Two years ago, I joined a growing population of TV watchers in cutting the cord from my cable company. I canceled my cable TV service from Time Warner and switched my plan to Internet only, which costs me about $40 per month. 

My setup is now a 55-inch TV connected to an Apple TV box and a $20 "rabbit ear" HD antenna that lets me pull in network TV from over the airwaves. I pay $7.99 for Netflix (which I stream through my Apple TV) and use an HBO GO password a friend was kind enough to give me so I can keep up with two of my favorite shows, "Game of Thrones" and "Veep." And I can get many cable shows like "Mad Men" (another personal favorite) the next day by ordering it on my Apple TV through iTunes.

It's the perfect setup for me. My cable subscription came with a zillion channels I had no interest in watching, so now my Internet-only diet lets me only pay for the stuff I want to see. Most importantly, I've saved a boatload of money over the last two years.

If the future of TV watching really is something like my setup, then a startup called Aereo, which lets you stream live network TV over the Internet, is perhaps the most important company trying to make it happen today. And networks are trying to kill it, suing it all the way to the Supreme Court.

But Aereo is a conundrum. If it loses its legal battle, it could slow down innovation not just in TV, but cloud computing in general. For that reason alone, I hope Aereo comes out on top. Still, Aereo as it works today is a pointless service, a workaround of existing copyright law that charges you $8 per month for something many people probably don't realize they can already do for free. 

Here's how it works. In the handful of U.S. cities Aereo operates, it packages together thousands of dime-sized antennas that work just like the traditional rabbit ears you're familiar with. Those antennas pull in over-the-air broadcast networks like ABC, NBC, and CBS and then send the signal over the Internet to a customer's computer, smartphone, or tablet. Aereo subscribers also get a virtual DVR service that lets them program recordings to stream later. Since Aereo assigns each customer her own antenna, it argues that it operates no differently than a company that rents antennas and DVRs and installs them directly in the household.

And that's why Aereo is basically useless for most people. There's no need to pay $8 per month for something that's already free. If you want all the free network TV you can handle, you can just do what I did and buy an antenna for around 20 bucks. Paying for Aereo is like paying for tap water at a restaurant.

Aereo today feels more like a proof of concept, a challenge to traditional broadcasters that says, "Hey, if you won't give us TV over the Internet, we'll find a way to make that happen." It works as advertised, but unless you don't own a TV, there's no value in paying for it. I don't see Aereo as a useful product, but a bold statement about what TV should be in the Internet age.

The best case scenario would be for Aereo to win its case against the networks and continue to operate. But instead of letting Aereo stomp all over them, the networks should realize they need to treat the Internet just like they treat the airwaves and start broadcasting their shows online.

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Every entrepreneur has that moment — an experience, an epiphany, getting fired, getting desperate, getting fed up; getting lucky enough to have the right mentor— that inspired them to someday become an entrepreneur.

So I asked 10 successful entrepreneurs to share their original inspirations. Here they are:

Ali Brown, founder & CEO, Elevate

"In 1998 I was a copywriter/account manager at a small ad agency in NYC. I liked what I did, but working in jammed quarters with 10 people (and one stinky bathroom) and being told when to show up and when I could go home was getting old.

I was just 27 but knew I was doing good work for our clients and that I had some talent. Then I noticed a freelancer coming in and out of the office on his own schedule yet doing pretty much the same work as me. He'd come back all tanned from the Hamptons and would do his work while he was there.

I was so envious. And then I found out he was making way more money than me.

But then I realized my envy simply meant I wanted more freedom for myself. So I didn't get mad... I got smart. I took him to lunch, asked how he got started, and once I kind of understood the first few steps I quit my job.

I didn't have any clients, I had never taken a business course, I was cash-poor, and in over $15,000 of credit card debt. But I somehow knew I could hustle. And it was just more painful for me if I had stayed at that job and never known what would have happened if I didn't try.

I stopped at Staples on the way home and put a new printer-fax machine on the last bit of room I had on a credit card. I printed business cards that said I had offered marketing communications services. I attended any networking meeting I could find. I asked for referrals. I met a lot of people but nothing was happening. And I was getting tired of ramen noodles.

When I didn't have the money for my next rent payment on my tiny apartment, I was getting nervous all this wouldn't work. But one day, after praying for guidance, the phone rang. One of the agency's clients had looked up my number. They said they had no reason to stay with the agency if I was gone. They became my first real client — one that at least paid for my rent, groceries, and Metro card.

And from there, you couldn't stop me."

Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, founder of The Next Web

"As a kid I was dyslexic and had bad eyesight. That meant I often couldn't see the writing on the blackboard and even when I could, I still couldn't read it.

Unfortunately it took a long time before either problem was recognized. Before that I was simply labeled lazy, unwilling or stupid. By the time I was 15 I was three years behind and very unhappy. Then one day I decided to drop out of school and apply to circus school. Officially I was too young but I was determined and had talent for juggling so my parents supported my decision.

The teachers at my school weren't so supportive. They took turns trying to persuade me to stay and all said the same thing: 'If you drop out now you will never amount to anything.'

They tried to persuade me by threatening me but their strategy had the opposite effect: I felt liberated and even more determined to choose my own destiny. I figured if leaving meant starting from zero and being labeled as an outcast, than everything I would accomplish from now would be to my own credit. I felt empowered and excited at the opportunity to design my own life without someone else telling what I could and couldn't do.

For me that was a defining moment. I've always felt like the rules didn't apply to me and I could do what I wanted. After I graduated circus school I applied to an art academy, graduated cum laude, and then started my first Internet business, one I sold three years later.

Although you never start a company alone and I had many partners to thank, I did feel I truly earned my success as a self-made man when we signed those contracts, and I definitely thought back to those teachers who told me I would never amount to anything."

Eric Ripert, co-owner and chef, Le Bernardin

"While I had three mentors in my life that helped and influenced my culinary career, I learned entrepreneurship from my mother. From a young age, my mother instilled in me a sense of responsibility and inspired me to lead by example. My mother ran a successful home as well as a successful business in fashion — she owned and managed several boutiques.

Her aspirations and ambitions encouraged me, even as a child, not only to achieve my goals, but also to become a leader in what I do."

J.T. O'Donnell, founder of CAREEREALISM

"'You can't run a legitimate business from your home in NH while you raise your girls.' That was the feedback I got when I started exploring the idea of building my company after leaving the corporate world to be with my kids.

Then it was, 'You can't build a virtual career coaching practice. Everybody knows the best coaching is done in-person.' Again my idea was trashed by people who thought they knew better.

Ironically, I've never taken well to being told I couldn't do something (thanks, Mom and Dad!)

So, looking back, I realize what got me into entrepreneurship, and more importantly, what helped me succeed were all those naysayers. I never intended to run a company, but the road filled with people trying to push their negativity on me only helped me to see how much I needed to start my own business to prove them wrong.

I'm grateful for those people who said it couldn't be done."

Edward Wimmer, co-founder of Road ID

"I'm pretty sure 'entrepreneur' was one of the first words I knew how to spell. I simply can't remember not wanting to be an entrepreneur. It was a desire ignited by my father, and his father before him.

My dad, a serial entrepreneur, was a joyful workaholic. He had a contagious love for his work even when times were tough. I wanted to be like him. Inspired by dad, I filled my youth with small ventures of my own. One of my earliest childhood memories is buying 10-cent toys from the grocery store vending machine and reselling them for 25 cents on the playground.

Getting a 'real job' was never an option. I consider myself blessed that the magnetic pull of entrepreneurship led me to Road ID, a company my father and I started together."

Dave Lavinsky, founder of Guiding Metrics

"When I was in high school I decided to become an entrepreneur since I wanted more money. I started a local snow removal business and achieved just that. Then during college I spent one summer working at a health club. The club's owner was there every day and would walk around the club in his sweatpants. He would also work out a lot and seemed very healthy and stress-free.

That lifestyle really appealed to me. I liked the idea of being able to set my own rules and create my own environment (today we have a treadmill and showers in our offices and everyone dresses extremely casually.)

I also liked the idea of controlling my destiny. The smarter and harder I work, the more success I have, and I believe that's the way it should be.

With regards to the stress-free part, I haven't figured out that one yet."

Larry Kim, founder and CTO, WordStream

"I was an unremarkable student throughout high school and college, so when I graduated I was excited to discover this strange place called the 'real world.' It was a magical realm where there were no assignments, professors, rules, etc.

