Working for a big company is, I believe, much risker than it looks.

A lot of things you want to do as part of daily life can now be done over the Internet.

The advantage of the consumer businesses is they tend to be much broader-based, much larger number of customers, that tend to over time be a lot more predictable. The advantage of the enterprise companies is they are not as subject to consumer trend, fad, behavior.

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.

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.

At Microsoft, they all rock back and forth like Gates, they wear the same glasses, they have the same hair style. Maybe they grow them in tanks.

Smart tech investor thinks about: a) future product roadmap, b) bottoms-up market size & growth, c) talent and skill of team. Essentially you are valuing things that have not yet happened, and the likelihood of the CEO and team being able to make them happen. Finance people find this appalling, but investors who do this well can make a lot of money.