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.

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

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

It’s not about having a Silicon Valley attitude—it’s about having an entrepreneurial attitude. It’s about partnering with other organizations in and around your area. It’s about thinking big with entrepreneurs that sit next to you in your coworking space. It’s about collaborating with tech gurus, social media wizards and community leaders at cool business events. It’s the people that make a community an entrepreneurial one—not the location—and it’s up to you to contribute.

Building a startup community is not a zero-sum game in which there are winners and losers: if everyone engages, they and the entire community can all be winners.

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.