Making a decision reduces opportunities in the short run, but increases opportunities in the long run. To move forward in your career, you have to co… - Reid Hoffman

WORK TOGETHER TO ALIGN EMPLOYEE, MANAGER, AND COMPANY. Once everyone’s values and aspirations have been articulated, all parties should work together to strengthen the alignment between them. This is a collaborative rather than top-down effort. It’s not just a job for you, but for the employee as well. The good news is, working together on this can actually help build the long-term relationship.

Network effects generate a positive feedback loop that can allow the first product or service that taps into those effects to build an unassailable competitive advantage.

Having “extra” capital gives you a cushion for when outcomes do not in fact follow your plan. Moreover, it increases your optionality — if you need to invest in growth, you can do much more without having to go through the time-consuming process of raising another round. As Mariam Naficy, CEO of Minted, told me, “Act like you’ve got half the amount you have in the bank because you’ve got to factor in all the failures and all the optimizations that kill great entrepreneurs and businesses all the time. Both of us know so many people who had good ideas and were on the right track, but just ran out of money.” At both PayPal and LinkedIn, we raised large financing rounds right before a market meltdown (2000, 2008), and we sure were glad we did. In the case of PayPal, that money allowed us to keep growing during the dot-com bust; without it, we wouldn’t have made it to our IPO. In the case of LinkedIn, the situation wasn’t as dire, but I realized that the value of the optionality from additional funding far outweighed the potential negatives of equity dilution.