The process of just being in front of people, having to stand up for your ideas, and ask - and then ask people for money, which is a very hard thing to do.

That economics and finance are often covered as technical subjects, sort of boring subjects, and either you already know a lot about it and you follow it, or you don't know much about it and you don't want to know.

Having good relations with lots of lots of different people helps a lot.

When you have spent too much time with something, you may lose sight of what's marvelous about it.

I think I did 97 pitch meetings, and even at the 97th meeting, there were questions I was getting that I hadn't had in the - you know, any of the 96 preceding ones.

I'm so grateful to Hugo Lindgren, Jon Kelly, and the people who gave me the opportunity to write a weekly column. It's an amazing thing to do, and when I started they both said, you know, the problem with columns is they just exist forever.

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.