“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.

“Startups that have a credible potential to be sold or go public for a 10x gain on invested capital within 4 to 6 years of the date of funding should consider raising venture capital. Most other startups should not raise venture capital. This includes: startups where the founders want to stay private and independent for a long time; startups where there’s no inherent leverage in the business model that could result in a 10x gain in 4 to 6 years; and startups working on projects with a longer fuse than 4 to 6 years.

“Here’s something surprising about venture capitalists: their primary job is often helping very worthwhile nonprofits build larger and larger endowments to be able to continually make the world a better place. The largest investors in many top-tier venture capital firms are nonprofits — particularly universities and large philanthropic foundations.

Why you should feel sorry for VCs: life in the VC trenches seems to consist of trying to jumpstart or otherwise fix fatally flawed startups.

“I’d recommend being more focused on picking the right partner than picking the right venture capital firm.