"I've always loved games. When I was in high school I read a book about Go and realized it's the best game. I was an exchange student in Japan mostly because I wanted to play a lot of Go, and in the year I was there, there wasn't much else to do. There was a chess master that said, "If aliens exist they might play chess, but they certainly play Go." ... There's something beautiful that happens when simple rules lead to a complex system. It also teaches me patience and composure and handling ambiguity. ... I think it's helped a lot with my business, or at least it's shaped my style of management. ... Go is all about handling ambiguity. For example, do I want a region of the board to be well defined or undefined? Beginners stress out too much about leaving territory unclaimed or stones half-captured. But you learn often that's advantageous. I think a big part of running an early stage start-up is not freaking out about things being left undefined."
January 1, 1970