The companies I have traditionally seen do best over the long term had lead investors for their seed rounds

The more you simplify, the better people will perform. People can not understand and keep track of a long complicated set of initiatives. So you have to distill it down to one, two, or three things and use a framework they can repeat, they can repeat without thinking about, they can repeat to their friends, they can repeat at night.

Being a venture capitalist to me is like being more of a psychologist. So if you come to my office we have two chairs with a table in the middle. And we sit down and it's like, Tell me your problems.

You generally know when someone asks you to do something- am I more writing, or am I more editing? The editor is the best metaphor for your job.

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.

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.