Ultimately, the goal is to use acquisitions to compress time on product development and get people on the team, especially in senior roles, who can help build out areas of the company they have experience in.

Taking a great new idea with an entrepreneurial team that wants to create something significant and trying to build a real company is what is interesting.

My view was, if I didn't like Boulder, I'd keep going west, except I never really wanted to live in the Bay Area.

Lots of entrepreneurs don't want to be hassled by a board of directors early on. The entrepreneurs want to control the company, don't want to be responsible to a board, or don't want to waste time communicating with board members. This is a classic error of thinking about the early stage board incorrectly.

It's much easier to get a reception from someone if there is an introduction versus randomly trying to get in front of people.

I'm a strong believer that you can build great companies in time of both greed and fear. But you have to be paying attention and operating under the right assumptions. You don't have to believe history repeats itself, but you should accept that history rhymes.