Netpreneur Exchange.. An Evening With the Barons

Click here for the full transcript, but first check out these notable quotables!


Little companies compete well because they are wiry, they are slim, they haven't beefed up on overhead. They are like little speed boats so when they see something change, they can change quickly. Changing quickly is the big challenge for big companies. You get big. You get arrogant. Arrogance is success' evil twin....The minute you think you know everything is the minute you are going to die. ... trying to find other people to carry water for you and to leverage other people's assets to your own benefit is a great tactic. You have to find somebody and, Tom Sawyer-like, you have to explain to them why it's in their best interest to want to team up with you.	[Greater Washington is] at a place of convergence that is making us different because we are sitting in the middle. The fact is that communications (the pipes), computing (the process) and content (the information) are all converging, and they are converging nowhere in the world better than in this region. I remember the number of times we worked around the clock, the number of times we ate steak and eggs ate at Toddle House, the number of times we did really stupid things. That's entrepreneurship, folks, because you are living on the edge. . . .You have no board room. You meet in lobbies of hotels, maybe basements, maybe living rooms. You have to be aggressively competitive. Make sure you are in the game. There is no excuse for not jumping in. Whether you are going to be a netpreneur today, next week or next year, be ready when that opportunity comes.This is not about getting to a destination. This is a journey. Every step of the journey, you need to figure out what you are learning that will make you better equipped.


You have to be out in this community. You have to be in the West Coast community. You have to be in the European community. You have to be in the Far East community. All of these places, things are popping all the time. It's face-to-face time physically and face-to-face time on the Net. There is no protection. When you jump in, you’ve got to jump in. Yes, the big guys will try to steal your ideas, try to buy you, try to work with you. Part of building a business is building perimeters of defense. Really, entrepreneuring seriously is much more about learning how to learn; nonstop learning.... In all business, I think every entrepreneur that has been in the business says he is wrong at least 50 percent of the time, not 60 percent of the time. You try to make mistakes that are not fatal, but that you can learn from and learn with your group.	In the 15 or so years that I have tried to make a living in this business, I have never seen a capital market that is as powerful or open as it is today. This capital market is like a high-octane gasoline that is fueling these fires from technological change and resulting in incredibly swift application across the board. At the end of the day, I think the only thing you can ever really hope for is mind share that leads to market share. You've just got to run. If it's a great idea, customers will buy it. [The Internet] isn't about technology, the Internet is about fundamental economics and the change in economics. What does the Internet do to the existing business paradigm?