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

The people that work with you should generally come up with their own initiatives.

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.

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.

The office environment that people live in and work in, dictates your culture and how people make decisions.

Create tools that enable people to make decisions at the same level, ideally, of fidelity that that you would make them yourself.

Ultimately, I don't believe that you can build a company without a lot of effort, and that you need to lead by example.