The best way to become a billionaire is to help a billion people.

If you believe that the developing world deserves the same standards of living that we do in the developed world, then to achieve that, they need resources. They need the metals and the minerals to build the industries and the buildings and so forth, and the energy.

What is grit? Grit is refusing to give up. It's persistence. It's making your own luck.

The world's biggest problems are the world's biggest business opportunities.

I founded a launch company called International Microspace when I graduated medical school in 1989. We were trying to build a microsatellite launcher.

In 1980, during my sophomore year at MIT, I realized that the school didn't have a student space organization. I made posters for a group I called Students for the Exploration and Development of Space and put them up all over campus. Thirty-five people showed up. It was the first thing I ever organized, and it took off!

Companies have too many experts who block innovation. True innovation really comes from perpendicular thinking.