Before dreaming about the future or marking plans, you need to articulate what you already have going for you - as entrepreneurs do.

Part of what being a great founder is, is being both able to hold the belief, to think about where it is you want to be doing and want to be going, but also be smart enough that you are essentially listening to criticism, negative feedback, competitive entries.

It is impossible to dissociate an individual from the environment of which he is a part. No story of achievement should ever be removed from its broader social context.

During normal times or boom times, there are some parts of the business that are going to so well, that that can cover for weakness and other parts of the business. What happens during recessions, is you have less windfalls just helping you cover mistakes. You have to be more careful about not making mistakes.

Democracy tends to be a collaborative process, a committee, a consensus.

What great founders do is seek the networks that will be essential to their task... Usually it's best to have two or three people on a team rather than a solo founder.

If you have to conduct layoffs, which is always a regrettable thing, there's kind of three things that are very important. One is to communicate well with your employees in order to help them understand why it is you're doing, and how. Second is to make sure that the employees who are part of the go forward, understand kind of what happened and are not like the ground doesn't keep moving. It's like, okay, we did that, we're moving forward, here we go. And then for the employees that you unfortunately have to let go, try to provide as much support for them as possible.