If you're living off credit-card advances and ramen noodles, a buyout offer might be too hard to resist. And you'll be even smarter the second time around.

The first time I had a secretary, I was sheepish about being demanding or even asking questions.

It's defeatist to harp on what might have been, and yet, it's hard to resist considering what might have been.

Even as an 18-year-old, I had to grow comfortable with my leadership style, which is that I was really impatient with under-motivated people - extremely impatient, to the point where I was counterproductive as a manager of underproductive people. And that hasn't really changed. If people need to be motivated, I'm no good.

Smart people tend to enjoy thinking about a lot of things at once. I'd say entrepreneurs should be serial monogamists; do one thing at a time until you make sufficient progress and then move on.

When we started EA in 1982, our goal was to make games as big a media as visual entertainment or movies. That was how big we dreamed at the time.