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When it all got taken away, I was becoming a young man. So I had to sacrifice to leave my family... Sleeping in my car, getting an apartment for a month and getting evicted the next month. Staying in the $25, $50 hotels.

We were living in a tough situation, but my mother managed; she juggled. Sometimes we'd pay the light bill, sometimes we paid the phone, sometimes the gas went off.

I lived in a hotel across the street from Disneyland for a month.

I live a fairly simple life, and that didn't change much after I sold TechCrunch in 2010. I didn't buy a new house or even a new car. The one thing I did splurge on was a boat. Nothing too fancy or large.

At one stage, I didn't have any money, so I slept on the streets for a few nights. It wasn't uncommon in the 1950s, and it wasn't uncommon to be out of money. There wasn't anywhere to go to get money.

If I close my eyes, I can remember the first apartment where I lived with my family in Newark, N.J., in the late 1930s. The rooms were lined up like train cars - you had to go through one to get to another - and there wasn't any heat or hot water.

I lived by the candlelight for two years because I couldn't afford power. It was nice and romantic at the time, but if you can't afford power you're pretty broke. You endure it.

I had my electricity turned off three times because I never had time to pay my bills. It was a joke. I'm making a ton of money, and I'm walking around my apartment with flashlights.