I want to have enough space to, I don't know, think thoughts. I mean, I just - I don't know that I'm capable of having an exciting, profound thought every week that's worth a column.

My mother - both my mother and father had very successful careers. My mother's an English professor and my father is a scientist and physician. They worked at the same jobs for their entire life, 50 years each.

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

When you're writing for the New York Times someone reading it knows the topic better than you do and knows when you've messed up.

I should say, the one thing you run into is, if you're trying to raise a round you have to decide, well, how much money are you trying to raise? And then you have to justify that to your investors, because they want to know why you [are] raising that much? Why aren't you raising either twice as much or half as much?

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.

Writing a column, a weekly column for the New York Times, is really tough, and I wasn't prepared for the demands that that involved.