“A CEO needs great intelligence and great courage. And I always found my courage was tested more.”

Until you make the effort to get to know someone or something, you don’t know anything.

As a startup CEO, I slept like a baby. I woke up every 2 hours and cried.

Don’t punk out and don’t quit.

Over the last ten years, technological advances have dramatically lowered the financial bar for starting a new company, but the courage bar for building a great company remains as high as it has ever been.

Leadership is hard to train on.

The only thing that prepares you to run a company is running a company.

A key thing in being a leader is you’ve got to pause yourself.

I emphasize to C.E.O.s, you have to have a story in the minds of the employees. It’s hard to memorize objectives, but it’s easy to remember a story.

Relationships built from a business do better than the reverse.

Groupon looked like a very high valuation, but any investment in a great company at any stage is almost always a good investment.

Planning is valuable, tho the plan is usually useless.

When raising money, you want to look through the lens of ‘What happens when things go wrong?’

Your employees know each other better than they know you.

The person they’re working with, is going to be the person they’ll know more. So if that person leaves, they’re going to go – well, should have I left too? What did they get and how does that compare to my deal.

Breakthrough ideas usually come from guys who look like they’re hallucinating

Wartime CEO is too busy fighting the enemy to read management books written by consultants who have never managed a fruit stand.

I have found people on both sides of the aisle, white and black, that’ll give you the shirt off their back.

And I’ve also found people that won’t give you a piece of bread if you’re starving to death.

Finally a breath of fresh words founded in hardcore, intelligent research.

There is – I mean – I found early in life that righteous indignation is a little off-putting, and so I try to couch it with humor.

It is not found in a forest or on a hilltop, nor is it given by a teacher. Where you experience suffering, you can also find freedom from suffering.

Peace is within oneself to be found in the same place as agitation and suffering.

Beauty and inspiration can be found in any natural place of the earth.

The Dhamma has to be found by looking into your own heart and seeing that which is true and that which is not, that which is balanced and that which is not balanced.