I always feel stand-up is a great outlet for people who don’t have any discernible talent in music or sport or sculpture or whatever. It’s a great medium for chancers.

When I was growing up I wanted to be a minister. I wanted to preach.

I didn’t have a chance to want to be anything – I became an actor at 11.

In African families, you can be one of three things: a doctor, a lawyer or a failure. I wanted to be an Egyptologist, but things worked out in the end.

Trust your instincts.

“Yes, I’d like to upgrade my dad’s season tickets. Oh, front row, fifty-yard line, please–the best you have.”

deli counter attendant (I was terrible at this and hated smelling like cold cuts after work, despite how much my dog liked it), FedEx warehouse grunt (great exercise, though not very mentally stimulating), and parking booth attendant (get paid to read books? Yes, please! Until the robots replace humans, that is).

She'll show you what it means to be truly courageous and selfless. And you'll spend the rest of your life working to make her sacrifices worth it.

That really crystallized for me what some really passionate founders who could write some code could do to change things, and this gave me the confidence to say, “You know what? They can do this. We can definitely do this.” ... So without a doubt, Reddit would not exist if it weren’t for Masters of Doom.

Thank goodness, too. Because that was a long-term investment in myself.