"Another great vector along the same lines is just to ask yourself, is taboo in California? Understanding that the vast majority of early stage risk capital in this industry is domiciled in the Bay Area and so what is your typical person there not allowed to think about. That's just a great way for idea generation to happen."

"In many cases going to a multi-stage firm you only get one bite at the apple and if you're going to ask for that bite at the apple you want it to be for 10 or 20 million dollars or more. You don't want to go to fill in the blank multi-stage famous firm to raise your three million dollar seed."

"I like to ask, are they breaking a rule? What rule are they breaking? An industry rule, some sort of common, conventional wisdom type rule. What's contrary, if anything, about what they're doing? What do they know that others do not know? What have they figured out that others have not figured out?"

"We have a Nobel Prize winner, a four-star general, and the former ambassador to Germany or whatever. That means nothing to me. That just means maybe you're too well networked for your own good and perhaps actually you're just mimetic, chasing trends."

"You've got the money now and you need to be building something. You've got the 1.8, you gotta make it work with that for a while. You should probably go kind of dark. To the outside world you're updating your cap table, but to everybody else you're kind of going dark and you're just building."