I learned that it was possible to build great things, and that the only limit was your imagination and ability to execute — nothing else mattered. So, it wasn't as much a decision to become an entrepreneur as it was just a realization that is what I was meant to do. Starting WordStream and growing the business were just the next steps as I explored and uncovered new possibilities. I found purpose in growing a business that produces useful things and creates meaningful jobs for people.

Also, there's definitely an element of subconscious self-loathing, too. From time to time I feel this strange but powerful need to reassure myself that I'm not a complete failure, which in turn drives me to overcompensate by pursuing more spectacular entrepreneurial endeavors."

Art Papas, founder and CEO, Bullhorn

"I was 23 and working for a small company that was running out of cash. The company had hired me as a software engineer to help build a new product they were convinced would be a huge hit. I didn't realize until I joined that the financial situation was so dire, but I was told that if we could build the product quickly, there were scores of big customers lined up to buy the product and save the company.

I was energized and loved the challenge. I poured myself into my work. But as we built the product I couldn't shake the sinking feeling that I didn't see a real use for it. It was a solution for a problem that didn't feel compelling to me. I voiced this concern a number of times and at one point even pushed for a different strategy.

The executive team was dismissive and even indignant. 'Who the hell do you think you are?! You're just a kid engineer. You need to know your place,' one red-faced executive told me. So I backed off, against my better judgment.

We completed the product and I joined the CEO for the big customer road show. It was a total disaster. Meeting after painful meeting confirmed my intuition: There was no reaction, no feedback, not even a hint of interest from a single customer.

On the flight home I realized that I needed to start my own company, that my instincts for products and customers were really good. I needed to free myself from the burden of convincing someone else to let me run with my ideas.

Two weeks later I met my co-founder and we started Bullhorn together."

Jordan Dolin, co-founder of Emmi Solutions

"I don't think anyone decides to be an entrepreneur; they simply reach the point where they can no longer not be an entrepreneur. Sure, it takes a certain type of individual and certain set of circumstances, but suddenly you have this sense of unwavering commitment and the belief that you can succeed.

That sense is what I refer to as the yin and yang of the entrepreneur: the perfect balance of arrogance and stupidity. Starting a business (and surviving) is really, really hard. You have to have the confidence that you can actually do it, and the stupidity to think you're right.

Being an entrepreneur is not about love at first sight; it's about having an idea that intrigues you and increasingly pulls you in until you can no longer ignore it.

For me, it was on Valentine's Day in 2002 when I came home and told my wife that I was starting Emmi Solutions. I had resigned from my current company, had a limited amount of health insurance, no salary for the foreseeable future, no office, no investors, no customers, nothing. (I still don't know if her enthusiasm was dampened because it was Valentine's Day, or because she was six months pregnant with our second child, or because she didn't understand the subtle nuances of the healthcare industry.)

Entrepreneurs may blindly follow their passion but they are certainly not dumb. They choose to downplay the risks, underestimate the competition, and overestimate their talents because they are driven by an overwhelming curiosity.

That commitment and passion is really what makes entrepreneurs who they are. Great ideas are far more common than you think but the people who can turn the great idea into a company are incredibly rare.

When those two abilities come together... that's the magic catalyst."

Joel Basgall, co-founder and CEO, Geneca

"I've always felt software was the great equalizer. Many aspects of business have limits, but the only limit to software is our imagination. With software, any and all companies can build products and generate revenue and make a real difference. It's easy to get stuck in constraints and limited thinking and the physics of business — but with software you have the ability to create whatever you want.

I found that idea to be incredibly liberating, challenging, and exciting. And that's why I had to be an entrepreneur. I didn't see anyone doing what I wanted to do the way I wanted to do it — and as an entrepreneur, I could."

Brian Guttman, founder of Jeremy Argyle

"I was in third grade and one of my teachers told us to decide what we wanted to do when we grew up and then interview someone who had that job.

I'm pretty sure that like most 10-year-old boys growing up in Montreal I wanted to be a professional hockey player. I knew it would be tough to get an interview with one of the Montreal Canadiens, so I decided to talk to my father and grandfather.

My grandfather founded what was, at its height from the 60s through the 80s, one of the largest apparel companies in Canada. My father took over and ran that business for many years. That was definitely inspiring, but even more inspiring was the story my grandfather told of how important it is to control your own destiny.

In 1947, when he was 22, my grandfather came to Canada with very modest means and began to build a life with my grandmother. He had studied textile engineering in Hungary before World War II. He was very hard-working, took extra shifts and found innovative ways to improve operating efficiency, and quickly rose through the ranks to become general manager and essentially run day-to-day operations.

This his boss brought in his son-in-law to take over. My grandfather now reported to him. He felt taken advantage of since he had been promised he would someday take over the business. So he walked away and started his own business.

I admire the courage it took for an immigrant from Hungary with a young daughter and wife and almost no savings to strike out on his own. Looking back I still marvel at how he was able to achieve what he did, but I think the hardships he overcame during and after the war gave him the strength to fear almost nothing.

Those conversations made me want to follow in my father and grandfather's footsteps."

SEE ALSO: 3 Traits You Might Have In Common With The World's Richest Entrepreneurs

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Some people keep lists of overused phrases and verbal tics. Others keep score of business clichés.

CEO Ben Smith and SVP of Business Development Mark Menell of Wanderful Media, a startup that re-imagines the digital circular through FindnSave.com and a suite of mobile apps, like to collect silly things entrepreneurs say.

Not just things they've heard though; their list includes a few things they've said and later regretted.

Here's their list, and why they feel those statements are misguided:

1. "We can't give up that much ownership! What will we ever use that extra $2 million for?"

This statement sounds thoughtful, conservative, and careful.

It's usually just misguided. In terms of dilution it's good to maintain as much control as possible, but don't let your ship go under in lieu of accepting the right financing deal during that crucial proving period.

2. "If you aren't regularly sleeping under your desk you're not committed."

You can't beat employees into commitment. If your idea is so great, inspire them to be as dedicated as you are.

If you can inspire people to be passionate you can let go of rigid rules and authoritarian mandates because everyone will give all they have for the sake of a shared dream.

3. "Why can't we do both? We can do both."

You got here by not taking "no" for an answer. So when you're given boundaries your first instinct is to break them.

Sometimes you just can't be both an enterprise and a web company at the same time. Solve the problem for the target market that needs it most right now, and solve the next one as you expand. Do one thing and do it well.

Focus, focus, focus.

4. "I don't get this relationship stuff; I'm all about putting my head down and getting stuff done."

Without relationships, you will also not have the best information about what is really happening — such as when the largest acquisition in the history of your space goes down.

Plus, without relationships you will not be able to remove friction. Buying companies with weeks of paperwork and diligence can be great experiences because of trusted relationships.

Relationships matter in the startup world. Treat them like the 50-year investment they are.

5. "Our consumer product is great. Now we just need to hire a designer to fix the user interface/user experience."

Steven Covey didn't invent the saying "Begin with the end in mind," but he burned it into our collective consciousness.

You don't have many chances to win someone over to a new way of doing things. If the user experience is clunky, poor quality or difficult to navigate, you may lose the early adopters and there goes the house of cards.

Perception is reality for consumers, so make them perceive you as pretty terrific.

6. "I know we should fire him, but let's wait a few weeks until we get past (some seemingly critical event)."

An old Texan VC once said, "Y'all can't cage an eel." If an employee has different priorities than yours, especially priorities that involve stealing from you whenever possible, there is no cage that will hold them.

If you have holes in your team's skill set, fix those problems immediately. Do it in a clean, honest and transparent way — everyone involved will respect you for it.

7. "I know I'm not the long-term CEO for this business."

Really think about this one before you say it. You want to inspire confidence in your team and those whose investment dollars you ask to be trusted with. Everyone likes to know who is accountable.

You (or your co-founder) better be the CEO today. It is appropriate and respectful to take great input from your team, but management by committee is not ok.

Also, know your limitations — even great CEOs at larger companies can struggle at startups, and vice versa.

8. "I know he has zero integrity but he's so talented. If I go into this eyes wide open, I can handle him."

This is related to dumb thing #6, but at a much more dangerous level. Everyone has problems, so you shouldn't abandon someone that could help you just because they aren't squeaky clean.

