Startups are unique animals. We take them pretty much for granted out here now, but they are still endeavors that require very different skills from the ones needed in established companies.

Anyone can sail with the wind to his back. Startups usually sail into a stiff wind, leaking like a sieve, in high seas, without food or water.

In the world of startups, angels invest in seed or early-stage deals, and with their money they lend a bit of advice. They pay for the privilege of helping the company.

Good entrepreneurs are passionate visionaries, usually with one or more exceptional talents, but rarely have they actually built a company from scratch.

It's not clear that being the first-mover will provide the rash of Internet startups a sustainable competitive advantage. Ultimately being right, or better positioned, may be more important than being first.

Deferred Life Plan: Step one: Do what you have to do. Then, eventually — Step two: Do what you want to do

Most business ideas do not find funding. Even the majority of those that are funded—that is, vetted by very smart people who think enough of the ideas to invest in them — ultimately fail.

It's the romance, not the finance that makes business worth pursuing.

Entrepreneurs, in my experience, don't like to be told they're wrong.

The business model can and should change over time, as the world changes.

Business conditions are forever changing. You need to reconsider your strategies and business models constantly and adjust them where necessary.

Business is about nothing if not people.

Silicon Valley veterans share a tacit understanding that what a startup needs isn't one CEO, but three —each at successive stages of the startup's development.

If you turn a visionary startup into an operating company too early, you throw out its birthright. It will never be as big, or as influential as it might otherwise be. It will be much harder, perhaps impossible, to expand the vision later, when performance is being measured, because then there's too much at stake.

Business failures are unfortunate but necessary steps in the search for those few huge successes.

If you're brilliant, 15 to 20 percent of the risk is removed. If you work twenty-four hours a day, another 15 to 20 percent of the risk is removed. The remaining 60 to 70 percent of business risk will be completely out of your control..

Work hard, work passionately, but apply your most precious asset — time — to what is most meaningful to you.

Time is the only resource that matters.

If you asked a team of expert psychologists and sociological researchers to come up with a design that was sure to infuriate and offend liberals in America, they'd probably come up with what we call the Great Seal.

When it comes to salt, what was really staggering to me is that the industry itself is totally hooked on salt. It is this miracle ingredient that solves all of their problems. There is the flavor burst to the salt itself, but it also serves as a preservative, so foods can stay on the shelves for months.

At 9 years old, I moved in with my father because my mother could no longer care for me. Looking back, I now see so many similarities between my own childhood and that of my sons. My father stepped in when I needed him, and that gave me the chance for a better life. That's what I'm doing for my boys now.

My acting experience has been a benefit. What I learned from directors is how to listen to and talk with actors. I know how they think and what they need.

Goals are dreams with deadlines.

You know that something is really well written when you have to think so little about the words that are coming out of your mouth, and you're able to dwell in your own headspace to get there.

If you want to be happy for a day drink. if you want to be happy for a year marry. If you want to be happy for a lifetime ride a motorcycle.

I think I've spent more time in front of a camera than off camera. That's just the way it is.

One hazard of our job on TV is people are always checking us out and noting every pound we've gained or haven't quite lost.

Diseases of the soul are more dangerous and more numerous than those of the body.

I personally want to have children. I love children, and I simply can't wait to have a family of my own.

Simply by changing your habitual vocabulary, you can instantaneously change how you think, how you feel, and how you live.

Everyone gets their just deserts.

Pilot season after pilot season, I read the same part: the wife who rolls her eyes at her somewhat immature husband that she still loves. Literally.

Prancing around on stage is not the entire purpose of my life.

I got interested in the Vikings, and then you realize that there isn't much to be read about them because they did not write their history. It was written by hostile witnesses, by Christian monks and so on. From what I could see and understand, I was really excited about it. I loved their culture and loved their gods.

What's my greatest fear? I don't know; I have lots of fears. Regret, I don't want to have any regrets; that makes me scared.

I tell a good story.

What do you want a meaning for? Life is a desire, not a meaning.

The first, that their pretensions to this possession of an art properly so called in their art of speaking are entirely unfounded; and the second, that they are involved in a profound mistake in their confusion of the good with the pleasant.

I put on the best live show, the absolute best live show I can possibly can.

Annoying people with no class at all should stay far away from computers!

Beauty is a precious trace that eternity causes to appear to us and that it takes away from us. A manifestation of eternity, and a sign of death as well.

Fear is only in duality. Fear is Mind. When you are your Self, there is no fear.