We started YouTube to democratize video distribution. Now, we are democratizing video creation.

Every entrepreneur faces trade-offs when founding and growing their company. As we discovered at YouTube, those early decisions have far-reaching impacts and lead to unforeseen pitfalls down the road. Noam Wasserman uses vivid anecdotes and deep research to expertly outline the key early choices that define a startup, making The Founder's Dilemmas an invaluable alternative to real-world trial and error.

There's always going to be a place for YouTube.

I think the success around any product is really about subtle insights. You need a great product and a bigger vision to execute against, but its really those small things that make the big difference.

As you start building the product, don't assume that you know all the answers. Listen to the community and adapt. We had a lot of our own ideas about how the service would evolve. Coming from PayPal and eBay, we saw YouTube as a powerful way to add video to auctions, but we didn't see anyone using our product that way, so we didn't add features to support it.

To some extent, being an entrepreneur is a lonely journey.

I think Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are the cornerstones of any social media strategy.