“There is a bridge over the Buckingham Canal, between Triplicane and Mylapore in Madras. Built early in the 19th century, it was named after a then Governor: Hamilton Bridge. This name was too difficult for the common people to pronounce, who ultimately called it Ambattan Bridge. This word in Tamil denotes a barber. In course of time, this was re-translated into English and the bridge came to be called Barbers Bridge. The Government have now directed that the present name be changed to the original one of Hamilton Bridge.

“South Africans will never forget the Durban Test of 1969-70, when Richards and Graeme Pollock flayed the Australian attack to all parts of the Kingsmead ground.

“It has been pretty hard not being able to tell people what I work on.

“There are five stages of grief every spammer will go through when his content is removed.

“Friends would ask me, “What’s it like to be a famous international Internet CEO?” “I’m not a famous international Internet CEO,” I would answer. “But I play one on TV.”

I absolutely, completely, 100% sold myself to the media to promote Tripod.

Tripod was all hat and no cattle. Had we taken it public, we would most likely have failed, and everyone, including many unsuspecting individual investors, would have lost a lot of money.

The vast majority of journalists are not interested in covering what is actually happening. They are interested in covering what they think people want to think is actually happening.

“Don’t egosurf. You never find the NICE things people say that way.

“It is good for communities to fragment. As the number of people on reddit increases (which is presumably desirable) its front page descends further into lowest-common denominator images and video, as everything of substance becomes interesting only to a minority and so gets pummelled soon after submission.

“Luck is a part of life, and everyone, at one point or another, gets lucky. Luck is also a big part of entrepreneurial life. At the very least, entrepreneurs must believe in luck. Ideally, they can recognize it when they see it. And over time, the best entrepreneurs can actually learn to create luck.

The best way to ensure that lucky things happen is to make sure that a lot of things happen.

Being lucky in business has an intoxicating underbelly called believing you’re smart. Everyone will work hard to convince you so. Few people have the incentive to tell you the cold hard truth.

“Venture capital professionals arguably used to be a more homogeneous group: the founders and pioneers of the business, and their hand-picked proteges who had grown up as venture capitalists under close supervision and with rigorous training. The explosion of venture capital in the late 90’s has led to a much broader range of people becoming partners in venture capital firms. Many partners today have little venture capital experience. Instead they have background as executives, entrepreneurs, attorneys or recruiters.

A VC with an executive recruiting background can be incredibly helpful at recruiting. But there’s probably still no substitute for the VC who has been a VC for 20 years and has seen more strange startup situations up close and personal than you can imagine.