You must maximize the probability that someone shows up at front door of your store or website and ends up with a solved problem.

You need that hunger no matter what, because eventually the honeymoon period wears off. Somewhere between printing your business cards that say 'founder' on them and everything else you have to do, you realize, 'Oh, actually this is a ton of work.'

A lot of times it's an asset to not know everything about everything... A lot of really great, innovative things have happened when people just didn't know it wasn't supposed to be possible.

The hardest-working people don't work hard because they're disciplined. They work hard because working on an exciting problem is fun.

No one is born a CEO, but no one tells you that. The magazine stories make it sound like Mark Zuckerberg woke up one day and wanted to redefine how the world communicates [by creating] a billion-dollar company. He didn't.

Even if it doesn't work out, the experience is so valuable to so many employers that your worst case scenario is, 'Ok, so that was a bust, I'll get a six-figure job at whatever company.' Risk is this outmoded idea - your parents might not understand that, but taking these types of risks doesn't have a downside.

The only way to learn on a zero dollar budget is to talk to people