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

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.

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

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.

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.

I don't think enough people have accepted that the machines have already taken over. They are patiently waiting for us to catch up with them. Our world is now interdependent with the machines, and more entrepreneurs should be working on the symbiosis between the two entities.

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