amazon, get the three top-rated books and just go at it. I did that for marketing, finance, product, engineering. If there was one thing that was really important for me, that was it.

If you have a dream, you can spend a lifetime studying, planning, and getting ready for it. What you should be doing is getting started.

You can’t focus on what everyone else is doing — it has to be about what’s really broken and what you can do to fix it.

Reading a book about management isnt going to make you a good manager any more than a book about guitar will make you a good guitarist, but it can get you thinking about the most important concepts.

You're not going to become a great manager overnight. You're not going to become a great public speaker or figure out how to raise money. These are the things you want to start the clock on as early as possible.

You have to adopt a mindset that says, 'Okay, in three months, I'll need to know all this stuff, and then in six months there's going to be a whole other set of things to know - again in a year, in five years.' The tools will change, the knowledge will change, the worries will change.

If you start your own thing, you can learn a lot really fast from doing things wrong.