Vivek Wadhwa

“The harsh reality is that if you are middle-aged, write computer code for a living, and earn a six-figure salary, you're headed for the unemployment lines. Your market value declines as you age, and it becomes harder and harder to get a job.”

“I have no doubt that my M.B.A. from New York University's Stern School of Business was one of the best investments I ever made. It helped me climb the corporate ladder and become an entrepreneur.”

“The mentor-mentee relationship is ideally like that of the guru and disciple: motivated by the desire of the guru to impart knowledge to the disciple.”

“The stereotypical successful entrepreneur is Mark Zuckerberg - the young college dropout who dreamed up a crazy idea while in his dorm room.”

“After my health suffered due to the stress of running my second company, I had to switch careers. But I still didn't want to go back to the corporate world. So I became an academic.”

“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.”

“I realized that, after tasting entrepreneurship, I had become unfit for the corporate world. There was no turning back. The only regret I had was having wasted my life in the corporate world for so long.”

“The fastest way to get kicked out of a venture capitalist's office is to say that you want to build a business that grows steadily, focuses on employees, and creates wealth over the long term. Entrepreneurs with such ambitions are considered pariahs.”

“An open-minded and diverse population that readily shares information, encourages experimentation, accepts failure and dispenses with formality and hierarchy is what makes Silicon Valley the successful hub that it is.”

“A key to achieving success is to assemble a strong and stable management team.”

“The best way of dealing with the press, customers, and critics is to come clean when things go wrong and admit when you make a mistake. We are humans, and no one expects us to be perfect.”

“Big companies such as Google and Facebook buy startups at ridiculously high prices - not for their products, but for their people.”

“The goal should be to build a sustainable lifestyle business that does good for employees and customers - and that steadily builds wealth.”

“Hiring foreigners is more expensive and more difficult than hiring locals, because of the visa fees and long lead times for visa processing. And companies face a backlash by anti-immigrant groups for hiring foreigners. So they do it only because they have to.”

“The fact is that you are never too old to innovate.”

“The truth is that entrepreneurship is more like a roller coaster ride than a cruise.”

“One of the biggest problems that software developers face is that technology changes rapidly. It is very hard to stay current.”

“Whenever I write about immigration, I hear heart-wrenching stories of computer workers who are unemployed and facing severe hardship.”

“Innovation is all about people. Innovation thrives when the population is diverse, accepting and willing to cooperate.”

“Most successful entrepreneurs share their knowledge as a way of giving back. They do not demand compensation. Those who do are usually trying to take advantage of you.”