Neil Blumenthal

Share your personality with interviewers, but keep a professional filter safely adhered to it.

Self-awareness is a trait - or maybe 'practice' is the more accurate way to put it - that everyone can always improve at. It is part emotional intelligence, part perceptiveness, part critical thinking. It means knowing your weaknesses, of course, but it also means knowing your strengths and what motivates you.

When you look at the reasons people leave companies, it's usually because their boss is a jerk or because they aren't learning and growing.

From the beginning, we believed that it was possible to develop direct relationships with customers at a relatively cheap cost, and our plan was to build a lifestyle brand that was also an Internet company - a rarity for eyewear.

When we were creating Warby Parker, for us it was about having a positive impact on the world and having a strong social mission.

Millennials are eager to make an impact, which makes them ideal for start-ups.

I completely believe in the lean startup and minimum viable product; I just I think that people are setting the threshold for minimum viable too low.

My goal is to get in bed by 11. That rarely happens. But I celebrate when it does happen.

For many startups, ideating is the fun part: coming up with ingenious schemes to grab eyeballs and start conversations. But before you dive into that stage, take a step back and define your goals.

Venture capital is an inherently optimistic form of investment - which is both its primary strength and its primary weakness.

Often, companies are trying to chase growth and get into other categories or go international too quickly, and they can get in trouble doing that.

All companies - and not just startups - face the same eternal challenge: resource allocation.