People are free or cheap. Marketing: using Twitter or blogs. Cheap or free. Infrastructure: call up Amazon, call up Rackspace, terabytes of data in the clouds, thousand dollars, two thousand dollars.

You’ll learn that the key to a great book is editing-grindin g, buffing, and polishing-not writing.

Revolutionary products don't fail because they are shipped too early. They fail because they aren't revised fast enough.

"No one is doing what we're doing." This is a bummer of a lie because there are only two logical conclusions. First, no one else is doing this because there is no market for it. Second, the entrepreneur is so clueless that he can't even use Google to figure out he has competition. Suffice it to say that the lack of a market and cluelessness is not conducive to securing an investment. As a rule of thumb, if you have a good idea, five companies are going the same thing. If you have a great idea, fifteen companies are doing the same thing.

Pursue joy, not happiness. This is probably the hardest lesson of all to learn. It probably seems to you that the goal in life is to be happy. Oh, you maybe have to sacrifice and study and work hard, but, by and large, happiness should be predictable.

When you’ve worked hard and done well and walked through that doorway of opportunity, you do not slam it shut behind you.

High achievers tend to have major weaknesses. People without major weaknesses tend to be mediocre.