Be intentional when building your team.

Follow your dreams and forge your own path. Don’t let people pigeonhole you into an unwanted career.

Alignment trumps strategy. Get everyone moving in the same direction and even mediocre strategy will soar.

Get creative when thinking about the future of emerging technology. Innovation starts by imagining the impossible.

Lisa Alderson of Genome Medical cautions would-be entrepreneurs to celebrate the wins along the way to sustain you through the inevitable highs and lows ahead. Drawing from personal experience, Alderson says the intense passion of the typical entrepreneur puts them at higher risk of taking on too much and neglecting to step back occasionally to rejuvenate themselves.

Gabriel Parisi-Amon, co-founder, CTO and COO of Nebia, tackles imposter syndrome head-on. He explains how it begins: several small doubts creeping into your mind then growing into a mental block, which can lead to burnout. The cure for imposter syndrome? He says to train the voice in your head to give positive self-talk.

Take time to review your personal values, mission and vision. Make sure they align with the values, mission and vision of the startup you’re founding.

Nebia co-founder, CTO and COO Gabriel Parisi-Amon, compares the prepping of a career as a founder to running a marathon. By pacing yourself as your startup grows, you'll be prepared to take on the challenges of later stages. Taking breaks to go on walks during your day and taking vacations as a way to decompress helps to clear the mind and allows for opportunities to reflect.

"Don't be naive about the power of storytelling," says Joshua Hoffman, co-founder and CEO of Zymergen. Whether that's convincing people to work for your venture, give you startup money or sign that first contract, emotion plays just as big a role as intellect in their decision, Hoffman explains. He describes how neglecting to build a narrative at his company has left some newer employees feeling disconnected.

Joshua Hoffman, co-founder and CEO of industrial-chemicals maker Zymergen, underscores the value of teams over individuals, saying that no one person can hold the complexity of an entire business in their head. He also stresses the importance of cognitive diversity, adding that the tension caused by disagreements can be offset by unique strengths that others possess.

Tracy Chou, a founding advisor to Project Include, discusses how the organization launched with an open-source approach to building a community of advocates for more diversity and inclusion in tech. She lists specific ways companies can set and work toward goals, as well as track progress. An early employee of both Quora and Pinterest as a software engineer, Chou mentions the work Project Include does with startups.

Josh McFarland, partner at Greylock Partners, draws on his time as a tech entrepreneur to illustrate that there's no ideal time to start a company, nor do you need to hurry. He stresses the importance of having positive and enthusiastic people around when you decide to take the leap, and to be bold once things start falling into place and you're forced to decide whether or not to risk it all. "Everything you want is on the other side of fear," he says.

Venture capitalist Josh McFarland explains how being frugal when he was a tech-startup founder helped in the beginning, but hindered the venture once it entered the high-growth phase. He shows a somewhat tongue-in-cheek photo marking a successful round of fundraising at the time, urging aspiring entrepreneurs to celebrate the fun moments in a startup's life because they help build culture and lore later on.

Josh McFarland of Greylock Partners reveals how a deal for Twitter to acquire his startup, TellApart, almost fell apart. All appeared to be in order from his perspective, but the social-media giant's legal team raised some last-minute questions that seemed to put the nearly $500 million deal in jeopardy. As the acquisition went through, the CEO of Twitter at the time, Dick Costolo, texted McFarland: "Every deal dies three deaths."

Tech startup founder and venture capitalist Josh McFarland shares inspirational words from renowned architect Daniel Burnham. "It is as hard to run a company of two people as it is to run one of 200," McFarland elaborates. "Really bring the full force of everything you have." He also warns against bringing home all the negativity that comes with startup life and dumping it on loved ones. "Help them believe why this is going to be successful," he says.