Your goal over time is to use less red ink every day.

Most people, most great people even are ammunition. But what you need in your company are barrels. You can only shoot through the number of unique barrels you have, so that's how the velocity of your company improves... is by adding barrels, and then you stock them with ammunition and then you can do a lot.

If the Martians took over eBay it would take 6 months for the world to notice.

There are three things you need to do as a CEO-founder. Think strategically, drive design, and drive technology. Some people who are really good at one can build a pretty foundational company. Most people who are very successful are good at two. But Jack is the only person in the Valley I've met who's all three. He's a first-rate strategist, a first-rate designer, and a first-rate technologist.

Barrels are very difficult to find. But when you have them, give them lots of equity. Promote them, take them to dinner every week, because they are virtually irreplaceable because they are also very culturally specific. So a barrel at one company may not be a barrel at another company. One of the ways, the definition of a barrel is, they can take an idea from conception and take it all the way to shipping and bring people with them.

Usually when you hire more engineers, you actually don't get that much more done, you actually sometimes get less done.

I'd actually argue forging a company is far more harder than forging a product