But, and this is the big "but," only gamble with what you are prepared to replace. As that Texan VC said on another occasion: "Look around the table. If you don't see the pigeon, you are the pigeon."

9. "We just need to give engineering a clearer spec document; they don't have to agree with what we're trying to do."

We are all sick of those infographics: "What sales promised...""What engineering built...""What the customer wanted."

We don't learn because we seem to keep running into this same problem every generation. The web gives us clear, instant communication, and there's no reason to withhold vital information from your team.

Trust them with your mission and they will get on board.

10. "We are meeting with VC X, but it's not a pitch."

Even the toughest birds get a little tender when they meet a VC. There's a lot of money on the line and there's tremendous pressure to get everything right.

Your best defense is to never stop pitching: at the grocery store, at the dog park, in the restroom (just kidding).

Get so good at your pitch that it doesn't matter if it's the top VC in the Valley or your aunt's bingo group. Keep pitching until you hit a home run.

Yeah, that metaphor doesn't work, but keep pitching anyway.

SEE ALSO: The Simple Strategy Alabama Coach Nick Saban Used To Create A College Football Dynasty

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In the heart of Boulder, Colo., is one of the cutest startups we've ever seen: Ubooly.

Ubooly makes an iPhone-powered, interactive stuffed animal. The startup was founded in 2012 by husband/wife team CEO Carly Gloge, 30, and CTO Isaac Squires, 31.

This is a startup story that has it all: a free app that turns an iPhones/iPad into a kid's toy; educational scripts written by teachers and comic book writers; two successful Kickstarter campaigns; a well-known VC backer; and early success.

So far, the 2-year-old company has sold 40,000 units, and can be found in a bunch of big brand-name stores.

Best of all is this tidbit: Gloge and Squires knew nothing about making toys when they started. So they created the product by watching videos from the "MythBusters" television show.

"We secretly took classes at night to learn how to sew," Gloge laughs. "And we watched 'MythBusters' videos on YouTube to learn how to cast silicone."

And the toy is amazing. It's the evolution of handing your kid an iPhone or iPad to play with.

Married couple and startup co-founders, CEO Carly Gloge and CTO Isaac Squires with an extra-large Ubooly toy.

Gloge and Squires met in college. After graduation, they traveled the world together before settling back in his home state of Colorado to launch a startup in Boulder.

They spent a year teaching themselves how to make children's toys at night, while keeping their day jobs writing software, before launching a company.

They did TechStars in 2012.

Ubooly has raised almost $3 million so far.

First, the company raised $80,000 through two successful Kickstarter campaigns.

It landed another $2.5 million in venture funds, led by VC Jeff Clavier (backer of Fitbit, Mint, SendGrid) and early success.

Today it employs 14 people.

Ubooly makes free iPhone/iPad/Android app for kids.

The app is a cute voice-activated animal creature that talks, plays games, plays calming music for bedtime and other stuff.

Parents can buy additional add-on apps to teach their kids Spanish, conduct science experiments, imagine traveling to France or to outer space, and so on.

That content is written by experts like teachers, or other professionals, like a comic book writer.

If you're roughly my age (ahem!), you might dimly recall how amazing it was to be a kid 25 years ago this week and to hear that McDonald's was breaking ground on its first restaurant in Moscow. This was an almost unfathomable news story. Just five years earlier, my adolescent friends and I had been more or less obsessed with a PG-13 movie about the Soviets invading America. Now it turned out America was invading Russia.

To get an idea of just how bizarre the idea was that a U.S. fast food restaurant would open in Red Square, check out this video of the line that formed on the first day it opened.

I'm mentioning this anecdote not because of nostalgia (well, not only because of nostalgia), but because it illustrates just how quickly things that we think are constant can change. Moreover, it shows just how few people can accurately predict big changes before they happen.

There are always a few great leaders, though, who somehow see farther into the future than the rest of us.

Whether you're leading a growing company, or helping your kids decide what to study at school, here are seven things that explain how great leaders understand the future a bit differently.

1. They understand that unthinkable will happen, often.

Within a few decades, the United States went from fighting all-out war against Japan and Germany to viewing their cars as the gold standard of luxury. In 1980, the U.S. boycotted the Olympics in Moscow; 10 years later the Berlin Wall was gone and the Cold War was over. In the late 1990s, according to the CDC, the tobacco industry had a seemingly unshakable stranglehold on American teenagers (nearly 40% of U.S. high school students said they smoked). Now the figure is more like 19%.

Great leaders can't always predict specific enormous, fast-moving changes. However, they do understand that these kind of reversals — the things that most of us think could never change — are among the rules, not the exception.

2. They understand that David will often defeat Goliath.

We tend to think that being bigger and more powerful are advantages in any competition. Sometimes that's true, but it's also true that smaller, nimbler, leaner competitors often come out on top. Think of Google in the early to mid-2000s, when it was hiring the best engineers it could find and acquiring social network after network while News Corp paid $500 million for MySpace. Lo and behold, the dominant social network was being built in a Harvard dorm room.

Great leaders don't discount the advantages that larger players have, but they understand that you don't know how a competition will play out until it actually plays out.

3. They understand that some basic things will never change.

People will always have certain basic needs: food and shelter, a sense of security, friendship, community, self-worth and others. For example, whether people were writing "air mail" letters to their loved ones, or making long-distance telephone calls, or sending emails, or getting on Skype, they were always trying to satisfy basic, human needs — things like interacting with friends and family. The way people address these needs change, but the needs themselves stay constant.

Great leaders recognize that there are many uncertainties in life, but if you build a business that helps meet these kinds of perpetual customer needs, you'll have a leg up on your competition.

4. They understand that demographics affects destiny.

There were about 281 million people living in the United States at the turn of the century; now that figure is estimated to be 317 million. The way that population has grown, and how its makeup has changed over time, gives important clues to what the future will hold. If we have a higher percentage of senior citizens, that tells you that some markets will expand, while others might contract. Moreover, more income inequality means more opportunities to sell overpriced things to the obscenely rich, and means opportunities to come up with economical products and services for the rest of us.

Bottom line? Great leaders pay attention to the census.

5. They understand that things move in cycles.

I was kidding my nephew not long ago for sporting a tie so skinny that it looked as if I could have worn it in my high school graduation photo. Fashions hit hard. Then they wear out their welcome, are mocked, disappear, and eventually return.

Great leaders understand that while it's sometimes difficult to predict how and when certain styles and attitudes will come back around, they often will. Thus, the best way to predict the future is sometimes to examine how things unfolded in the past.

6. They understand that herds don't think.

Groupthink is most often wrong precisely because so many in the group don't think. It's the equivalent of when nobody does an obvious thing that will help a group, simply because everyone assumes somebody else in the group will do it.

Great leaders understand that the worst reason to commit to any course of action or continue any type of behavior is probably because "everyone does it." Moreover, being among the small minority who think for themselves can translate into significant advantages.

7. They understand that pioneers get slaughtered, but settlers prosper.

People rarely remember the first person to accomplish something. Instead, they remember (and sometimes celebrate) the first people to accomplish those same things while incorporating lessons they had learned from their predecessors' mistakes. Everyone knows the Wright Brothers, for example, but who remembers Otto Lilienthal?

Great leaders understand that first-mover advantage is only that: a potential advantage. Often it's those who come to an idea next, and who perfect it, who eventually benefit from it most.

SEE ALSO: The Simple Strategy Alabama Coach Nick Saban Used To Create A College Football Dynasty

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Karl Mehta has made quite a splash in the tech world. 

He founded PlaySpan, which sold to Visa for more than $200 million in 2011. He was a White House Presidential Innovation Fellow in the program's inaugural year. He joined Menlo Ventures in 2013 as a partner to focus on finding and funding interesting and world-changing companies. He's writing a book called Financial Inclusion at the Bottom of the Pyramid about the best ways to get financial services to poorer people.

Right now, he's also working on Code for India, a program that he founded to inspire engineers in the U.S. and abroad to use technology to help India's urban and rural poor. 

Code for India will be holding its second hack-a-thon — happening simultaneously in Mountain View and Bangalore — on May 9. This year's event will revolve around the theme of using tech to make India more resilient to natural disasters. Business Insider hopped on the phone with Mehta to ask him a few questions about his illustrious career. Below is a lightly edited transcript of the conversation.

