You're talking to investors - and investors, they look at you and they realize, you know, not every business they invest in are the founders or the people running it going to have every bit of skill - and I think they looked at me and realized, OK, this is a guy who's got a lot - I'm much older than the usual run of people they fund.

The Bible is forbidding when you start to read it. The language is odd. The stories start and stop herkily-jerkily. The characters behave in inexplicable ways. It takes a little bit of time to get into the rhythm of the book. I found reading the first 15 chapters of Genesis very very difficult. Once I got past there, I loved reading, and found it very easy. When you get used to the Bible, it becomes thrilling to read (like any great book - I just had exactly the same experience with the Odyssey).

People found it unusual to leave a job where you're the boss.

My buddy Alex Blumberg learned - he was very public about his learning process, and I know for a fact because we sat next to each other for many years, that he knew nothing about venture capital or seed rounds or "A" rounds or whatever you call them, and he had to really learn, like, pitch by pitch. He just screwed pitches up.

The Christians think I am making a mistake by not trying the New Testament and meeting Jesus. The Jews tend to think I am making a mistake by reading without support from educated people. After all, there is 2,000 years of scholarship about the book, they say, so it's perverse of me to ignore it.

I think I developed a culture of healthy skepticism of claims of certainty on any side of the aisle. A sort of boldness in using economics no matter where it leads you in political circles, you know, rather than worrying about being left-wing or right-wing or biased or this or that.

You're talking to investors - and investors, they look at you and they realize, you know, not every business they invest in are the founders or the people running it going to have every bit of skill - and I think they looked at me and realized, OK, this is a guy who's got a lot - I'm much older than the usual run of people they fund.