Innovations seem inevitable in retrospect, but at the time it's an uphill battle.

Investors, most of them, have a herd mentality. They want to invest only if other people are investing

People like the idea of innovation in the abstract, but when you present them with any specific innovation, they tend to reject it because it doesn't fit with what they already know.

You've got to say you are a step ahead of where you actually are to move to the step that you want to be at.

My skills weren't that I knew how to design a floppy disk, I knew how to design a printer interface, I knew how to design a modem interface; it was that, when the time came and I had to get one done, I would design my own, fresh, without knowing how other people do it. That was another thing that made me very good. All the best things that I did at Apple came from (a) not having money, and (b) not having done it before, ever. Every single thing that we came out with that was really great, I'd never once done that thing in my life.

The media often glamorizes successful founders and makes their paths seem easier than they actually were.

Finding a programmer to work with if you don't already know one will be a challenge. Merely judging if a programmer is exceptional vs. competent will be very hard if you are not one yourself. When you do find someone, work together informally for a while to test your compatibility.