BI: Tell me a little more about Code for India. 

Mehta: India already has a large number of tech developers and there's also a large Indian developer community in the U.S. The country has massive challenges, in the public service infrastructure and the government, that need a lot of help. So this is an excellent opportunity for tech developers all over the world to take time to volunteer. We have a very diverse group pitching in, and contributing and building software. Code for India is special because hundreds and hundreds of NGO’s  in India, and instead of starting another NGO to try to focus on education, or healthcare, or crime, or women’s issues, we can cut across horizontally, and provide a technology backbone to dozens or even hundreds of NGOs that are already doing wonderful work. 

It’s been a wonderful, really open source movement, and we’ve created some really great apps — over 20 of them so far. 

BI: Any particular ones that you want to highlight?

Mehta: One of our apps that gets the most attention is the voting app, I Vote For A Better India. India is going through a massive election — probably the world’s largest election — and 1.2 billion people are going out to vote. Tirelessly, through weekends and weeknights, outside their daily jobs, both here in the US and in India, our community of developers and entrepreneurs have developed this app to increase voter registration. Part of the trouble with the democratic process is that the people who can actually make a difference in voting, don’t go out and vote, because they think that it's too much of  hassle, since even registering requires standing in big lines.

With the mobile devices, and the software that we built, we cut down the hassle to almost nothing. And that made a big impact over the last few months. Our volunteers all over the country were able to convince even the election commissioner to use the app, which is a big achievement. For tech volunteers like us, our ability to take our software and get it implemented in this vast country, and also getting it out there through the election commissioner, is a pretty big deal. It’s a big achievement  and it’s kind of super-charging all the other projects and applications that we’re working on.

BI: What made you decide to launch Code for India and how did you get involved with Menlo Ventures?

Mehta: When I sold my company PlaySpin in 2011 to Visa, it was a pretty large, very successful outcome — $240 million in cash — so I almost retired. And I decided that I want to do two things:

First, I want to help entrepreneurs because I had benefitted from being an entrepreneur. So, I think taking on a venture capital role is the best way to keep in touch continuously, either by funding them or mentoring them. But I realized that the venture capital role is not very engaging from a personal standpoint. You’re not actually playing the game, you’re coaching.

And having been in an operating role, used to working 18 hours a day and 7 days a week as an entrepreneur, I realized that I had a lot more time being a VC. So, the second thing that I wanted to do was give back, and for me the best way to give back is through technology because that’s all I know.

I had seen how technology projects worked in the White House, and when I was appointed by Governor Brown to the Workforce Investment Board of the California, so I had a pretty good understanding of the state government and how we work here and some interesting best practices that I could bring back to my native country. Code For India was the perfect way to bring all this together.

I spend almost half and half of my time helping entrepreneurs launch for profit companies that can change the world, as we say here in the Valley, and then the other half goes into helping nonprofit initiatives. 

BI: Do you think enough startups are focusing on social good?

Mehta: I think that Silicon Valley gets a fair share of blame for not doing much in the social impact space and I think that that criticism is quite legitimate. I think we still have more companies getting funded that are just solving the first world problems than the second world or third world problems, because typically investors have a short-term horizon and they all want the next Snapchat and Facebook, which is unfortunate. And I think that we’re starting to see some big stories where big bets and big risks are taken — like Tesla — that still offer first world products, but help the third world (in Tesla's case, in reducing CO2 or bringing clean energy). But we’re still very far away from that in changing the mindset of people to build, take risks, and try to innovate in areas that will really make an impact, instead of trying to make the next photo sharing app. 

BI: What do you think are some U.S. problems that could be solved by technology?

Mehta: I think there is a big movement going on now in the education space. That’s another area that I’m really excited about. And there has been a surge in the number of of ed tech companies that have been funded in Silicon Valley and in the U.S., and I think that’s a really encouraging trend. And several years back, VCs would probably shy away from anything in education because they would think that the majority of that was government controlled and for nonprofits, so there isn’t much money to be made. But I think that the thinking is shifting as we are moving more and more towards consumer-centric technology adoption, and that is helping to fund more companies that want to bring more technology to education to improve both the student performance and outcome in K-12 and in higher education. I’ve seen some technology startups that are pushing the boundaries to bring the cost of education down and the access ability to everyone.

SEE ALSO: Meet some of the other amazing Indians working in U.S. tech

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It's not uncommon for developers to excel at an early age, but that doesn't make 17-year-old Michael Sayman any less impressive.

The Miami native was not only featured in a video at Facebook's f8 developer conference last week, but his app 4Snaps has risen to the top of the iOS App Store, a feat that even seasoned developers have a difficult time pulling off.

Sayman has been coding since he was 13 and currently has 13 apps in the Apple's App Store.

In a recent interview with PandoDaily, he revealed how he went from viewing coding tutorials on Google to being featured at a developer event for one of the biggest tech company's in the world. His app 4Snaps is currently beating Starbucks, Luminosity, and Fitbit in overall app store ratings, according to PandoDaily. 

4Snaps is a free game that requires a player to take four pictures in order to help another player guess a particular word. 

When Sayman was in middle school during 2010, he begged his mother for $100 for the iOS App Store registration fee. On the condition that he would pay his mother back, she loaned him the money.

His first contribution to the app store called Club Penguin Cheats app, a tutorial for the popular Disney game. It quickly rose to the top 10, and Sayman ultimately ended up making tens of thousands of dollars on the first app he had ever built.

Although Sayman struggled with his second app, a Club Penguin-themed game, his success helped him provide for his family during a very difficult time. The 2012 recession hit his family hard— Sayman's father lost his job and his parents were forced to foreclose their home. When the Sayman family moved into a smaller apartment, he helped his parents pay for their mortgage when he was only 16 years old.

Now, two years and several apps later, Sayman already has his foot in the door at Facebook as an intern this summer.  

His success story is one of several scenarios in which young teens with a passion for hacking and building have been able to break into the tech world.

In 2011, then 17-year-old Alex Godin, son of marketing Guru Seth Godin, was accepted into the extremely selective TechStars startup accelerator program after teaching himself to code in just seven days. He now works at Meetup, and before that he launched his own startup Dispatch, which was eventually acquired by Meetup.

Sayman taught himself how to code by watching tutorials through Google, but now there are plenty of initiatives aimed at teaching kids how to code. The iPad app Kodable, for example, is a free educational game that introduces kids to programming concepts and problem solving. CodeAcademy also offers free online courses in languages including Javascript, HTML/CSS, and Python among others.

SEE ALSO: A 55-Year-Old Developer Tells Us What It's Like To Face Homelessness In Youth-Obsessed Silicon Valley

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The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only organization comprised of the world's most promising young entrepreneurs. Nine of its members shared some of the biggest misconceptions people have about building a company.

Question: What is your favorite lie that you've heard about starting your own business?

You'll be your own boss.

"Not only will you not be your own boss, but more people than ever will have a critical stake in your success, including customers, vendors, and staff. If you think your boss makes unreasonable demands of you now, just wait until a good customer calls you to handle a major issue at 2 a.m. — and you have to be the one to resolve it."— Alexandra Levit, Inspiration at Work

You control everything.

"You don't — your customers control everything you do. You will realize this when you see $0 in the bank account. That is the day you learn to listen and adjust to their demands. Remember that if customers don't pay you, you can't pay rent, staff, insurance, office supplies, etc. The customers are your bosses, and they control everything."— Derek Capo, Next Step China

Most businesses fail.

"I'm always hearing these statistics that show a huge number of businesses must be failing every day. But while I've seen plenty of companies evolve, change names, pivot, or otherwise change, I don't see that many entirely shut down. I love hearing these statistics so I can poke holes in them."— Thursday Bram, Hyper Modern Consulting

Companies run themselves.

"'My company pretty much runs itself these days.' If someone ever says this to you, he is a liar. [Wannabe entrepreneurs] also ask me a lot how detailed my involvement is in Speek these days — 'Does it pretty much run itself?' Only someone who's never done this would ask that question."— Danny Boice, Speek

You'll have complete freedom.

"The biggest lie is that running your own company allows you to set your own hours and gives you total freedom. In reality, I have virtually no control over my own hours or schedule. If you want to start your own business for freedom, think again."— David Ehrenberg, Early Growth Financial Services

You'll eventually succeed if you work hard.

