One of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make is not understanding the relationship they have with their investors. At times, they confuse VCs with their friends.

The Lean Startup is a process for turning ideas into commercial ventures. Its premise is that startups begin with a series of untested hypotheses. They succeed by getting out of the building, testing those hypotheses and learning by iterating and refining minimal viable products in front of potential customers.

Value Proposition Design is a 'must have' for anyone creating a new venture. It captures the core issues around understanding and finding customer problems and designing and validating potential solutions.

Schools reward their students for a combination of intelligence, perseverance, and hard work - in the classroom and on the playing fields. But these metrics don't help kids understand that great grades are not a pass for a great life.

Of course, the discounting of future earnings should hurt all stocks. But it should hurt technology stocks more than others, because so many of them are valued at extremely high levels relative to their current earnings.

I won't deny that I have a far more productive writing life without the Internet, mostly because I rekindle my ability to concentrate on one thing for a period of longer than three minutes. My curiosity is channeled inward rather than Internet-ward.

The key to understanding my career is that I was never into technology. From the beginning, I brought an outsider's point of view, which is why I write for a layman's publication.

Long-term, we must begin to build our internal strengths. It isn't just skills like computer technology. It's the old-fashioned basics of self-reliance, self-motivation, self-reinforcement, self-discipline, self-command.