My takeaways:
On life:
1. Things usually work out if you persist and really believe in what you’re doing.
2. Your willingness to fail gives you the ability to succeed.
3. Don’t let fear of failure hold you back. Even if you fail, nobody will remember.
4. Anything worth doing is hard.
5. With enough persistence, most things that seem impossible become possible.
6. Don’t take ‘no’ for an answer too easily.
7. Most people do what’s expected of them and not what they believe in.
8. Leadership is having a belief system, knowing what you believe in, an internal compass.
9. The world is changed by a very small number of people who follow their core beliefs and don’t listen to others.
10. Only those who fail greatly can succeed greatly.
On VCs:
1. Almost all VCs add no or negative value.
2. If you haven’t built a startup or have equivalent experience, you haven’t earned the right to advise an entrepreneur.
On startups:
1. Business plans are useless except for showing the issues the entrepreneur is thinking about.
2. If you want to change the world, join a startup and not a big company.
3. All the exciting opportunities are at the fuzzy, obscure edges of the system where things are uncertain.
4. Don’t listen to experts. Their predictions are no better than dart throwing monkeys.
quoting note17xd…8m46Stumbled across this scorcher of an interview with Vinod Khosla from 2015.
> 90% of VCs add no value to startups; 70% even harm them.
> Just the fact that you got an MBA and joined a venture fund doesn't mean you can give useful advice to an entrepreneur.
> If you never built an actual business, you're not qualified to give advice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZcXup7p5-8&ab_channel=StanfordGraduateSchoolofBusiness