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Though it is very easy to do valuations, eyeballs and brand prominence surveys, you should never allow any of them to influence the balance sheet.

The fact is that one of the earliest lessons I learned in business was that balance sheets and income statements are fiction, cash flow is reality.

Our balance sheet provides us with the ability to act on investment opportunities in appropriate areas that diversify and broaden our portfolio, including the gas and energy sector.

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.

Companies typically borrow money at less than their return on equity and therefore compound their return at the expense of lenders.

Most firms are hierarchical in nature, with everyone getting different slices of the economic pie. The problem is those slices are negotiated every time a firm raises a new fund, so in between funds, which is most of the time, the partners are trying to outgun one another to make a stronger case for themselves.

Too often, investors are the target of fraudulent schemes disguised as investment opportunities. As you know, if the balance is tipped to the point where investors are not confident that there are appropriate protections, investors will lose confidence in our markets, and capital formation will ultimately be made more difficult and expensive.

With a private company, you've got to get into who's investing and what's the balance sheet like. So going public is a positive thing from the perspective of the sales organization.