I think Salesforce, going public very early on before they were profitable, it made a lot of sense for them because it got customers comfortable that these guys were going to have capital and be transparent about their business.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Salesforce's Chatter is what convinced me that the company understood what is going on in the enterprise; this was the biggest attraction for me. I saw that Salesforce understands social.
During the 2000 bubble, many companies rushed to go public before they had any revenue.
There is a significant momentum behind the social Internet. A wide range of public investors were very enthusiastic about that.
I would say the consumer Internet companies - in a lot of ways, if you go inside the consumer Internet companies and you see how they run, it's how all their businesses are going to run.
Being a public company is really terrible for most companies. I'd say Facebook and Google have done a pretty good job of standing up to the incredible quarterly pressure to hit numbers, but most companies - and I've observed a lot now - don't do a very good job of that.
I think good companies can navigate being public and doing the right things for their customers.
We got bigger, much scarier competitors. We ended up with Microsoft, a company with all the money in the world, the way I look at those guys. And IBM, another company that, historically, dwarfed us.
I wouldn't necessarily say that 'Alpha House' or 'Betas' embodied a particular vision of Amazon of the kind of brand or programming they were gonna do. I think those were the first lucky creators who hit it right for them.
Great companies start because the founders want to change the world... not make a fast buck.
Facebook, Google, Apple, Yahoo - there's a common theme. None of these companies ever sold. By staying independent, they were able to build a great company.