I worked for Microsoft until 1996, till I had a different angle to view life. I wanted to be an entrepreneur and control my own destiny.

Once humans traded their hunter-gatherer existences for more settled communities, we began a quest to make our lives better and more comfortable, but we've also been sucking precious finite resources from our environment ever since.

Apple Computer would not have reached its current peak of success if it had feared to roll the dice and launch products that didn't always hit the mark. In the mid-1990s, the company was considered washed up. Steve Jobs had departed, and a string of lackluster product launches unrelated to the company's core business had failed to catch fire.

I started off with a company, InfoSpace, with my own funding. The company was listed among the most successful companies and I went on to start Intelius and Moon Express. Now, I focus my time on using the skills of an entrepreneur to solve many of the grand challenges facing us in the areas of education, healthcare, clean water and energy.

Success is not how much money you have in a bank. Success is how many lives you have touched.

Go where your customers take you! For example, did you know that Sony's first product was a rice cooker? Since abandoning the rice cooker, it has merely managed to become the world's biggest consumer electronics company.

It's a simple fact: no individual can be good at everything. Everyone needs people around them who have complimentary sets of skills.