I don't care about the sort of things that will bring in chump change over the next two or three years. I think I'm better than others at sniffing out things that will bear fruit in 10 or 20 years while they're still at the seed stage, and I'm more willing to take the risks that entails.

I think I would have kept in contact with venture capital investors and entrepreneurs. I'm sure staying involved as something like a coach would be fun. If I handed over the reins to a successor, I wouldn't stick around [to pull strings] like a retired emperor.

But a big paradigm shift is staring us in the face. If I left things to someone else despite having my own thoughts on it, I wouldn't be true to myself.

Jack's [Ma Yun ] theory is that whoever controls data controls the world.

I would say that hardware is the bone of the head, the skull. The semiconductor is the brain within the head. The software is the wisdom and data is the knowledge.

I'm a man, and I think every man wants to be No. 1.

If something happened, like engineers starting to quit, things would go downhill fast.