If you have things or are involved with things that turn on, it's going to have code. And there are so many people - let's pick on the historians - even as a historian, let's say I ended up going the road of being a historian, just knowing some basic scripts, any kind of automation would have made me a 10 times better historian because I wouldn't have to sit there changing every file name to "1234" and then "12345." It can have a transformative value.

There was a clear lesson here — and that was that the Internet loves Mister Splashy Pants.

I think we are a better and a more efficient society when people actually get to do the things that they really are passionate about, and really are amazing at, because it's going to mean better stuff for us, too.

Let's say you're all worried about student-loan debt and you need to have steady income. That doesn't have to be your everything.

There is a much bigger issue with student loan rates, the cost of tuition; those are some huge problems that need to be resolved.

Every founder has to delude themselves into thinking, "Yes, it's going to be big. It's going to take over the world."

We were very, very lucky being in the first round of Y Combinator because that alone generated a lot of interest. A lot of readers of Paul Graham were just excited to see what was going to come up. And we were the first ones to launch.