Sublime

The reason I do this is that I want to be known for always having time for founders. People tell me, “I know you’re really busy, I don’t want to keep you.” But it’s my job to meet with founders. There is nothing I love more! And those aren’t just words. It’s absolutely true. I love talking to people about their ideas, their products, and their visi

market insight.

People always ask me, “How do you pick billion-dollar companies to invest in?” You don’t pick billion-dollar companies. You pick billion-dollar founders.

“My job is to work with sort of the Top 100 people,” he said. “That doesn’t mean they’re all vice presidents. Some of them are just key individual contributors. So when a good idea comes…part of my job is to move it around [and]…get ideas moving among that group of 100 people.” Privately Jobs has spoken even more strongly about the Top 100’s import

When I get an email, I never go straight to the meeting. I ask how many full-time employees they have, how much money they’ve made, their funding history, how they acquire customers, and why they are building this business. The FTE and money-raised answers tell me what their burn rate is and how much they have left in the bank. Most founders think

Most of us don’t have three or four decades to build our fortunes. We want to do it in five to ten years, which I think is a reasonable window if you read this book and do what I tell you. If you compare businesses made from atoms (brick-and-mortar shops like Starbucks and McDonald’s) to businesses made from bits (software), there is no comparison.

I ask founders to explain to me every word I’ve never heard of, be it a company or technology or theory. This helps me in three ways. First, I get points for being considerate. Second, I get to hear how well they can explain things. And third, I get smarter. When I meet with founders, they are frequently awed by my knowledge of their business, and