Understanding and respecting your roots is critical not only to winning the tech talent wars but leaving a legacy that transcends bottom lines.

Workflow and usability are not afterthoughts; they impact the core of any project and dictate how it should be engineered.

An exit is only a success if you set an exit as your primary goal. My primary goal was to build a globally influential tool, to build something from the ground up that could literally change how we communicated in business and individually.

Early in my career, I was involved with engineer-led projects, where designers came in late in the game and were expected to put lipstick on an existing code base. This almost never works.

There are definitely problems with technology companies, mostly around privacy, in my opinion, and the fact that they don't protect our privacy and we haven't passed privacy laws.

As technology progresses, I believe that fintech will fundamentally change finance.

I'm studying theater and media. I don't really know why I took media, because I'm so useless with technology, though it's fun. But, I do love theater and am having a great time learning about all the practitioners and getting to perform with my friends.

I think at places like 'Slate' or the magazine where I work, there was a really poor record of hiring African-American writers. It was really that simple. And I think with the proliferation of the Internet and Internet media, it has been a little harder to maintain that gatekeeper position.