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Every venture capitalist says at some point, 'I wish I could run this company myself' - to be the entrepreneur instead of the investor.

First of all, in terms of investment in Internet-related developments, venture capitalists - once burned - are now very cautious and are investing in areas that actually make business sense.

I'd been a great angel investor, but professional venture capital was clearly not the right thing for me.

I wanted to be a venture capitalist and join Sequoia Capital. They've financed and helped built some really special and enormously successful companies, including Google, Yahoo, Paypal, YouTube, Cisco, Oracle, Apple, and also Zappos.

Venture capitalists buy minority positions in young companies they think will grow quickly; buy-out investors buy most or all of companies they think can be turned around by fixing a few basic things.

So many folks in the venture capital business are sheep that just want to follow the herd. They are momentum investors purchasing highly illiquid investments. That is a recipe for disaster.

I don't think I've ever not had a dark side. But one of the wonderful reasons why you go into this business is that half your life you live in a fantasy, which is somebody else's life. It's actually a great release because you're not having to deal with the itty-bitty bits of life.

I don't think a lot of people have been entrepreneurial about venture capital.

I realized that, after tasting entrepreneurship, I had become unfit for the corporate world. There was no turning back. The only regret I had was having wasted my life in the corporate world for so long.