Understanding and respecting your roots is critical not only to winning the tech talent wars but leaving a legacy that transcends bottom lines.

Workflow and usability are not afterthoughts; they impact the core of any project and dictate how it should be engineered.

An exit is only a success if you set an exit as your primary goal. My primary goal was to build a globally influential tool, to build something from the ground up that could literally change how we communicated in business and individually.

Early in my career, I was involved with engineer-led projects, where designers came in late in the game and were expected to put lipstick on an existing code base. This almost never works.

I've been in situations in my career where I've had slumps and struggles. I always stick with it and just keep working.

I did a little bit of acting - some guest spots here and there. I got a job working as a therapist doing individual and group crisis intervention and family therapy. I did that for two years. I left to do 'Boston Legal.' So my psychology career has been interwoven into my acting career, and it's my safety net and fallback.

We're living in a world where international governance is failing to overcome borders, but technology is succeeding in removing them.

When I first read 'Lord of the Rings,' I wanted to see a film of it. But at that time, the technology wasn't there; there was no such thing as CGI.