Risk and failure is a part of our equation, and if you are seeing too little failure, you are actually probably not taking enough risks.
There's never been a good period of venture capital when prices weren't high.
I couldn't use Nest because it doesn't operate with high-end HVAC systems.
Obviously there are positives to working in the epicenter of innovation. But there are also disadvantages. There is a groupthink mentality that goes on. Being based outside of Silicon Valley, you're not as subject to it.
I started my career at General Electric in a small office under a guy named Greg Liemandt, and his direct boss was Jack Welch. I would say those two have had the most profound impact on my career.
We talk to our partners in Silicon Valley every week, so we have a real sense of what goes on.
I'd love to see the secondary markets become more widespread in terms of their adoption.
We had this unbelievable faith that no business has done, quite frankly, and we tripped along the way doing it, but within two years, we were in 40-plus countries. So we ran at an amazing pace, and this is where venture capitalists play a role. Making Groupon into what it is today, we had no role in it; the entrepreneurs did it.
I had learnt from my years of being in the services business, like networking and closely watching the early days of the Internet, that scale leads to many possibilities.
