Building a company isn't that different from climbing a big mountain. You need people helping you traverse treacherous paths and to lift you up when you fall.

During the dot-com days, one could take just about any company public and reap fortunes. All you had to do was to make sky-high projections for growth, say you were in the Internet space, and go along with unscrupulous investment bankers and their analysts.

When my generation grew up, our only sources of knowledge were books, teachers, parents and friends. The encyclopedia was an item of luxury. We faced big limits in what we could learn, where we could be and who we could reach.

Recruiting talent is no different than any other challenge a startup faces. It's all about selling.

The natives of Silicon Valley learned long ago that when you share your knowledge with someone else, one plus one usually equals three. You both learn each other's ideas, and you come up with new ones.

Corporate executives and business owners need to realize that there can be no compromise when it comes to ethics, and there are no easy shortcuts to success. Ethics need to be carefully sown into the fabric of their companies.