The choice of location

Well, you should have some superpowers. It's generally speaking useful to be a good product person. It's useful to have good skills in leadership, bringing networks in, persuading people, and it's useful to be able to -and this is kind of fundamental- recognize whether you are on...

People frequently think product strategy is fundamental to startups- I have a product idea, that's a thing, I'm a founder.

Actually, the next level down on strategy is usually product distribution, because no matter how good your product is, if it doesn't get the customers...

It's very conventional to say you're a contrarian these days. So it's actually pretty easy to become contrarian. It's hard to be contrarian and right. 

When you think about being contrarian, you have to think about how is it that smart people disagree with you, from a posi...

You should jump between them. You should always have a long-term vision in mind. But if you are not focused on solving the problem that's immediately in front of you, you're screwed.

So part of the question about how to put these things together is you say, "okay short...

Founders are thought of as being risk takers. Where everyone else cowers in fear, they boldly go out. You have to be a risk taker, you have to be thinking about how you make a really coherent risk because in fact the only really big opportunities happen to be ones that ha...

That is actually pretty important in being able to judge a founder. Because if you don't have that level of clarity, you are not going to be able to assemble the network behind you.

You are not going to be able to get investors, you are not going to be able to get employe...

And the reason for this is that entrepreneurs are frequently given the advice to have a vision and stay firm against their adversity.

• Realize that you have this vision that is contrarian to what people think and just stay on track. Get through th...

It's a constantly changing problem to face when you are trying to found a company. There is not one skill set, there is an ability to learn and adapt. And an ability to constantly have a vision that's driving you, but also to be taking input from all sources and ...

As a founder, should you be doing the work? Or should you be recruiting people and delegating the work? The answer to this is, actually, you need to do both.

In fact, not only you need to do both, but you need to sometimes do one at 100% and sometimes the other at 100%.  ...