Once you have picked an industry, get right to the center of it as fast as you possibly can. Your target is the core of change and opportunity—figure out where the action is and head there, and do not delay your progress for extraneous opportunities, no matter how lucrative they might be.

Never worry about being a small fish in a big pond. Being a big fish in a small pond sucks—you will hit the ceiling on what you can achieve quickly, and nobody will care. Optimize at all times for being in the most dynamic and exciting pond you can find.

Geographic locality is still—even in the age of the Internet—critically important. No one cares who the top filmmaker in Chicago is. On the other hand, the top 50 filmmakers in Los Angeles are all very important people in their industry. Living anywhere other than the center of your industry is a mistake.

In a rapidly changing field, start your career at a younger, high-growth company—not a raw startup and not a big company. You'll do more, get promoted faster, learn intensity, and the name on your resume (Netscape, eBay, PayPal, Google in their day) becomes a permanent source of credibility as valuable as an advanced degree.

Don't be a 'summertime soldier'—don't join somewhere because it's already successful and bail when things get tough. Hiring managers can read that on your resume just by looking at the dates. Gutting through the hard parts is a key part of your real-world education, especially if you ever start your own company.

Every job is both a tactical and a strategic opportunity. The strategic one is usually overlooked: learn how the business and industry actually work. Ask 'if the creators of this industry were starting out today, what would they be doing now?'

If your startup fails, try another one. If that one fails, get back into a high-growth company to reset your resume and get more skills. Then start another company. Repeat as necessary until you change the world.