"Although I spent the first ten years of my professional life as an entrepreneur, I didn’t fully understand the entrepreneur’s mind-set — my own mind-set, that is — until I went to the other side and became a venture capitalist. (More on how that happened in the next chapter.)

As I listened to pitch after pitch and watched as some venture-backed start-ups took off and others didn’t, I became much more aware that the successful entrepreneur is built, in fact, has to be built, in ways that are fundamentally different from other businesspeople.

Many start-up entrepreneurs would simply hate being a big company executive. The conventional wisdom is that they just don’t have the management skills necessary to run a large company. Although it’s true that most entrepreneurs could not successfully manage thousands or even tens of thousands of people in a complex organization, there are exceptions. Bill Gates is the best example of a brilliant entrepreneur who has succeeded along the whole arc — starting from scratch to leading one of the world’s largest and most important companies.I think the difficulty that start-up executives have in fitting in comfortably into a big company is more about what drives an entrepreneur and what satisfies him or her — both in the long run and in the day-to-day work. It comes down to an essential character trait that I observed in myself: the entrepreneurial itch. When you have it, you just have to scratch it. You really can’t help yourself."