Almost every dot-com idea from 1999 that failed will succeed.

In 2000, when my partner Ben Horowitz was CEO of the first cloud computing company, Loudcloud, the cost of a customer running a basic Internet application was approximately $150,000 a month.

Start-ups should be based on radical ideas. There should be a high failure rate for start-ups, because if there isn't their ideas aren't bold enough.

My own theory is that we are in the middle of a dramatic and broad technological and economic shift in which software companies are poised to take over large swathes of the economy

If you're the village blacksmith and a model T comes along, you better become a mechanic. People's lives are better when they get news online versus having to wait for the morning paper. It's a lot more efficient, a lot more real time, a lot less waste.

These days, you have the option of staying home, blogging in your underwear, and not having your words mangled. I think I like the direction things are headed.

I think 2012 is the year when consumers all around the world start saying no to feature phones and start saying yes to smartphones.