Nowadays people talk about PayPal's founders as prescient geniuses who would inevitably change the world. It was, however, not so obvious that PayPal would taste its first major success by helping people sell Beanie Babies on eBay. But they had a vision, a hope, and the perseverance to try multiple iterations until they got it right.

We need to reengineer companies to focus on figuring out who the customer is, what's the market and what kind of product you should build.

If we do not know who the customer is, we do not know what quality is.

The lean startup method is not about cost, it is about speed.

The biggest start-up successes - from Henry Ford to Bill Gates to Mark Zuckerberg - were pioneered by people from solidly middle-class backgrounds. These founders were not wealthy when they began. They were hungry for success, but knew they had a solid support system to fall back on if they failed.

If you can’t out iterate someone who is trying to copy you, you’re toast anyway.

A startup is a human institution designed to deliver a new product or service under conditions of extreme uncertainty.