When I started doing things on my own, I was figuring - remember, it was a very nascent market. And there was a lot that was unknown about the renewable marketplace in 2004, early 2003, when I was planning on it.

New industries are created by entrepreneurs who don't necessarily have subject matter expertise when they get started, yet they are still responsible for most of the innovation we see in society.

Seeking an acquisition from the start is more than just bad advice for an entrepreneur. For the entrepreneur it leads to short term tactical decisions rather than company-building decisions and in my view often reduces the probability of success.

You take something like RingCentral. It doesn't need any more money or financing: it is relatively mature, recurring revenue business - not really worried - but you know, we could sell it tomorrow. We have not been in a rush to sell it. We don't care about exits as much. We care about building fundamental value.

In the end, the whole Internet thing kills me, because you can use it as a positive thing or you can read into all the negativity. And I think you've gotta put out positive energy, put out cool viral stuff, and then just stay out of people's opinions.

If you step back and look at technology from every era, it has displaced jobs but also created a lot of jobs.

As for my friends, I do have friends that aren't in the entertainment world at all but do interact on social media. I think that's an innate human thing now, to connect via those channels.

One of the annoyances of working for The Guardian is that, obsessed as the organisation is with its digital and social media presence and its own sense of singular importance, editors would militantly try to edit your tweets.