Startup Advice

For me, 'big' means having the ability to take a chance on an idea that others may not understand or even see as valuable. My team was excited about the idea of using artificial intelligence to help us develop web content and make it more engaging for users. Others in the company were skeptical, but we took a chance on it."

Engineer Wei Dai on reinventing yourself:

"Once you achieve high status, a part of your mind makes you lose interest in the thing that you achieved high status with in the first place. You might feel obligated to maintain an appearance of interest, and defend your position from time to time, but you no longer feel a burning need to know the truth.

One solution that might work (and I think has worked for me, although I didn't consciously choose it) is to periodically start over. Once you've achieved recognition in some area, and no longer have as much interest in it as you used to, go into a different community focused on a different topic, and start over from a low-status (or at least not very high status) position."