if DICE does right by the fans, everything else will follow. The artists, the venues, DICE—they all have one master in the end: the person buying the concert ticket. The human being who just wants to see a great show.

Forming that team and shepherding it through its many transitions is always the hardest and most rewarding part of building anything.

make a joyful product.

If you start a company, the odds are against you. So you’ll need to get over the mental anguish of failure and losing other people’s money. If and when the time comes, you’ll have to be honest and open about it; you’ll have to admit what went wrong and how you learned from it.

Mission-driven “assholes”:

build a relationship based not on starry-eyed hero worship but mutual respect.

stop running from it and start chipping away at the risks, one by one, until you’re confident enough that they’re worth taking. If that does not happen, then it’s not a great idea. It’s a distraction. Keep going until you find an idea that won’t let you go.

If you do think you’re ready to take money, then what exactly do you plan to use that money for? Do you need to build a prototype? Recruit a team? Research an idea? Get a patent? Petition local government? Fuel a partnership? Create a marketing campaign? What’s the minimum amount necessary to meet your needs now, and how much will you require later

Steve Jobs was clear about the lesson he’d learned and made sure we all learned it, too: any company that tries to do both B2B and B2C will fail.