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.

Most phenomenal startup teams create businesses that ultimately fail. Why? They built something that nobody wanted.

Zero invites imagination, but small numbers invite questions about whether large numbers will ever materialize.

It doesn't matter if you call it a boom or a bubble. The startup business moves in cycles, and what goes up will eventually come down.

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.

Start-up success is not a consequence of good genes or being in the right place at the right time. Success can be engineered by following the right process, which means it can be learned, which means it can be taught.

The mistake isn't releasing something bad. The mistake is to launch it and get PR people involved. You don't want people to start amping up expectations for an early version of your product. The best entrepreneurship happens in low-stakes environments where no one is paying attention, like Mark Zuckerberg's dorm room at Harvard.