In all the difficult decisions that I made through the course of running Loudcloud and Opsware, I never once felt brave. In fact, I often felt scared to death. I never lost those feelings, but after much practice, I learned to ignore them. That learning process might also be called the courage development process.

In my experience as CEO, I found that the most important decisions tested my courage far more than my intelligence.

Big companies have trouble with innovation. Innovation is about bad ideas, or ideas that look like bad ideas. That's the fundamental thing.

Leadership is hard to train on.

I don't have an office. I sit in a cubicle with everybody else. That's partly so no one can ask for an office, which in a fast-growing company isn't practical. But it's also so I can keep my finger on the pulse of how people are feeling.

For me, and I said this even before the draft, I think being with the same team for my whole career would be something that would be very special to me because, especially at the quarterback position, that means that we won a lot of games, hopefully Super Bowls, 'cause that's the end goal.

Early in my career, I was galvanized by a disease that ravaged my country and many others around the world: malaria.

My whole career strategy has been to build a base so that I could take the roles I want to play. I'd hate to think that a shorter part might not be available because I was worried about my billing.