So many of my rookie mistakes could have been avoided by first-hand exposure to other, more experienced technology entrepreneurs.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.
I love any time you can enlighten people to mistakes, that's how I started my career.
I'm an accidental entrepreneur.
I realized that, after tasting entrepreneurship, I had become unfit for the corporate world. There was no turning back. The only regret I had was having wasted my life in the corporate world for so long.
I've made mistakes before of doing different projects just based on my dreams, my hopes, my thing, and not really thinking about my customers.
My biggest mistake was when I started up easyEverything, a chain of Internet cafes. The idea that people would go to a shop to use a computer was revolutionary in 1999. It worked for a while, but cheap technology almost killed it. One silver lining of the problems I faced was that it gave me experience of turnarounds.
My dad was an entrepreneurial businessman, and maybe I got some of his ability.
Past success is no guarantee of future success, so I have learned to be an entrepreneur. I began to produce and direct my own projects.
Even as a college professor at Carnegie Mellon and Stanford, I saw myself as an entrepreneur, and I went out, took risks, and tried to invent new things, such as participating in the DARPA Grand Challenge and working on self-driving cars.
I've trained my people in mentoring entrepreneurs and made myself obsolete.