An editor who is a mentor, advisor, and psychiatrist. Don't kid yourself-a good editor will make your book better.

Great teams are usually small-under fifty in total head count. (There are few examples of a team made up of hundreds of people who created anything revolutionary.) Big teams aren't conducive to revolutionary products because such products require a high degree of single-mindedness, unity, and unreasonable passion.

Let's say a startup is hot. It ships something great, and it achieves success. Thus, it's able to attract the best, brightest, and most talented. These people have been told they're the best since childhood. Indeed, being hired by the hot company is "proof" that they are the A and A+ players; in fact, the company is so hot that it can out-recruit Google and Microsoft.

At the end of the day in business, it's not about peer review and getting into a scientific journal. You either increase sales, or not.

If you truly don't have competition, then zoom out until you can define some. Competition can be as simple as the reliance on the status quo, Microsoft (since at some point Microsoft will compete with everyone for everything), or researchers in universities. Pick something, because saying you have no competition at all is a nonstarter.

Ideas are easy. Implementation is hard.

For me writing is as close to being an engineer as possible.