In high school, one of the things I loved doing was this after-school program where you would teach computer skills to some of the maintenance folks at school.
Focus on doing the right things instead of a bunch of things.
Innovation happens best when people of different backgrounds come together to solve the world's toughest challenges and, in the process, can create new jobs and opportunities. I'm hopeful that updated immigration policies will encourage entrepreneurs from around the world to help tackle these opportunities in the U.S.
Having a scriptable infrastructure requires upfront work but can pay huge dividends in bringing new engineers onto your infra team, as well as helping in disaster-recovery scenarios.
I remember, when I was in college, an anonymous donor gave Stanford students a year of 'Yahoo Music Engine'.
My dad worked for different companies that made whiskey for a long time, so we were definitely whiskey drinkers. Growing up, my friends would get toy cars, and I would get swag from whisky companies.
Doing the simple thing first doesn't mean your solution will work forever.
With 100 million people, somebody is using your product in some interesting way. If you change it... you're going to break some use cases.
When I was a student and rushing to finish a project, my gut instinct was usually to keep adding all kinds of features. It's a way of papering over the fact that you haven't quite nailed your concept yet.
When I came to the United States in 2004 to attend university at Stanford, I was instantly inspired by the stories and advice from startup leaders in Silicon Valley and beyond, who had endeavoured to create new opportunities and improve lives around the world.
Who I love reading is Jordan Mechner, who wrote 'Prince of Persia.' He put all his journals while he was writing 'Prince of Persia' online.
Hearing 'no' a lot of times usually tells you either you're crazy or you're on the right track, and you don't know which one it is until you finally launch.
You have to tailor yourself to everybody. Sometimes people need a firmer hand; some people you can have a laugh with, and they concentrate more. What they needed was more certainty about the future of the company.
