Crystal-clear thinking is one of the things we look for – not a fancy slide pitch, but crystal-clear thinking.

The trick is, a market has to be nonexistent when you start. If the market is large early on, you will have too many competitors. You have to make it large.

If I could press a button and have all of Sequoia Capital on the Midas List, I would choose to do that over a honoring a single individual.

In a globalized world, one application can spread like wildfire and there's only one winning company, which means you have to invest more than you've ever had.

If you start a successful company in China at 11 A.M., by 2 P.M. there's three more companies like it.

I'll say this: I can't think of one instance in my 20 years in venture capital in which I have wanted to sell a company before the entrepreneur.

If you choose a market that already exists, say, networking equipment, you have to compete with an established company like Cisco. Even if your product is marginally better, Cisco can fudge it and outsell you.

There's a number of companies clearly that we wish we had invested in either at the early or at the moderate stage.

You meet with a CEO or founder. You talk about sales, engineering, product management and give some ideas or suggestions. And the founder quickly understands that you really can help them both operationally and from a strategic standpoint.

Raise as little as you can to get you to something that you can show - plus maybe a quarter or two so you have a little bit of cushion - and then raise some more money. Raise as little - not as much - as you can because that's the most expensive equity you're going to sell.