At YC we have this public phrase, and it's relentlessly resourceful.

No matter what you choose, build stuff and be around smart people.

You can create value with breakthrough innovation, incremental refinement, or complex coordination. Great companies often do two of these. The very best companies do all three.

Founders are usually very stingy with equity to employees and very generous with equity to investors. I think this is totally backwards.

Obsess about the quality of the product.

In general don't start a startup you're not willing to work on for ten years.

Everyone starting a startup for the first time is scared, and everyone feels like a bit of an imposter.

No growth hack, brilliant marketing idea, or sales team can save you long term if you don't have a sufficiently good product.

You have to be decisive. Indecisiveness is a startup killer.

Execution gets divided into two key questions: 1) can you figure out what to do and 2) can you get it done.

If you don't need it yourself, and you're building something that someone else needs, realize you're at a big disadvantage.

Exploring is delightful to look forward to and back upon, but it is not comfortable at the time, unless it be of such an easy nature as not to deserve the name.

Protect your finest hours for your greatest work. Bring on your craft and lift us with you.

The diet, to be healthy, has to be mostly fruits, vegetables, beans, nuts and seeds.

If I haven't played with a player before and I don't know anything about them, the more they tell me about themselves, the better I will be able to judge how they think and how they play.

Friendship's the wine of life.

Finding ways to organize work in which people are not locked into unequal power relationships is very important. Having said that, it's not easily done, and it's complicated.

The greatest blessing in the whole world is being a blessing.

The reservedness and distance that fathers keep, often deprive their sons of that refuge which would be of more advantage to them than an hundred rebukes or chidings.

If I could persuade myself that I could find Him in a Himalayan cave I would proceed there immediately.

You can fight a rumour only with an even wilder rumour.