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If you work for Google or Apple, stock options give you a chance to share in the increasing value of the company. In the N.F.L., nothing like this happens; the players, though rich, are just working stiffs like the rest of us.

Whenever you look at any potential merger or acquisition, you look at the potential to create value for your shareholders.

Shareholders share in the downside and not necessarily in the upside; that's the whole story.

Joint-stock companies are yet in their infancy, and incorporated capital, instead of being a thing which can be overturned, is a thing which is becoming more and more indispensable.

When companies are private, founders can share more about their future dreams with investors; report less; and the shares are illiquid, constraining short-term changes in valuation.

Companies that get confused, that think their goal is revenue or stock price or something. You have to focus on the things that lead to those.

When I was in the private sector, one characteristic that differentiated the best entrepreneurs from the others was that they were not in it for the stock options, but for a mission - to deliver something that was helpful... Every entrepreneurial journey, it turns out, is like this.

Tech executives have historically been owners of significant portions of their companies' stock so there is a propensity for them to diversify as a rule.

You have more independent eyes scrutinizing the decision-making and financial statements of companies.

Today, public companies don't like the idea of conglomerates. People want to buy something in which they know where they are putting their money - into the food business or the oil and gas business. They don't want to put their money into a hodge-podge as a general rule.