"Actually, it's the small business owner who works smart — and not just hard — who will improve his or her chances for success."— Andrew Schrage, Money Crashers Personal Finance

Customers will flock to great ideas.

"'If you build it, they will come.' Sure, it's a great quote (from a great movie), but I think it's also dangerous. You shouldn't expect customers to flock to your business, even if you think you have the greatest idea in the world. It's crucial that you adequately plan and leave some budget for marketing — just in case a few people have a hard time finding you."— Nicolas Gremion, Free-eBooks.net

You'll work a 4-hour workweek.

"Starting your own business will not let you 'travel' and make your 'own schedule,' at least at first, because you will be working 80 hours a week. If you love what you're doing, it might not feel like a grind, but it will still be work. Anyone who tells you otherwise is not being honest. There are plenty of great things about starting your own business, but working fewer hours is not one of them."— Jim Belosic, Pancakes Laboratories/ShortStack

Everyone will be supportive.

"To say everyone will be supportive at the beginning of a new business venture is like saying the Yankees will win the World Series before they throw out the first pitch. Be prepared in the beginning for the negative comments and fear from loved ones about the cliff you're about to leap off. They'll come back around — the good old bandwagon effect — but it takes a few months of success!"— Kim Kaupe, ZinePak

SEE ALSO: Here Are The Books That Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, And Charlie Munger Just Read

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Dropcam, the company that makes WiFi cameras that let you stream live video of your home, is working on a new product that can alert you when a person walks in front of your camera.

Right now, Dropcams can detect motion, but they can't tell the difference between say, your dog and your three-year-old toddler. This summer, the company will push a software update that can tell the difference. In theory, it'll help reduce unnecessary alerts that get pushed to your phone. The obvious goal here is to accurately alert you when an intruder enters your home.

Dropcam cameras let you stream live video to your iPhone, iPad, computer, or Android device. You can also pay $10 per month or $99 per year for an extra service that continuously records the last seven days of video. The new people detection feature will only be available to customers who pay for the recording service too. Dropcam cameras start at $149. The best model, the Dropcam Pro, costs $199.

All of the processing for Dropcam's people detection is done in the cloud, so users won't have to buy any new equipment. Greg Duffy, the CEO of Dropcam, told Business Insider that the company was able to teach its software the difference between people and other objects by analyzing the feeds of people who publicly broadcast their Dropcam feeds.

Dropcam also announced today its first accessory for its camera, called Dropcam Tabs. Tabs are $29 rectangular devices about the size of a stick of gum that can talk to your Dropcam using Bluetooth and detect motion or presence. For example, you can put a Tab on your front door so your Dropcam knows when you enter the house. Tabs will go on sale this summer.

Dropcam is one of the buzziest hardware startups at the moment. Last year, the famous Internet analyst Mary Meeker mentioned Dropcam in her presentation on the state of the web, saying that user-uploaded video is one of the next big things. In fact, Meeker said Dropcam users upload more video to the Web than YouTube users.

Dropcam has raised about $48 million so far. Duffy told Business Insider there are no immediate plans for an IPO.

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TGIF is a common saying for burned out employees dreaming of the weekend. Even in the best companies, your workers always have the weekends in mind. Like a mirage in the desert, employees are going about their 9-to-5 while dreaming of those precious two days of freedom.

With the war for talent raging, company culture has become a battleground for many organizations. In order to attract the kind of top-notch candidates needed to move companies forward and stay competitive, companies now have to offer better perks to entice the best people. One of these perks is the four-day workweek... and it seems like it might actually be more than a buzzy trend.

Currently, only about 36% of employers allow some employees to work shortened schedules. However, might the four-day workweek be the answer to employee stress and employer bottom lines? Can it increase productivity, improve work-life balance, and decrease stress?

The four-day workweek won't work for every company, but before you write off making Thursday the new Friday, here are a few reasons to consider making the switch:

We're working longer, not smarter

The truth is, for many American workers, the 40-hour work week is a myth. In fact, 85.8% of men and 66.5% of women in American routinely work more than 40 hours a week. In addition, troubled economic times mean companies are less likely to be able to offer the kind of benefits and perks employees crave.

While employees are working longer, they're not necessarily working smarter. A recent Gallup poll found 70% of the American workforce is disengaged on the job, leading to more than $550 billion in lost productivity annually. Workers are looking for better flexible time options, which is why two-in-five working adults would be willing to give up some portion of their salary for more flexibility.

These flexible schedules also benefit Boomers who want to cut down hours but remain working, and women who want to juggle work and family more effectively. In fact, 44% of female doctors already work four or fewer days a week.

In order to attract great people and keep them focused during work hours, companies like Treehouse have adopted the four-day workweek. Despite cutting a day out of the week, Treehouse has grown by an impressive 120% annually and still does millions in sales.

It's not the only company embracing the trend either. The CEO of 37signals, now Basecamp, explained to The New York Times the surprising benefits of making Thursdays the new Friday:

"[T]here's one surprising effect of the changed schedule: better work gets done in four days than in five," CEO Jason Fried said. "When there's less time to work, you waste less time. When you have a compressed workweek, you tend to focus on what's important. Constraining time encourages quality time."

Added productivity

Fried makes an important point: With less time to complete work, there's also less time to waste. This forces employees to cut down on distractions, roll their sleeves up, and really focus on work while they're in the office.

According to a survey by the Captivate Network, 45% of workers routinely leave the office for doctor and dentist appointments, while 52% sneak out to buy gifts and cards. Since 2011 alone, the survey has seen a 31% rise in the amount of employees running errands on work hours.

With a shorter work week, employees have more time to run errands, ensuring all of their work hours will be spent on work. This is certainly what happened in Utah, when the local government offered four-day workweeks for many state employees. The initiative was a huge success from the employee perspective, with 70% of workers preferring the shorter week. It also increased productivity and decreased absenteeism by 9%.

After three years, the state reverted back to a regular five-day week, mostly because residents were complaining about lack of access to services on Fridays. The large-scale efforts in Utah, however, show shortened workweeks are viable for even large organizations.

Four-day workweek options

Clearly there are some real benefits to ditching the conventional five-day workweek for something a little less traditional. Obviously, not every company is the same and therefore the four-day option which works for one company might be a disaster for another. For instance, many companies would not be able to cut down to a standard four-day week for all employees, especially organizations with customers or clients who would need you on Friday.

Putting employees on staggered schedules can allow you to ensure someone is always in the office Monday through Friday while still giving workers time off. If you employ the "4/10 model," employees work four 10-hour days. The longer hours allow them to get their work accomplished, while still cutting the work week shorter.

Another schedule has employees work nine hours for five days, allowing them to take a day off biweekly. You'll still see most of your employees five days a week, but the biweekly days off can work as a reward for work well done, and a chance for your best people to relax and refresh.

The four-day workweek won't be right for every company, but it's not an impossible perk to implement. By allowing employees to spend some time outside the office, you'll be improving work-life balance, increasing productivity, and attracting great talent.

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Mobile payments startup Square did not try to sell itself, according to one of its board members, Roelof Botha of Sequoia Capital.

At the TechCrunch Disrupt conference today, Botha said the payment company has not tried to sell itself in recent months, contrary to news reports. He also said the company is doing fine and that it did not shelve any IPO plans.

"I don’t know where this misinformation is coming from," Botha told Michael Arrington at the on stage at Disrupt. "There was a person who compared Square and Box recently for shelving its IPO plans. Square never filed, they never made a filing public, and they never withdrew it."

"A lot of our late stage companies are thinking, 'Should we go public this year? Maybe not. Are there things we should invest in?' Going public is an irreversible event," he added.

When asked if Square was trying to sell itself, Botha replied, "Square was not trying to sell itself these past few months. There were no discussions to sell itself. None."

Botha said the Wall Street Journal called him before it ran a story about issues within Square. Botha said he told the reporter, "Being on the board of the company, [if Square was trying to tell itself] that would be a surprise to me."

Still, WSJ said it had sources who said otherwise and reported:

Google Inc. discussed a possible acquisition of Square earlier this year, according to three people familiar with the matter...Square also had informal discussions about a deal with Apple Inc. and eBay Inc.'s PayPal in the past, according to people familiar with those situations. Those conversations never developed into serious talks.

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I'm not an angel investor.

