Even if you have no interest in starting a company, having the experience of having ideas and doing them, that's muscle to exercise because that's what people are going to want to see. That's what makes you different.

The stage of investing that I do is seed stage, so it's really early. Here's a pair of founders who maybe have a prototype. They have a little bit of traction, maybe one employee, tops. At that stage, you really, really can only evaluate a company based on those founders and what they've been able to build. It's very, very team driven.

The goal shouldn't be to be the next Silicon Valley (there'll always only be one of those) - it's to be your own startup community.

I think the one advantage to a failed - recovering, but a pretty broken - economy, and a lot of broken promises, is that we've pulled the veils from our eyes way earlier than most people do, and realize "Hey, you know what, maybe I should try do this thing that I really care about, and why not spend the time now during my best years to get into knitting, or coding, or swamp boat sailing." And there's this resource called the Internet that's going to provide you with a stage and a library for all of those things.

I hate phone calls so I believe in a telephone armistice. To me, the idea of calling someone unprompted is basically saying, 'Hey, stop whatever you're doing and talk to me right now.

The great thing about the Internet is, it's the freest marketplace of ideas that there is.

If you imagine Maslow's hierarchy of needs, if you can get all those requirements checked off and have all those amazing things that we need to just live lives, but actually get to do the thing that you're really passionate about.