Meritocracy is a good thing. Whenever possibly, people should be judged based on their work and results, not superficial qualities.

In a startup, both the problem and solution are unknown.

Vanity metrics are the numbers you want to publish on TechCrunch to make your competitors feel bad.

Start-ups make so many mistakes that the challenge to identify the root cause of a failure is tough. But believing in your own plan is probably the worst.

As an entrepreneur, I knew that if my company failed, I could always try again. So I often felt that the only real risk of true financial ruin came from the possibility of a serious illness that either exceeded my insurance plans lifetime limits, or was not covered due to rescission.

The hardest part is the grueling work of constantly being wrong.

The attributes for entrepreneurs cut both ways. You need the ability to ignore inconvenient facts and see the world as it should be and not as it is. This inspires people to take huge leaps of faith. But this blindness to facts can be a liability, too. The characteristics that help entrepreneurs succeed can also lead to their failure.