Nor am I likely to be providing venture capital anytime soon. So you would think reading a comprehensive guide to angel investing would be of little interest to me.

In fact, often the best way to approach a situation is from a totally different perspective. Say you want to build a thriving business. You could list everything you think is important in founding, growing, and maintaining a startup, and build your company that way.

Or you could focus on what experienced investors look for — not because you want to attract outside capital, but because you want to evaluate the same key qualities an experienced investor looks for when deciding whether a business merits their money.

In other words, build a company that has all the qualities a successful angel looks for... and you've probably built a company with real legs.

The same approach can apply to you, the founder.

As David S. Rose, the CEO of Gust and the founder of New York Angels, says in Angel Investing: The Gust Guide to Making Money & Having Fun Investing in Startups:

The number one thing I look at when making a startup investment is the quality of the entrepreneur. In this, I — and a majority of professional angel investors — follow the old adage: "Bet the jockey, not the horse." A great entrepreneur — especially one backed by an outstanding team — can tweak, improve, and refocus a business idea as needed, while a mediocre entrepreneur is likely to ruin the promise of a brilliant business concept. If I have to choose between a great business idea and a great entrepreneur, I'll take the entrepreneur every time.

So what about you? Do you have all the qualities a successful angel looks for in an entrepreneur?

There's no need to guess. While in the book he describes certain behaviors of great entrepreneurs, David also lists a number of warning signs.

See if any of these apply to you:

1. Perceived lack of integrity
2. Unrealistic assessment of market size
3. Unrealistic assessment of competitive offerings
4. Unrealistic assessment of competitive advantages
5. Unrealistic assessment of execution challenges
6. Unrealistic assessment of execution costs
7. Unrealistic assessment of timing
8. Unrealistic financial projections
9. Unrealistic valuation expectations
10. Unrealistic declarative statements
11. Unrealistic fundamental business idea
12. Lack of execution track record
13. Lack of domain expertise
14. Lack of technical expertise
15. Lack of long-term vision
16. Lack of historical knowledge of the market space
17. Lack of perceived leadership capability
18. Lack of perceived communication skills
19. Lack of necessary operational skills on the management team
20. Lack of perceived ability to grow with the company
21. Lack of perceived willingness to accept advice or mentorship
22. Lack of carefully considered go-to-market strategy

Of course you might say, "Wait. I don't plan to seek investors. So an inability to communicate effectively with potential investors is a non-issue." Of course you'd also be wrong; while communicating with investors may not be important, communicating with everyone else — employees, customers, vendors, etc. — is definitely important. Any entrepreneur who lacks solid communication skills is working at a huge disadvantage.

The same is true for all the other items on David's list of warning signs. If you can't lead then your employees can't follow. If you can't grow with your business then your business can't grow. If you can't identify and leverage your real (not imagined) competitive advantages then you can't compete.

And while you think you may never be an angel investor, you already are, because you've invested in your business.

Viewing entrepreneurship and your business from a different perspective — especially an experienced perspective — is incredibly valuable because it can help you identify weaknesses you must overcome... and just as importantly, strengths you can leverage.

SEE ALSO: 17 Traits That Distinguish The Best Startup CEOs

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Rick Webb came into wealth a few years ago, when his company Barbarian Group was acquired. Or, as Webb describes it, he became "wealthy. ish." 

"Like rich people wouldn't consider me rich, but I did some research and I'm in like the top .5% or something now, well into seven figures, won't have to work ever again," he wrote in response to a question on Quora.

Webb didn't always have money. He worked tons of odd jobs before he became a successful entrepreneur and investor. Webb has since backed startups such as Foursquare and Tumblr.

This week, Webb turned 42 and he listed all the jobs he's ever made a salary from. The list begins with "berry and rhubarb farmer" and ends with "house cleaner." In the middle you'll find things like "pooper scooper" and "guitarist/singer in space rock band," to more recent roles, "board member" and "COO."

Even now that Webb has money, he doesn't spend it in a crazy fashion. He wrote a really thoughtful post about what it was like to come into wealth, here. 

Below is his full list of jobs. 

• Rhubarb & Berry Farmer
• Bartender on a roving karaoke palace
• Christmas tree decorator in a christmas shop (the trick is to individually wrap every branch with lights from the trunk outward and back, one branch at a time. Use about 10 strings. Looks amazing)
• Railroad car cleaner on the Alaska Railroad
• Guy who waves those paddles for airplanes
• Baggage handler at the airport (notable for being allowed to play on baggage claim belts)
• Founding music director of a commercial radio station
• Dishwasher
• Busboy
• Line cook
• Copy shop lackey
• Offset press man
• Bus washer
• Bar owner
• Club promoter & host of illegal raves
• Designer of annual reports for genomics companies and microchip manufacturers
• Video editor for startups and ad agencies (dot com boom 1)
• Record label owner
• Rhythm guitarist and keyboardist in a country band
• Guitarist and singer in a space rock band
• Power electronics operator in a noise band
• Purveyor of corn dogs at the Alaska state fair
• Seller of admissions tickets to the Alaska state fair, 3 years running
• Paperboy (boy that one did not last)
• Lawn mower
• Driveway snow shoveler
• Hotel Housecleaner at Sophie’s Station hotel in Fairbanks, AK
• Photographer of bands, fetish nights, etc. 
• Macromedia Flash animator and actionscript programmer
• Pre-press operator for financial reports at a major printing press (FRAMEMAKER)
• Tour manager for goth bands
• Merch boy
• DJ
• PA
• PowerPoint expert for audit and financial firms, including Putnam, KPMG, Deloitte, Fidelity. 
• Web designer
• Web developer
• Macromedia Director Lingo programmer (Coincidentally I met one of the authors ofLingo last night!)
• Photoshop production artist
• Color corrector of photos of automobiles
• Copywriter
• Art director
• Bookkeeper (oh man do NOT hire me as a bookkeeper I am terrible)
• Columnist
• Book Author
• COO
• Web producer
• “Mechanical Supervisor" (whatever that means. I am still not sure)
• Information Architect
• Quark and Pagemaker Page layout designer
• Film producer
• Agfa Accuset Imagesetter Operator
• Full time designer of record covers
• Bed and Breakfast breakfast preparer and housekeeper
• Professional decorator of techno/electronica nightclubs
• Venture Capitalist & angel investor
• Co-working space owner
• Advisor
• Board Member
• Revenue consultant
• Advertising product designer
• Salesperson
• Account manager
• Vague, undefined “strategist”
• Design studio owner
• Advertising agency owner
• Proposal lackey
• Professional buyer of tickets to concerts for resale via a legal scalper
• Attendant at a pop up store for the Nintendo Game Cube (actually this might have been the best job I ever had)
• Alaska state legislature campaign manager (man it’s crazy there is NOTHING about this on the web)
• Parade pooper scooper
• Subway busker (for one day, bauhaus covers only, harvard square stop)
• Professional speaker
• MacTemp
• Game designer
• Recruiter
• Ebay seller
• Gas station attendant
• Guy standing on a street corner handing out flyers
• Envelope stuffer
• House Painter
• House cleaner

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Many people in the tech industry dream of building a startup, making it grow, taking it public, and growing rich along the way.

All of that is perfectly possible, but one thing these dreamers don't always realize is that these days, by the time a tech company goes public, the founders tend to own very little of it.

Often they own less than 10% of their own companies. For instance, among the tech industry's most recent S1 forms, Aaron Levie, founder of Box, will own about 6% after the IPO. Zendesk co-founder and CEO Mikkel Svane will own about 8% after the IPO.

We asked two founders of two hot startups, "What gives?":  Krish Ramakrishnan, founder and CEO of Blue Jeans Network, (his third successful startup), which has raised $98.5 million so far; and Ross Mason, founder and vice president of product strategy at MuleSoft, which has raised $130.5 million so far.

Why are founders willing to give up so much of their companies?

Ramakrishnan tells us that CEO founders are simply not worried about the size of their stake affecting control in the board room. Their investors know that founders are integral to the company, and they want the founders to succeed.

The only time there's an issue of control is a "downside scenario" where the business is in trouble, and if that's the case, there's more going on than just a power struggle.

Ramakrishnan says a CEO founder is much more likely to be ousted if things go wrong after the company goes public. "Public markets have little patience for change. A CEO founder is not as revered because, the public markets are only looking for financial results." A founder, on the other hand, maybe focused on a long-term vision at the expense of short-term financial gains, he said.

