“Do things that incumbents can’t or won’t do because it’s economically or technically infeasible.”

My workday begins around 11 A.M., with a cup of black coffee in each hand. If I had more hands, there would be more coffee.

When you’re doing something you’re passionate about, stress becomes a featurenot a bug.

Entrepreneurship: 10% coach, 20% player, 30% cheerleader, 40% waterboy.

I think I’m the kind of person who would be very difficult to employ – I’m pretty annoying, but driven.

The best technology is aimed far enough in the future that it stands out, but close enough to the present that it blends in.

I don’t use many apps. I use naps.

Better to be too early and have to try again, than be too late and have to catch up.

Your product should sell itself, but that does not mean you don’t need salespeople.

Companies have never won. You’re always either fighting for survival, or fighting for relevance.

Startups live at the intersection of existential crisis and everything going perfectly great.

I’m obsessed with speed. I’m always asking myself, ‘Why can’t we do things faster? Why can’t it happen more efficiently? Why is this requiring three meetings instead of one?’

Listen to your customers, but don’t always build exactly what they’re telling you. This is a really key distinction around building enterprise software.

You want to find the really crazy but still somewhat reasonable outliers within the customer ecosystem.

You intentionally start small, because you will not be able to compete with an incumbent… because the incumbent is always going to go for the full solution.

The chance of failure is almost always better than the guarantee of never knowing.

You’ll learn more in a day talking to customers than a week of brainstorming, a month of watching competitors, or a year of market research.

Family and friends and faith are the most important things in your life and you should be building friendships.

Every single thing I learned about marketing and building my business, I learned from my mom, and she had never been in the workforce. She just had great practical sense.

Buildings become furniture, courtyards become carpets and arrases, the streets are like galleries, the boulevards conservatories. It is a house, one or two centuries old, rich, bourgeois, distinguished. The only way of going out, or shutting the door behind you, is to leave the centre.

I laugh, and it’s laughter, not light, that casts out the darkness building within me, that reminds me I am still alive, even in this strange place where everything I’ve ever known is coming apart.

The Bible says that our real problem is that every one of us is building our identity on something besides Jesus.

The building of a house, the writing of a novel, the demolition of a bridge, and, eminently, the finish of a voyage.

To me, the most shocking thing about grit is how little we know, how little science knows, about building it.

The Liberal State is a mask behind which there is no face; it is a scaffolding behind which there is no building.