Our brains are adept at concealing our motives from ourselves, convincing us that we are not as interested in status as we might actually be. This self-deception, paradoxically, enhances our ability to argue our lack of interest in status, which, in turn, can ironically increase our standing within the social group. People are drawn to this perceived humility, further entrenching the intricate and ironic dance of status within human society.

While many were focused on selling routers and switches, I envisioned a more transformative goal: changing the way the world works, learns, lives, and plays via the internet... we must sell outcomes, driven by technology, rather than just selling products.

The brain can be thought of as a blank slate, yet it comes with certain built-in constraints and proclivities. Every culture recognizes the octave, because it's grounded in physics, a simple 2:1 frequency ratio. Every culture also uses the perfect fifth, 3:2. And every culture divides the octave into a discrete set of steps for their scale, usually between five and eight.

It's naïve to think that financial markets are not part of the battlefield.

India is conservative on the outside, but becoming more liberal inside. A lot of my stories are about the double life that younger India has to lead…. The conflict between conservatism and liberal values.

Curiosity drives human progress; it helps us understand our world and that's what drew me to leave my home. I had this curiosity, like Isaac Newton when he saw the apple fall and wondered why.

When these people are under stress, they make bad decisions. They get reactive. One of the key findings in our conclusions is that the unsuccessful founders were more reactive. They weren't measured. They weren't deliberate. They didn't make decisions based on facts — their emotions carried them away.

The most critical element is the cultural integration. The distinct cultures of the two companies present a significant challenge, consuming 80-90% of our efforts. Our goal is to forge a unified team culture, permeating from senior leadership to the deepest levels.

To make those markets work well, they have to make the market thick, they have to attract enough participants to get good transaction levels. They have to deal with the problem of congestion that can be symptomatic of thick markets. You have to also make the market safe enough for people to transact in!

The greatest leaders have humility. A good leader is a humble leader. A good leader listens to people, gets other inputs, admits when they're wrong… and that boils down to humility; it's the single most important characteristic that I see in leaders.

Each person is trapped in their own world and assume that the rest of humanity sees the world the same way that they do. That assumption is incorrect. You see the world differently to me, and that's true for every situation in which we find ourselves.

I've always been self-taught, sort of like the Grandma Moses of acting. If I'd gone to drama school, I would probably have had a very different career- perhaps not as much fun in some ways.