Skillful pitching... is a necessary, but not sufficient, part of raising capital. More important are the realities of your organization: Are you building something meaningful, long lasting, and valuable to society?

Do not write to impress others. Authors who write to impress people have difficulty remaining true to themselves. A better path is to write what pleases you and pray that there are others like you. Your first and most important reader is you. If you write a book that pleases you, at least you know one person will like it.

It's easy to say that entrepreneurs will create jobs and big companies will create unemployment, but this is simplistic. The real question is who will innovate.

The best reason to start an organization is to make meaning; to create a product or service to make the world a better place.

Leverage your brand. You shouldn't let two guys in a garage eat your shorts.

"(Big name research firm) says our market will be $50 billion in 2010." Every entrepreneur has a few slides about how the market potential for his segment is tens of billions. It doesn't matter if the product is bar mitzah planning software or 802.11 chip sets. Venture capitalists don't believe this type of forecast because it's the fifth one of this magnitude that they've heard that day. Entrepreneurs would do themselves a favor by simply removing any reference to market size estimates from consulting firms.

Arguably, in business books, I don't think there's much that has never been said before.