I’ve been lucky enough to have a front row seat in Silicon Valley over the past twenty years at companies like AOL, Friendster and Facebook, where we leveraged technology to radically transform the media, content, and advertising industries. One characteristic shared by almost every successful founder I have ever worked with, invested in, or advised is an insane degree of curiosity. Being insanely curious goes way beyond being satisfied with a simple answer – it’s the art of asking “why” five times to get to a problem’s root cause. Breaking any problem down to its basic components exposes gaps – and that leads to innovation. In my youth, I had always been able to memorize well and regurgitate facts. Becoming insanely curious, for me, was the key to lifelong learning. I haven’t been bored in two decades.