The traditional sources of capital for ideas — investment, charity, rich relatives, grants — are nowhere near sufficient to the number of good ideas in the world. Now, the internet has democratized this, and you don't need to be wealthy to be a patron. You can help bring something to life with $10 because you like the project, not because you see it as a financial return.

What's beautiful is when you're filling your bank account and your soul account. There are two accounts! You can't chase those goals at the expense of your own character, that makes you a paper tiger, a fool.

All the talks I give are about failure, how hard it is, how much this job kinda' sucks and genuinely how tough it is. People often go into this world thinking it's all roses, and it's not.

I do believe there's something fundamentally essential about free play—the open-ended combination of elements not confined by a narrow context. This concept is vital not only to humanity but to life itself. Consider Johan Huizinga, the sociologist and anthropologist who, in his book 'Homo Ludens,' famously argued that play is a necessary precondition for culture. I find this perspective accurate.

Diamonds are a miracle of nature, they are millions of years old, they survived a hazardous journey to the earth's surface and the discovery of them is an exciting moment. To see the rough diamond and then watch it come to life on the polisher's wheel with incredible fire and scintillation is incredibly inspiring.