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.

Before we had the Internet, I organized a fax campaign against the first Iraq war. We blasted faxes to the hotel where James Baker and Tariq Aziz were having their final meeting before the two sides went to war. Much more recently, I co-founded Avaaz and Get Up, which inspired the creation of Purpose.

As a rule, software systems do not work well until they have been used, and have failed repeatedly, in real applications.

When I was growing up, I had three channels, and I didn't know what happened in the Philippines instantly if it happened. Now you can be on the Internet and find out what's going on in Zimbabwe. It's changed.

Some people, through luck and skill, end up with a lot of assets. If you're good at kicking a ball, writing software, investing in stocks, it pays extremely well.