Venture capitalists are professional money managers. We are provided capital to invest as long as we can return it to our investors with a strong return in a reasonable amount of time. A strong return is three times cash on cash. A reasonable amount of time is ten years max.
Don’t try to solve the entire problem on day one.
When my dad was in Vietnam, we lost a parent for a year. Thank God we didn’t lose a parent for good.
Investing in management means building communication systems, business processes, feedback, and routines that let you scale the business and team as efficiently as possible.
Profiles aren’t journalism.
People already love to play casual games. But when you take a casual game and stick it inside a social network, it becomes way more exciting.
Not only do you have to put yourself in harms way in service of your country, you have to leave your families at home. It is a great sacrifice.
I believe the mobile OS market will play out very similarly to Windows and Macintosh, with Android in the role of Windows. And so if you want to be in front of the largest number of users, you need to be on Android.
Many artists stick to making and hire a manager to focus on their business. Artists that build websites and mobile apps can do that, too.
Certainly anything that is news or opinion needs to be free on the Web, because the Web is this very fluid medium that is very much driven by links and the flow of visitors through a discussion via links.
When I see people laughing at ideas and companies we have backed, I smile. It means we are going to make a lot of money on that investment.
I would like to reiterate that I don’t want any profiles of me. I am not newsworthy.
I think ‘crazy’ is a compliment. I think you make money with people who are crazy.
Given New York City’s cultural diversity, it has always attracted creative people.
Games are the most social of all things on the web.
Foursquare’s adoption of a game dynamic when it launched is a particularly clever implementation of a social hook.
Facebook is not an unstoppable juggernaut. There are a lot of other things people can do on the web.
I don’t like to talk about myself. I like to talk about stuff that’s happening, stuff that’s going to happen, and the people who are going to make it happen.
Board meetings should not be for the benefit of the board. They should be for the benefit of the CEO and the senior team.
Blog-based businesses have lower cost structures and are more ‘authentic,’ and as a result are drawing larger shares of ad budgets.