When I first got started in the late '70s, early '80s, and first was thinking about the interactive world, I believed so fervently that it was the next big thing, I thought it would happen quickly.

I enjoyed high school and college, and I think I learned a lot, but that was not really my focus. My focus was on trying to figure out what businesses to start

In the end, a vision without the ability to execute it is probably a hallucination.

So you have to force yourself out of a comfort zone and really try to figure out what are the key ingredients, the key skill sets, the key perspectives that are necessary, and then figure out a way to attract the very best people to fill those particular roles.

So we believed that strategic alliances and partnerships were critical, and we did that for five years.

I do think actually in this case the government does get credit for funding some of the basic research.

When I was trying to popularize the concept of the Internet - ten or 15 years ago - I came up with this concept of "the 5 Cs." Services needed to have content, context, community, commerce, and connectivity. After that, when I was trying to think of what the key management principles were to build into the culture, I started talking about the Ps. The P's were things like passion, perseverance, perspective and people. I think the people aspect is really the most important one.