What's the secret sauce of Silicon Valley? Failure, reports Tina Seelig, Executive Director of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. To develop more successes, she urges, entrepreneurs have got to take a risk, and this is the notion behind every deal in the entire ecosystem. Venture capitalists fund risk and, by association, failure, in order to find the "hits" in the haystack. Failure is a perfectly acceptable part of the entrepreneurial process, provided that the smart entrepreneur learns from their errors along the way.

Aspiring students also need to learn how to make their own good luck, says STVP Executive Director Tina Seelig. Hard work is imperative, but it doesn't always mean a fortunate outcome. It takes optimism, an open mind, shrewd networking skills, and the ability to find the veiled "million dollars in the room." Seelig cites a personal anecdote where, through perseverance and curiosity, she turned an encounter with a stranger over frozen lemonade in a grocery store into a long-lasting relationship and a helicopter ride to a private ski resort overseas.