What advice do you have for someone wanting to be an entrepreneur?

So, what advice would I have for someone who wants to be an entrepreneur?

Everyone's path is different, so take anything I have to say with a grain of salt. A lot of folks think of entrepreneurship as, “Hey, I have a new idea for a business,” whether it's a restaurant, a new technology company, a new social network—whatever it might be. They put a lot of emphasis on the idea itself. I think most entrepreneurs would tell you that a lot more depends not only on the idea but the execution of the idea, and really just how ready the world, the market, is for your idea.

My advice would be, especially if you're early in your career, try to build as many skills as you can. To be an entrepreneur, you have to be a little bit of a jack-of-all-trades. So, know your finance, know your accounting, know your marketing. You don't have to know it necessarily academically, but know it intuitively.

Pay attention to how other people are doing it. Think about your strategy. Wherever your area of interest is, if it's to start a restaurant, get to know that business really, really, really well. Work at a restaurant at all levels. If your goal is to work in tech, work at some tech companies and get to know that really, really well. Get to know not just the technology, not just the product management, not just the design, but the sales aspect of it and the management aspect of it.

The whole time that you're building yourself up, that you're working in the industry and learning these various skills, make sure that you have some time to fiddle. The best entrepreneurial ideas that I've seen are the ones where folks get to know a space well through their craft and then they have an idea. They’re able to have a little bit of time to test out that idea—not only build it, not only prototype it, but put it out there somehow and see how the market responds.

If the market is responding very favorably, if people are saying, “Wow, I want more of this! How can I get it?” then I think you're on to something. All of those skills that you would have built up over those many years will not only help you execute on the idea but they'll help you convince other people that you're ready to execute on the idea, which is maybe just as important: potential investors, people that you need to co-found your venture with.

Also, my last point is to know what your weak points are. As you experience all of these dimensions of starting a business, if you know that, “Hey, maybe the marketing isn't my thing,” know that, and then you can find someone who's good at it who can complement you. If you're like, “Hey, I like the entrepreneurial side, but scaling up a business isn’t my cup of tea,” find great operators who can help you scale it up. So, that's my two cents. Take it all with a grain of salt.