Founders also tend to grant significant stakes to their engineers. The engineers, particularly in early stage companies, are the company's lifeblood.

"If they leave, it's a piece of your company walking out the door. You need to make them invested like founders not just employees," he says.

He says that the decision to to share ownership is made from the first venture investment. At the seed round, an investor may take a big chunk. (We've heard up to 50%, though that varies from deal to deal.)

As founders raise more funds, their share gets diluted — meaning the percentage of the company they own gets smaller and smaller. But the dollar value of the stake should be worth more: a smaller piece of a growing pie.

"As a rule of thumb, a successful company will dilute itself by raising more money but the key is that the valuation goes will go up and that is far more important than ownership," he says.

Mason says, "Companies are waiting longer to IPO these days. No longer is it three years from launch to IPO. They are proving their business models first. This requires more cash and so dilution is just part of the process," he says.

Mason, who also does some angel investing, has observed that startups these days often raise smaller amounts, "but raise more rounds (C, D, E, F) as the company hits milestones like delivering a product, early break-throughs in a market, scaling the sales team, expanding into new geographies, etc.," he says.

Each time they raise a round, they are selling off more of their companies, and diluting their shares.

Ultimately "the goal is to build a really big business, so even though the stake gets smaller, even down to single digits, it's worth more as the company grows," Mason says.

For instance, Marc Benioff, CEO co-founder of 15-year-old Salesforce.com, owns about 7% of his company, according to forms filed with the SEC. It's worth $2.2 billion.

SEE ALSO: The 10 Best Tech Companies To Work For That Are NOT In Silicon Valley

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With nearly $50 million in funding and a shoutout by legendary tech analyst Mary Meeker last year, Dropcam is one of the buzziest hardware startups at the moment.

The company makes WiFi cameras that let you stream video from your home live. It also has a $99 per year subscription service that lets you store a week's worth of video at a time.

Last week, Dropcam announced it's working on a technology that can tell when a person enters your home so it can alert you via email or app notification. The person recognition can tell the difference between humans and other moving objects, which has obvious security benefits. It'll go live to subscribers later this summer.

Business Insider caught up with Dropcam's CEO Greg Duffy last week to talk about the new people detection feature and how the company prepares to grow and possibly IPO.

Below is an edited transcription of the conversation.

Business Insider: Why are you implementing people detection?

Greg Duffy: We're thinking about Dropcam as a way for you to see what's going on at home and we want to curate that content for you since there's so much of it. The whole service takes in orders of magnitude more video than YouTube per user. We've always talked about Dropcam being more than just a hardware device. Our cloud service gets better over time. You buy your Dropcam and there are things it's going to be able to do in the future that it wasn't able to do the day you bought it. The first thing we're going to launch is enhancement to our motion detection, which is actually going to allow Dropcam to recognize people.

BI: How does the people detection work?

Duffy: It's a computer vision feature that we run in the cloud if you enable it on your camera. You need to be on one of our recording plans to get it. There's a huge amount of computing power that's being dedicated to doing this in the cloud. It's a really amazing way to pare down the number of alerts that you get from your camera. Imagine if you have a home with pets. You probably don't want to be alerted about your pet running in front of the camera when you're in the middle of the meeting. 

BI: How did you teach Dropcams to recognize people versus other moving objects?

Duffy: The way we're able to do it is like all artificial intelligence or machine learning concepts. We had to provide some training data, which we're able to pull from our public featured cameras, which are only a small percentage of Dropcams. They're located all over the world and user submitted.

BI: What are some of the most interesting things users have captured on their Dropcams?

Duffy: It's been amazing seeing all the things people have caught. Some people have caught their kids' first steps. We've had tons of examples of people catching their kids' first steps or first words — all kinds of things they'd want immortalized. That's definitely a big use case. Also, people are catching burglars. Often, the burglars will even steal the camera, but it doesn't matter because all the video is in the cloud. It just gives us a better shot of their face. In fact, there was a guy who got his face on the local news from a Dropcam video and his mom recognized him and turned him in.

BI: Do you think everything we do in the future will be recorded?

Duffy: I think to a certain extent, yes. There's always a tempering of this because I still think privacy is a thing and it's going to be something that people care about for a long time to come. I think certain areas of your home will be recorded. We want to make sure that we're recording when you want us to record and not when you don't. [Note: Dropcam is also launching Bluetooth presence monitors that can connect to Dropcams and let the device know when you're home and don't want to be recorded. They'll launch this summer and cost $29.]

BI: Dropcam has raised a lot of money. Is there an IPO in the future? What's next?

Duffy: We've seen a lot of IPOs recently, and I think the way we look at it is maybe a little different than those companies. An IPO is just your last capital raise. You should need the capital and you should also feel like your growth rates are slow enough that the private market is not the place for you. We're still growing revenue on pretty significant numbers. I don't think it would be a good time for us to go into the public market right now, but I think it's definitely a goal for us to be a completely independent and profitable company. A lot of companies going for IPOs right now aren't profitable, so I think we'd like to avoid that.

BI: Does that mean you think a company must be profitable in order to have an IPO?

Duffy: I think it's a good idea to have a lead on profitability at the very least before you go into the public market. Venture capitalists are used to dealing with the risk of companies that aren't profitable and evaluating those risks and the technologies and other other things that make the companies valuable. It's really about predictability. I think that's more important for something like the public market.

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A central theme in the entrepreneurial world is challenging the status quo and questioning conventional wisdom in search of new and better ways of doing things. After all, if you're just going to follow the pack, you may as well just get a real job and call it a day.

That's why nothing raises the hairs on the back of my neck more than everyone moving in lockstep to the same drumbeat. When a thousand shrill voices tell you to do the same thing, that's a sure sign of groupthink. It's also a good time to get some earplugs and do some critical thinking.

Today, there is a pervasive and nearly deafening mantra insisting that you quit your job and become an entrepreneur. The collective says you should do it today because every day you wait brings you closer to a life of poverty and regret.

But that's simply not true. The idea that you can't have a fulfilling career, be remarkably happy, and even get rich working for someone else is perhaps the most ludicrous, disingenuous, and irresponsible myth I've ever heard, and I've heard a lot.

Don't get me wrong. Entrepreneurship can be incredibly rewarding. Starting your own business may be the best decision you ever make. But it's not for everyone. There's a lot to consider before you take the plunge and a lot of myths to expose, starting with these:

Myth 1. It's the only way to get rich.

One article I read argues that, because the world's top billionaires are entrepreneurs, that's the only way to get really rich. There's simply no data or logic to support the premise that any given person will make more money running their own business. Also, did you know that Microsoft created some 10,000 millionaires? Something to consider.

Myth 2. You should follow your passion, not the money.

Yet another article says money isn't everything and you should follow your passion. That is true, but who says you can't do that working for someone else? Most entrepreneurs actually find their passion while working for others. That's the best way I know to gain exposure to opportunities.

Myth 3. You'll be happier.

Last time I checked, the question of what makes you happy is entirely up to you. Most people are actually happier without the headaches, risks, burdens, hurdles and uncertainty of having their own company. Maybe they're less happy now that everyone's making them feel guilty about it.

Myth 4. You won't have a boss.

Wrong. Everyone has bosses. CEOs answer to their boards of directors, customers, and shareholders. Entrepreneurs also have to answer directly to regulators and bureaucrats at the federal, state and local level. Trust me, they can be pretty bossy.

Myth 5. You'll have more freedom, control, and work-life balance.

If you're on your own, chances are you're going to find yourself wearing all sorts of hats and working 24x7 for a very long time. Work will become your life. There's nothing wrong with that, but not everyone feels more freedom and control that way.

Myth 6. Corporate America is evil.

Here's something I bet you've never considered: Every corporation – even big ones like Apple and Intel – started out as somebody's small business. So what's the difference? I had a fabulous career working for companies big and small in the high-tech industry. So have thousands of people I've known over the years.

Myth 7. You'll be more fulfilled.

You know what just about everyone loves to do? Great work that accomplishes goals they can be proud of. You can do that working for a big company, a small company, or your own company. Fulfillment has nothing to do with business ownership. If you want to manage, lead, or run a business, you're better off learning the ropes in a good company before starting your own.

Myth 8. There are no jobs; technology and outsourcing killed them all.

