If you think about basic science or coming up with new theories of mathematics, these are not the kinds of things which are necessarily a well-defined market to pay people.

If you think about basic science or coming up with new theories of mathematics, these are not the kinds of things which are necessarily a well-defined market to pay people.

Customers won’t care about any particular technology unless it solves a particular problem in a superior way. And if you can’t monopolize a unique solution for a small market, you’ll be stuck with vicious competition.

If you think your initial market might be too big, it almost certainly is.

Technology and capitalism are very much linked. I think that capitalism probably works best in a technologically progressing society.

I think China thinks information technology is less important than we think it is in the US, economically, and more important politically. And so Chinese internet companies are extremely political, they're protected behind the great firewall of China, and investment in Alibaba is good as long as Jack Ma stays in the good graces of the Chinese communist party. Alibaba is largely copying various business models from the US; they have combined some things in interesting new ways, but I think it's fundamentally a business that works because of the political protection you get in China.

The college kids should think hard about what they're doing. If you have a great idea for a company, there's no right time to start it, and it's often better to start it sooner rather than later. I went to Stanford undergrad and Stanford Law School, and if I had to do it over again, I might still do those things, but I wish I had asked the type of questions like, why I was doing it, was it just for the status and prestige, or was it because I was really interested in the substance of it.