The point of Silicon Valley at least when I moved here was we're all trying to do stuff and none of us quite felt like we fit in anywhere else. But we were all trying to do good things. And the money was just the byproduct of good things. The idea that there's an obligation to have that thing happen in four years or five years or six years, I think we need to disavow that.

The reason to go public is that it is a massive branding, marketing, credibility, trust-building exercise with your customers, and then it allows you to consolidate power and scale and market share. Do we want to be a huge company with a huge impact? If the answer to that is yes, the only way that that happens is by going public. It is effectively a branding event that catalyzes interest. It helps with recruiting, it helps with marketing, it helps with sales. It just helps on many dimensions. I think it's basically a litmus test for the CEO's ambition.

The point of Silicon Valley at least when I moved here was we're all trying to do stuff and none of us quite felt like we fit in anywhere else. But we were all trying to do good things. And the money was just the byproduct of good things. The idea that there's an obligation to have that thing happen in four years or five years or six years, I think we need to disavow that.

It's OK, by the way, that it takes 10 years for you to make "money." Since when was it that being in your mid-30s to make a few hundred thousand dollars or a million dollars was like egregiously unfair? I think we have to have a sense of perspective here. We're all going to live into our 80s or 90s. So what is everybody in such a rush for?

What you should be in a rush for isn't necessarily the immediate monetary return, but it's to know that this equation existing between an employee and a company is being honored. What's the equation? I'm going to give you my most precious thing that I have - my time and my reputation. That's what the employee says. And the company says I'm going to take your time and your reputation and direct it at things that we believe collectively have a huge impact opportunity to do something extremely positive. And that positivity will get measured in impact and also economic upside.

I would tell startups to just keep your head down, keep building. Your contingency plan, if you have one, should be because you are still spending more than you make and you still don't have a line of sight for that J curve. That is the most important contingency. Because otherwise you are betraying that equation to your cofounders, to your investors, to your employees and to your customers.

The half-life of companies is shrinking. So in the same ease in which you can start a company today to disrupt an incumbent, you have to also realize that somebody will do that to you as well just as easily. So if you're not just going to get on top but stay on top, that will require a real prepared mind across many companies.