You know what it's like to wake up in the middle of the night with a vivid dream? And you know that if you don't have a pencil and pad by the bed, it will be completely gone by the next morning. Sometimes it's important to wake up and stop dreaming. When a really great dream shows up, grab it.

If your business is static, you're likely to have issues.

You need to get one thing done well, or else you don't have permission to do anything else.

I have a simple algorithm, which is, wherever you see paid researchers instead of grad students, that's not where you want to be doing research.

Small groups of people can have a really huge impact.

If you look at the people who have high impact, they have pretty general knowledge. They don't have a really narrowly focused education.

It is often easier to make progress on mega-ambitious dreams. ... Since no one else is crazy enough to do it, you have little competition.