Most investors, of course, have not made the study of business prospects a priority in their lives. If wise, they will conclude that they do not know enough about specific businesses to predict their future earning power. I have good news for these non-professionals: The typical investor doesn't need this skill. ... The goal of the non-professional should not be to pick winners – neither he nor his "helpers" can do that – but should rather be to own a cross-section of businesses that in aggregate are bound to do well. A low-cost S&P 500 index fund will achieve this goal.

So, look, I read lots of books, lots of them, you know, especially when I went from programmer to a business, realizing I have to just learn business really quick. I got really dismayed with the quality of business books pretty quickly, because frankly, I think the business books are largely written by the people who have time, who are not the people who actually build companies, frankly.

I was going to say work on what you love, but that's not really it. It's so easy to convince yourself that you love what you're doing — who wants to admit that they don't? When I think about it, the happiest and most successful people I know don't just love what they do, they're obsessed with solving an important problem, something that matters to them.

I have never felt the need to trash talk, and I'm not going to start now! I just quietly do my job and then quietly step into the ring to showcase what I can do. And one thing is for sure: I'm going to leave it all in the ring. I've always had such a will to win, and I always give my heart and my soul, so I don't need to change who I am.

Now, this ideology gets policed by this one very dangerous question, which is, "What percentage of my donation goes to the cause versus overhead?" There are a lot of problems with this question. I'm going to just focus on two. First, it makes us think that overhead is a negative, that it is somehow not part of the cause. But it absolutely is, especially if it's being used for growth.