Ryan Holmes

Facebook, Twitter and Google have all opened offices in Brazil, recognizing the importance of localizing their products and customer service efforts.

Providing better computer science education in public schools to kids, and encouraging girls to participate, is the only way to rewrite stereotypes about tech and really break open the old-boys' club.

For resourceful tech founders, finding capital is rarely a problem; making the best use of it is another story. A few years slinging pepperoni pies and chicken wings - on tiny margins and with minimal investment - might not be the worst fiscal training.

Pizza made me who I am. In the summer of 1998, I dropped out of college and started a pizza restaurant called Growlies in my hometown in rural Canada. My seed money: a credit card with a $20,000 limit.

As a child, I did what any normal kid who grew up without any electricity would do - I spent countless hours working on a computer wired to my parents' car battery... and learned how to code. This natural passion for computers lead me into the Internet market during the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Tech companies don't exist in a bubble; they draw from and feed into a larger community. Ideally, the relationship is symbiotic.

For everybody in their busy lives, you need to invest in sharpening your tools, and you need to invest in longevity.

As an entrepreneur, the pressures of a startup can be enormous, but it's rarely life or death.

Don't be scared to try new things, but remember to hold on to the vision of your company and the initial successes that defined your brand.

If you catch me lying, it's probably because I'm about to surprise someone for their birthday, or hide away the specific details about a company getaway to a strange but amazing place.

Tech companies have a finite lifespan: For the successful ones, an IPO or exit is never more than a few years off. But by recruiting locally and developing homegrown talent, companies can build something that remains after they're gone. People, skills and a culture of innovation persist.

A critical question to ask when bringing in a new CEO to take the reins of a company you started is: Do you want someone who will maintain company culture or reinvent it?