Because startups often accidentally build something nobody wants, it doesn’t matter much if they do it on time and on budget. The goal of a startup is to figure out the right thing to build - the thing customers want and will pay for - as quickly as possible.

The way forward is to learn to see every startup in any industry as a grand experiment.

The grim reality is that most start-ups fail. Most new products are not successful. Yet the story of perseverance, creative genius, and hard work persists.

The only person who can put you out of business, in the early days, is yourself.

This is one of the most important lessons of the scientific method: if you cannot fail, you cannot learn.

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 don't know who your customer is, you don't know what quality is.