What the partners were looking for were categories that were ripe for “disintermediation”—removing a middle layer in the distribution chain. In this case, that layer was the twelve thousand or so art galleries in the country.

But knowing that the CEO was personally fielding calls from angry customers when they could not find someone to speak with in his department would provide all the incentive he needed, and she knew it.

Daniel Webster: “There is always room at the top.”

Benchmark’s self-proclaimed “fundamentally better architecture” was based on a bedrock tenet: equal partners, without hierarchical separation, with equal votes and equal compensation. They had used it brilliantly from the beginning to differentiate themselves from the rest of the firms on Sand Hill Road.

Everyone in attendance was in a dark suit, and euphoria was in the air. In a buffet line, one gentleman with silver hair told another, “I haven’t felt this smart since 1968.” He added, “If we start thinking it’s our brains, we’re in trouble.” That sort of self-admonishment was the voice of the minority, however. Self-congratulation was the theme

When eBay, a small Internet auction company based in San Jose, California, sought venture capital, it had to pass an informal test administered by the venture guys before they would consider making an investment: Was there a reasonably good likelihood that the investors could make ten times their money within three years? In

Since we’re not actively shopping for capital, Walker summed up, this isn’t about the money per se. It’s really about two teams—your team, our team. We’ve got a multibillion-dollar asset here if played right. We’re not greedy; we’re not pigs. We’re players. Game theorists that we are, we understand the game trade. And we’re not afraid to make a

“So they know they’re in a tough spot.” Still, the inertial drag in a big company was the most powerful factor in the equation.

By temperament, Skoll could not help but pour himself into the work in a scarily total fashion—once he started at eBay, he worked hundred-hour weeks for the next two and a half years. But he wasn’t driven by materialist hungers, and he thought of himself not as a businessperson but as a writer.