The advice I would give any young person is, first of all, to rid themselves of prejudice against other people and to be concerned about what they can do to help others. And of course, to get a good education, and take advantage of the opportunities that they have. In fact, there are more opportunities today than when I was young.

Never give up your passion for learning. And zoom out of your field before you zoom in. Some of my very best business insights have come from reading around subjects. They have come from approaching questions at a strange angle, from thinking about them from a different point of view. A lot of the knowledge that has really given me an edge in business has come from history, psychology, even chemistry. Connecting seemingly unconnected dots is what has served me well.

Marry somebody you love and who thinks you being a writer’s a good idea.

The most important piece of advice that I could give them is to take advantage of the tremendous reservoir of knowledge that’s out there today. Spend some time learning how the world has evolved. There are a lot of good lessons in history, and other peoples’ experiences in the past, that could be exactly the solution to the problem you’re looking for.

We need to have mentors. I think I've always been pretty shameless about seeking out people much smarter and much more experienced than me from the very beginning. Michael Seibel and other people. And the more successful I got, the more leaders I started seeking out, whether it was investors, or Sheryl Sandberg at Facebook, or I got the opportunity to spend time with Warren Buffett and he became a close mentor of mine.

When we started Airbnb, no one wanted to invest. I felt like a failure so many days. It was small, it wasn't growing... A sane person probably would have quit. But we kept going through obscurity, through rejection. We couldn't raise money — but over time, it started growing.