The truth is that I love working. I love my kids. But I don't view one as evil and the other as good. I need to work to be a happy person, to be a good parent.

My advice for men who aren't yet parents is to make sure you're a happy person before having a baby.

The U.S. is one of the hardest-working cultures in the world.

If somebody were more passionate about Redfin, how would she not be more qualified to have my job than I am? Like, that's the thing I have to be the best at.

I learned that people love to be good at things, even the silliest things.

I learned, even when all hell is breaking loose, first to take time to make my environment productive.

I learned to value speed in everything I do.

Everybody who's been fired has heard before about the problems they have. They just don't know it's that serious. Once you know what the stakes are, you become more serious.

I learned that it's important to treat yourself like a work in progress, to think about how you can improve, to listen to feedback.

When you start a company, you become really emotionally involved in it.

We don't need to take the world by storm. We just need to make our customers happy, and when we do that, the word spreads.

People knew about IBM before they knew about Apple. Sometimes it takes a little longer for better to win.

One reason I was so convinced that Redfin would work was that I never met anyone who bought or sold a home who thought the process was ideal.

People don't think of me as Glenn Kelman; they think of me as the real estate guy. If I wasn't interested in real estate, that would be pretty tragic, wouldn't it?

Over the years, I just started paying a lot more attention not to whether I was right or wrong, but just to how I make people feel.

People can smell a lack of respect from a mile away.

I had a choice between working on Wall Street or doing consulting or working at a start-up, and I got a job at a start-up. I was one of the first employees there, and I did everything for them, and it was so much fun.

The one thing that Redfin has been really good at has been at delighting people.

You wanna work on something big so that if you win, everybody wins, and you really have an impact on the world. And that can get you out of bed.

Thinking constantly about world domination can give you a little vertigo. The way I usually get through my day is by limiting my horizon to serving the next few customers or increasing revenues in the next few months.

It's easy to grow 300% in your first year or two, when you're starting with nothing and people first hear about your service. What separates a potential colossus from other businesses is the capacity to keep growing at that rate in years four, five, and beyond.

The most important question venture capitalists ask is what prevents your company from growing faster.

VCs are good at asking questions.

I really admire the fact that whenever Marc Singer gets a call from someone running late, he says he's running late, too. I don't admit that even when it's true. Small, unnoticeable acts of generosity are sometimes the most impressive.