The Characteristics of High Achievers

Bret Waters has spent his whole career in Silicon Valley, where he’s been active as an entrepreneur, an investor, and an academic. After founding and running 4 companies, he now teaches a popular open-enrollment course at Stanford University called Accelerate your Startup Idea. He also serves as a mentor at Global Social Benefit Institute at Santa Clara University, where he helps help social entrepreneurs from around the world to develop, refine, and scale successful business models for social impact, and last summer served as Chief Mentor with the European Innovation Academy, teaching Silicon Valley innovation methodology to engineering students from around the world. He and his wife raised seven kids and will (finally!) become empty nesters when the last one goes off to college this summer.