Taking Risk:
If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.
There’s a tremendous bias against taking risks. Everyone is trying to optimize their ass-covering.
Some people don’t like change, but you need to embrace change if the alternative is disaster. The first step to establish that something is possible; then probability will occur.
Hard Work:
Persistence is very important. You should not give up unless you are forced to give up. Work like hell. I mean you just have to put in 80 to 100 weeks every week. This improves the odds of success.
When something is important, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.
Leadership:
The path to the CEO’s office should not be through the CFO’s office, and it should not be through the marketing department. It should be through engineering and design. People work better when they know what the goal is and why. It is important that people look forward to coming to work in the morning and enjoy working.
If you’re a co-founder or CEO, you have to do all kinds of tasks you might not want to do. No task is too menial.
Personal Growth:
Very important to have a feedback loop where you’re constantly thinking about what you’ve done and how you could be doing it better.
Really pay attention to negative feedback and solicit it, particularly from friends. It is possible for ordinary people to choose to be extraordinary.
If you get up in the morning and think the future is going to be better, it is a bright day. People should pursue what they’re passionate about. That will make them happier than pretty much anything else.
Entrepreneurship:
Starting and growing business is as much about the innovation, drive, and determination of the people behind it as the product they sell.
Being an entrepreneur is like eating glass and staring into the abyss of death.
When somebody has a breakthrough, it is rarely on one little thing. It’s usually a whole bunch of things that collectively amount to a huge innovation.
Talent is extremely important. It’s like a sports team: the team that has the best individual player will often when, but then there’s a multiplier from how those players work together and the strategy they employ.
It is a mistake to hire huge numbers of people to get a complicated job done. Numbers will never compensate for talent in getting the right answer.