There is a constant need for new systems and new software.
More and more major businesses and industries are being run on software and delivered as online services – from movies to agriculture to national defense.
I love what the Valley does. I love company building. I love startups. I love technology companies. I love new technology. I love this process of invention. Being able to participate in that as a founder and a product creator, or as an investor or a board member, I just find that hugely satisfying.
I would say the consumer Internet companies – in a lot of ways, if you go inside the consumer Internet companies and you see how they run, it’s how all their businesses are going to run.
If you’re unhappy, you should change what you’re doing.
I’ve been an entrepreneur three times. I started three companies.
Almost every dot-com idea from 1999 that failed will succeed.
I’m really excited about anything that is able to address the really big markets, so anything that’s universally appealing.
This has been a trend for a long time; the days of lifetime employment are long since over.
First of all, every new company today is being built in the face of massive economic headwinds, making the challenge far greater than it was in the relatively benign ’90s.
Perhaps the single most dramatic example of this phenomenon of software eating a traditional business is the suicide of Borders and corresponding rise of Amazon.
There was a point in the late ’90s where all the graduating M.B.A.’s wanted to start companies in Silicon Valley, and for the most part they were not actually qualified to do it.
Any successful company in the valley gets acquisition offers and has to decide whether or not to take them.
When you’re dealing with machines or anything that you build, it either works or it doesn’t, no matter how good of a salesman you are.
It’s much harder these days as a start-up to do physical devices.
One of the big first computers was called SAGE, which was a missile defense, the first missile-defense computer, which was, like, one of the first computers in the history of the world which got sold to the Department of Defense for, I don’t know, tens and tens of millions of dollars at the time.
At a certain point in your career – I mean, part of the answer is a personal answer, which is that at a certain point in your career, it becomes more satisfying to help entrepreneurs than to be one.
We worked personally with a lot of great VCs. They just work incredibly hard at supporting entrepreneurs and their companies.
I enjoy not being a public company.
In high school, I actually thought I was going to have to learn Japanese to work in technology. My big feeling was I just missed it, I missed the whole thing. It had happened in the ’80s, and I got here too late. But then, I’m maybe the most optimistic person I know. I mean, I’m incredibly optimistic.
The reality is the world is a really, really big place, and there’s a lot of people running around with a lot on their mind. And you really have to figure out how to build a company that can put on a message that can actually reach people and have an impact globally.
To bring out a new technology for consumers first, you just had a very long road to go down to try to find people who actually would pay money for something.
There will be certain points of time when everything collides together and reaches critical mass around a new concept or a new thing that ends up being hugely relevant to a high percentage of people or businesses. But it’s really really hard to predict those. I don’t believe anyone can.
So I came from an environment where I was starved for information, starved for connection.
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