Learn to sell. In business you're always selling - to your prospects, investors and employees. To be the best salesperson put yourself in the shoes of the person to whom you're selling. Don't sell your product. Solve their problems.

The only way to get ahead is to find errors in conventional wisdom.

I never considered my dreams wasted energy; they were invariably linked to some form of action. When I dreamed about having a lemonade stand, for example, it wasn't long before I set up a lemonade stand.

When it's too easy to get money, then you get a lot of noise mixed in with the real innovation and entrepreneurship. Tough times bring out the best parts of Silicon Valley.

I really had a lot of dreams when I was a kid, and I think a great deal of that grew out of the fact that I had a chance to read a lot.

Perhaps without that adversity I might not have been able to preserve later on when my financial burdens were redoubled. I learned then how to keep problems from crushing me. I refused to worry about more than one thing at a time, and I would not let useless fretting about a problem, no matter how important, keep me from sleeping.