It turns out that is exactly what product strategy is all about—figuring out the right product is the innovator’s job, not the customer’s job.

Breakthrough ideas usually come from guys who look like they're hallucinating

As a startup CEO, I slept like a baby. I woke up every 2 hours and cried.

Every time you make the hard, correct decision you become a bit more courageous, and every time you make the easy, wrong decision you become a bit more cowardly. If you are CEO, these choices will lead to a courageous or cowardly company.

You're better off being The Beatles than The Monkees, as a startup.

When you're making a critical decision, you have to understand how it's going to be interpreted from all points of view. Not just your point of view, not just the person you're talking to, but the people that aren't in the room. Everybody else.

Generally the reason they fail in the job is, you made some mistake in the hiring process in that you didn't match... them to the needs of your company accurately enough. That's the #1 reason this fails. And that's generally a good place to start: Here's where we are and here's what I didn't recognize about us and about you when I made the decision, and now it is what it is.