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Founders, presuming they know their customers, assume they know all the features customers need.

One of the perks of being the founder is that you get to build the company in your image.

Founding a company is hard. Most of it isn't smooth. You'll have to make very hard decisions. You have to fire a few people. Therefore, if you don't believe in your mission, giving up is easy. The majority of founders give up. But the best founders don't give up.

For a lot of people, one of the reasons they don't like to work for founders of startups is that they can be sensitive and protective around what they've built. You have an emotional attachment to the early marketing and technology materials, and you don't want to hear that anything's wrong with them.

For those working menial jobs or putting in 100-hour weeks for corporations, the lure of starting your own business can seem like a great way to get more flexibility, upside, and ownership.

When I meet with the founders of a new company, my advice is almost always, 'Do fewer things.' It's true of partnerships, marketing opportunities, anything that's taking up your time. The vast majority of things are distractions, and very few really matter to your success.

Any dispassionate observer would recognize that on Day One, a start-up has no customers, and unless the founder is a true domain expert, he or she can only guess about the customer, problem, and business model.

I feel that the best companies are started not because the founder wanted a company but because the founder wanted to change the world... If you decide you want to found a company, you maybe start to develop your first idea. And hire lots of workers.

The thing about startups is you can make it, and if it's wrong you can remake it, and you can build a team that you want to have, a product that you want to have. You're utterly focused on your users or your customers and their needs, and trying to figure out how to meet those needs.