Marc Andreessen

To build any kind of great company, anything that you're going to remember that's going to last, is a 10/20-year project at the minimum.

You would think the day job is saying yes to new companies; it's actually saying no. We pass on almost everything. The sort of black humor joke is our day job is crushing entrepreneurs' hopes and dreams.

A tech startup might or might not work. And fundamentally, whether it works or not is basically a function of if you build something that people want and can kind of build a business around it.

Another is an old venture capital adage, which is more companies die from suicide than homicide.

Another metaphor I use a lot is that building a tech company is like a snowball rolling down a hill. If it's working well, it's growing as it rolls ... It's creating resources. And so, it's kind of pulling people in...

If you talk to a lot of people who are still founders running their companies 10 or 20 years later, a lot of their life is every morning, they open up their email inbox, and it's just like a descent into hell.