Shockingly untrue. If technology destroyed jobs, then what do you call the most lucrative and fastest-growing industry on Planet Earth? That's right: technology. If you can't find a job, chances are you lack in-demand skills or education, in which case, yes, you might want to consider starting a small business.

Myth 9. The middle class is dying.

Maybe that's true, but what's that got to do with you, me, or anyone else? If the assumption is that, by working at someone else's company, you're destined to live hand-to-mouth, I can just as easily argue the opposite is true. Web 2.0, for example, squeezes entrepreneurs while employees at big companies like Google, Apple and Facebook make beaucoup bucks.

Myth 10: Quit making excuses; just do it now.

If you're struggling with the decision, there might be a very good reason for that. Maybe it's not a well-informed decision and you feel you're being pushed into it. Or maybe the timing isn't right or you don't have enough cash stashed away to survive. If your gut tells you not to do it and your instincts are usually right, you might want to listen.

Funny thing is, every article and book I've come across that tries to push people into entrepreneurship regardless of their circumstances was written by people who got their start working for others, didn't quit their day job, were just plain lucky, or were so talented or well-educated that they would have made it no matter what they did.

Look, what you do with your career is your own business. Make it your business to make an informed decision. Do what's right for you, when it's right for you. Have faith in yourself. Everything will work out fine.

SEE ALSO: Meet The 53 Best Small-Business People Of The Year

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In the tech industry, there are more men than women and tales of sexism abound. 

Thanks to new anonymous apps like Secret, more appalling stories are coming to light.

Part of the problem is that some men in tech think of women differently. This person, for example, likens women to 3D printers.

Men know the ratio of women in tech needs to be changed, and sometimes that freaks them out.

Some men think they're being respectful of women and supporting them. But this kind of thinking actually has the opposite effect:

Some men don't understand they shouldn't hit on female subordinates within their companies.

This Secret led a former Github employee, Julie Ann Horvath, to spill lots of stories of sexism within her former Silicon Valley company.

Some of the sexism stories make the tech industry sound like high school, where guys brag about hookups that didn't happen.

A lot of the shocking stories about women in tech occur when female founders are trying to fundraise.

The founder of e-commerce company Nasty Gal, Sophia Amoruso, recounted a strange story during her fundraising process:

"One investor left me a strange late-night voice mail and then apologized for it on the phone the next day. 'Sorry about that,' he said. 'I was all messed up on Percocet and Jack Daniels.'"

Recruiting can also be difficult for women in tech. This email was sent to the CEO of Locket, Yunha Kim:

Sometimes, women say they're reprimanded for speaking out about inequalities in tech.

Women aren't the only group of people overcoming issues in tech. 

Here are some other issues people in tech are whispering about, but they're too afraid to say out loud »

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How does a startup compete against Google for talent, especially when its employees are extremely well paid?

A few years ago, early PayPal-er Max Levchin, Palantir co-founder Stephen Cohen, and Founders Fund's Peter Thiel advised startups how to sell themselves and nab big hires.

Startups can't compete with Google in terms of compensation. And a startup idea alone probably won't win a recruit over. Instead, a startup has to play to a person's ambition.

According to Max Levchin:

"Since engineers think any new idea is dumb, they will tend to think that your new idea is dumb. They get paid a lot at Google doing some pretty cool stuff. Why stop indexing the world to go do your dumb thing?

"So the way to compete against the giants is not with money. Google will outbid you. They have oil derrick that spits out $30bn in search revenue every year. To win, you need to tell a story about cogs. At Google, you’re a cog. Whereas with me, you’re an instrumental piece of this great thing that we’ll build together. Articulate the vision. Don’t even try to pay well. Meet people’s cash flow needs. Pay them so they can cover their rent and go out every once in awhile. It’s not about cash. It’s about breaking through the wall of cynicism. It’s about making 1% of this new thing way more exciting than a couple hundred grand and a cubicle at Google.

Cohen elaborated.

"We tend to massively underestimate the compounding returns of intelligence. As humans, we need to solve big problems. If you graduate Stanford at 22 and Google recruits you, you’ll work a 9-to-5. It’s probably more like an 11-to-3 in terms of hard work. They’ll pay well. It’s relaxing. But what they are actually doing is paying you to accept a much lower intellectual growth rate. When you recognize that intelligence is compounding, the cost of that missing long-term compounding is enormous. They’re not giving you the best opportunity of your life. Then a scary thing can happen: You might realize one day that you’ve lost your competitive edge. You won’t be the best anymore. You won’t be able to fall in love with new stuff. Things are cushy where you are. You get complacent and stall. So, run your prospective engineering hires through that narrative. Then show them the alternative: working at your startup.

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Lulu, a girls-only app that lets women rate men anonymously, is launching a product for guys.

Cofounded by Alexandra Chong in 2011, Lulu lets women discuss a guy's sense of humor, appearance, ambition, and sexual prowess with mini quizzes and hashtag descriptions, such as #CanTalkToMyDad and #OneWomanMan. Then the man receives a score between 0 and 10 for other women to peruse. More than half of Lulu's users actually take these quizzes and create content on the app.

Before, when guys would try to log in to the app, Lulu would kick them out. It pulls in Facebook profile information on each user, so it can tell what gender someone is when they sign up. Now, Lulu is letting guys stay on the app and it's giving them insight into what women are saying about them there.

Guys can now see their scores on Lulu, as well as receive analytics about their profiles, such as the number of women who have searched for them, rated them, and followed them. It also reveals which hashtags are used most often to describe them, and it offers personalized content based on those hashtags.

Allison Schwartz, who launched Lulu with Chong, says more than 1 million guys have downloaded Lulu and that profiles on the app have been viewed billions of times. That's up from a reported 500 million profile views in December. Lulu has grown quickly by finding female ambassadors on college campuses, and it moved most of its team from London where the company was founded to New York City in the past few months. The team of 20 to 30 people has raised more than $4 million.

Schwartz says Lulu remains dedicated to its female users first. Men are still unable to rate women on the app.

Here are some screen grabs of the new features of guys.

Lulu for guys has content based on polls millions of females have taken on the app about sex, love, and relationships.

Lulu also offers men Google Analytics-like statistics for their profile pages. It shows them how many women have searched for them and followed them on the app.

It also shows men where they score highest, and which areas need improvement.

Lulu now shows men which hashtags are used most often to describe them. The bigger the hashtag, the more frequently it's used.

And here's a walkthrough of the app and how Lulu works >>

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Tripping, which lets you search through thousands of vacation rental sites, has announced its Series A funding round. 

The company isn't disclosing the exact amount raised, but sources tell Business Insider it's in the $5 million to $10 million range. This investment is one of the largest in the travel space this year.

Tripping can best be described as the Kayak of vacation rentals. It uses metadata to scrub millions of listings on other sites — such as HomeAway, Booking.com, and Wimdu — and surfaces listings that most closely match your search criteria.

You can then compare the listings by price, reviews, star ratings, and locations. It's one of the first players to use metasearch in the $100 billion vacation rental industry.

Tripping launched in 2010 at TechCrunch's Disrupt. Before this round of funding, it raised $1 million in seed funding.

The deal was led by Tripping's female CEO, Jen O'Neal. Only between 4% and 7% VC funding goes to women-led businesses.

The round was co-led by Recruit Holdings and Quest Venture Partners. Tokyo-based Recruit Holdings is one of the largest privately held companies in Asia, which has built several travel businesses, including one of Japan's largest online-booking sites. They're also known for having acquired Indeed.com for roughly $1 billion and being an LP behind several notable VC firms on Sand Hill Road. 

"This is still a new concept, so the fact that Recruit wanted to co-lead the round shows that we're onto something," O'Neal told Business Insider in an interview. "We're going after an area in the travel space that isn't completely saturated, so there is huge opportunity for growth."

Also joining the round are Erik Blachford (former Expedia CEO), Fritz Demopoulos (founder of metasearch giant Qunar), and Shawntae Spencer (an NFL athlete), among others.

"This new capital will enable us to innovate quickly on the product, expand strategically into new markets, and fulfill our mission to help travelers find the perfect place to stay on their next trip," O'Neal says. "We're grateful to our Seed investors for letting us take a chance on an unproven concept. Now we're ready to scale."

SEE ALSO: Pinterest raises another $200 million and is now valued at $5 billion

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