Your latte is not the problem. Your salary is the problem. Stop shaming people for small pleasures and start teaching them to negotiate raises, switch jobs, and invest the difference.
The stock going from $179 to $12 was painful. But the value of what we're building didn't change — the market's perception of it did. I've learned to separate market noise from engineering progress.
My parents both died by the time I was 15. I had nothing. So when people say starting a battery company in a borrowed factory was risky, I ask — riskier than growing up with no parents and no money? Perspective changes everything.
Being an outsider is an advantage in investing. I see things in Asia that American VCs miss because they are not here.
The worst thing that can happen to you is you go broke. I've been broke. It's not that bad.
I've lost almost 400 matches in my career. People only remember the wins. That's the unfair advantage of being consistent.
I grew up in a town of 6,000 people in Indiana. Nobody there invests in tech stocks. That perspective is an edge, not a handicap.
In South Africa, we know that empires can fall overnight. That makes you humble about permanence.
I got shot nine times and survived. After that, a bad quarter doesn't really scare you.
I started my career at Lehman Brothers right before the financial crisis. Nothing at Lyft was ever as scary as that September.
I wrote the first line of code for Microsoft. Then I left at 30 with cancer. Life doesn't care about your business plan.
New York VCs see the world differently than San Francisco VCs. We’re closer to finance, media, and the rest of the economy. That matters.
I made a lot of mistakes. But if you look at the broad picture, the money got used well.
From 400 kilometers above the earth, every problem that felt enormous from the ground looks like what it actually is — a temporary inconvenience on a very small planet.