19. Dharmesh Shah

Founder and CTO: HubSpot

“It’s important to pick a big, growing market where you have some distinct advantage. And, to ensure that you control your own destiny and are not overly dependent on others.”

18. Allan Branch

Co-founder: LessAccounting

“My business partner, Steve Bristol, and I really used to put in major hours the first years of the company. We were working 80+ a week. After working ourselves to a point of being burned out we realized that if we put in 40 x 2 hours the company didn’t move forward 2x faster. In fact those extra 40 hour were less productive than the first 40 hours. The reality is you’ll never be “done” with your work, you’ll never finish all the tasks, build all the features and have the perfect design. At the end of the day, around 4 pm, we close our laptops and go home. Never forget work is here to enable your personal life fruitful.

Also I no longer care how famous I become, I don’t care about being filthy rich or being on the cover of magazines. I care more about making our customers and employees happy. The only people I care about being famous to are my children and wife. I do still, even at the age of 32, still strive to make my parents proud of me. I’ve let go of the burden of trying to focus the company to a $500 million company, I’m happy being the co-founder of an unknown software company.”

17. Leo Widrich

Co-founder: Buffer

“The number one thing I wish I knew is that the people around you affect your success more than you would ever imagine.

Focusing on who you spend time with on a day to day basis, working with doers instead of talkers can make or break the progress of your business and more importantly self-improvement. Be selective who you choose.”