Actually, your past successes are your biggest obstacle: every battle, every war, is different, and you cannot assume that what worked before will work today.

Deception is a developed art of civilization and the most potent weapon in the game of power

The dreamers, those who misread the actual state of affairs and act upon their emotions, are often the source of the greatest mistakes in history-the wars that are not thought out, the disasters that are not foreseen

The key to success in any kind of start up is your level of persistence. It's not so much your intellect. The Zuckerburg's, Pages and Brins, that succeed have such a level of belief in what they are doing that they will put up with the kind of crap that most people won't put up with, they are incredibly persistent and resilient.

Expand your notion of what adversity is.

There is something I call social intelligence. You can do a lot in life on your own and you can do all kinds of stuff, but if you're really bad with people, if you're really naive or aggressive and push people away, if you don't know the political environment you're in, it invalidates all the things you know. You're not going to get anywhere.

It's okay to be lost in college.