Math is the great equalizer. If you can do the numbers, the boys have to respect you.
You need to understand the market, know how you can differentiate yourself in it, and grasp the price and the functional differentiation competitive points that are going to allow you to be disruptive.
Starting a company is like going to war. You can't do anything else but be fully engaged. You have to be insanely, passionately, nothing-can-stop-me committed.
I started in time-sharing and networking with packet switching, which was the precursor to what became the Internet. Time-shared use on packet-switch networks, when you think about it, is the cloud.
I am instinctively a network infrastructure plumber.
The more evident it is that a certain company is going to become the market leader in a big market space, then the higher the valuation goes because the risk has been dramatically reduced.