The key to leadership is having a vision, and being strong enough to say no and not try to please everybody. Thats a recipe for failure. Leadership is practiced through attitude and actions, rather than words and memos.

A poor logo doesn't mean a business will fail, and a good logo doesn't mean it will succeed - it just helps. Ultimately a good logo is something that people recognize instantly and relate to.

I never really felt like my age stopped people from wanting to work with me. I was speaking at conferences and lecturing at universities at 18, and I think that was mainly because web developing and management was a really young industry.

The main thing that 99designs is about is choice. Its a fantastic model that eliminates risk for small business owners and puts designers on equal footing.

The pace of change for entrepreneurs is rapidly accelerating, and the cost and risk of launching a new business and getting off the ground is just amazing. The ability to gain user feedback really quickly and adapt to what your consumers want is totally different with the web as it is now. But finding a new market, helping people and taking that original idea and turning it into a business is really exciting right now.

On April 1, 1998, I launched Webmaster-Resources.com, and I remember that date specifically because it was the date that the price of a two-year domain name registration dropped from $100 to $70, and considering I was funding this out of my allowance, that $30 made all the difference.

I was really just a hard-core geek, if you will, in 1996, and was building websites as a hobby. I started doing a lot of web design and development and built my first website on the now-defunct GeoCities platform.