Keep in mind the challenging fact that your aim is not to get ahead of others, but to surpass yourself; to begin today to be the person you want to be.
The thing about the Internet is the openness. People can link to each other themselves.
Look for when the environment is changing - the big shift now is mobile Internet. It's really happening big-time. The way you interact with services on a smart phone compared to the Web is quite different, so there's a huge opportunity.
Some Internet operators are concerned that video services such as Netflix and YouTube consume lots of the bandwidth on the network. While there is some truth to this, my guess is that the operators wished they could provide the same kind of services with the same success as Netflix and YouTube.
As an investor, what we're not looking for is 'oh this is a cool app,' it's 'is this something that can become a big business?' You need to find those that can become real businesses.
The telephone is a 100-year-old technology. It's time for a change. Charging for phone calls is something you did last century.
If you want to be an entrepreneur, it's not a job, it's a lifestyle. It defines you. Forget about vacations, about going home at 6 pm - last thing at night you'll send emails, first thing in the morning you'll read emails, and you'll wake up in the middle of the night. But it's hugely rewarding as you're fulfilling something for yourself.
If the company depends entirely on you - your creativity, ingenuity, inspiration, salesmanship or charisma - nobody will want to buy it. The risk and the dependency are too great.
I'm not saying I don't ever improvise because I do that quite a lot, especially with other people, but generally I've got an idea in my head and then I'll pursue it 'til I get there.
An employer has no business with a man's personality. Employment is a specific contract calling for a specific performance. . . Any attempt to go beyond that is usurpation. It is immoral as well as an illegal intrusion of privacy. It is abuse of power. An employee owes no "loyalty," he owes no "love" and no "attitudes" - he owes performance and nothing else. . . . . The task is not to change personality, but to enable a person to achieve and to perform.
You don't want to be the best at what you do, you want to be the only one.