I will maintain the position that, long-term, a strong and dependable dollar is in the best interests of the United States while recognizing that, at times over the long-term, that may not be the case.
Why do investors seem to care about 'billion dollar exits?' Historically, top venture funds have driven returns from their ownership in just a few companies in a given fund of many companies.
As long as the dollar remains in high esteem as a trade currency, America can continue to spend more than it earns. But when the day arrives - as it certainly must - when the dollar tumbles and foreigners no longer want it, the free ride will be over.
Many entrepreneurs, and the venture investors who back them, seek to build billion-dollar companies.
More and more major industries are being run on software and delivered as online services—from movies to agriculture to national defense. Many of the winners are Silicon Valley-style entrepreneurial technology companies that are invading and overturning established industry structures. Over the next 10 years, I expect many more industries to be disrupted by software, with new world-beating Silicon Valley companies doing the disruption in more cases than not.
Music companies are not technology companies any more than technology companies are music companies. They're really different from each other.
I think that most technology is positive in the short term, and negative in the long term. I wonder, if somebody looked back at the 20th and 21st centuries a thousand years from now, what their perception of the car would be. Or of television. I wonder if over time, they'll be seen as this thing that drove the culture, but ultimately had more downside than upside.
Too many investors overvalue companies in the near term while undervaluing them in the long term.
Remember Circuit City? Bear Stearns? Lehman Brothers? Sports Authority? Once, all were billion-dollar companies - then gone in a moment. The fatal problem might be fraud or corruption, but more often, it's simply that management didn't see 'over the other side of the hill.'
We're much more focused on the long term than most companies.
At 25, I made many companies. I was thinking more like a businessman or entrepreneur than a CEO. I created many companies, small companies, medium companies. I tried to be involved in many kinds of activities, in finance, in real estate, in mining.
Earth has provided a stable platform for the evolution of life over 4 billion years. But that lease is limited; we know for sure that it will expire after a few billion more. . . . If we are wise, we will have furnished our new apartments long before that time.
I now say that the world has the technology - either available or well advanced in the research pipeline - to feed on a sustainable basis a population of 10 billion people. The more pertinent question today is whether farmers and ranchers will be permitted to use this new technology? While the affluent nations can certainly afford to adopt ultra low-risk positions, and pay more for food produced by the so-called "organic" methods, the one billion chronically undernourished people of the low income, food-deficit nations cannot.
Today more than 20,000 communities participate in the National Flood Insurance Program. More than 90 insurance companies sell and service flood service insurance. There are more than four million policies covering the total of $800 billion.
There's smarter people than me. But you cannot have any one guy running 18 billion-dollar businesses. It just doesn't make sense to me. I've met some extraordinary leaders in my time. They struggle with running one billion-dollar business.
We over estimate technology in the short term and under estimate technology in the long term.