“The right answer on raises is you have to be formal. You have to be formal to save your own culture.”

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.

When you’re making a critical decision, you have to understand how it’s going to be interpreted from all points of view. Not just your point of view, not just the person you’re talking to, but the people that aren’t in the room. Everybody else.

These decisions intensify when you run a company, because the consequences get magnified 1,000 fold. As in life, the excuses for CEOs making the wrong choice are always plentiful.

Business ends up being very dynamic and situational.

I don’t believe in statistics. I believe in calculus.

Early in my career as an engineer, I’d learned that all decisions were objective until the first line of code was written. After that, all decisions were emotional.

Note to self: It’s a good idea to ask, “What am I not doing?

Hire sales people who are really smart problem solvers, but lack courage, hunger and competitiveness, and your company will go out of business.

You know what the difference between a vision and a hallucination is? They call it a vision when other people can see it.

Some day I’m gonna call me up on the phone, so when I answer, I can tell myself to shut up.

The Muslim people is calling upon you, Jerusalem is appealing to you, will anyone answer?

I met a lot of the senior Taliban, and I asked them precisely [about Mullah Omar]. The most common answer was he is humble. And that was very true.

When you inquire ‘Who am I?’ if you are honest, you’ll notice that it takes you right back to silence instantly. The brain doesn’t have an answer, so all of a sudden there is silence.

Self-inquiry is a spiritually induced form of wintertime. It’s not about looking for a right answer so much as stripping away and letting you see what is not necessary, what you can do without, what you are without your leaves.

Humor is such a strong weapon, such a strong answer. Women have to make jokes about themselves, laugh about themselves, because they have nothing to lose.

Humor is such a strong weapon, such a strong answer.

War is not the answer, for only love can conquer hate.