Our ambition was always to build a world-dominating venture capital firm, not just a small boutique, as we believed it was equally hard to build either.

I knew there would inevitably be a leading digital real estate marketplace in the US, and I wanted to be part of creating that solution.

To gain the trust of early customers, we initially targeted fellow companies in Y Combinator who were also new and had never paid themselves, which was a strategic move to build our initial customer base.

Our first investor didn't believe in the education business model, thinking it was a bad investment, but they were primarily interested because I had previously sold a company to Google.

I wanted to build a huge business, but I knew that with the technology I had at the time, I simply couldn't scale to a multi-billion dollar business.

I had never considered taking outside investment before Accel because I was happy with our small team and didn't want anyone to mess up what I had built.

We got caught in the mindset of being just a platform company, which limited our ability to innovate and adapt to new market demands.

I initially hesitated to hire others for my company, fearing they would disrupt my vision, but once I did, I realized it was a mistake to wait so long.

I believed there was a need for a company focused on building applications for enterprises, as it involves more complexity with multiple users and access.