Mainstreet Memories, 2024

What is venture about? Venture is about - you really go early and you hit home runs, you have huge multiples. That’s what venture is about. If you’re just talking about the size of the fund and the venture fees, that defeats the purpose of venture.

A hammer or screwdriver is a beautifully designed utility tool that helps you do one thing well, and then you put it away. Your life is not about hammers, you don’t swipe your hammer for five hours so the hammer company can make money

We were the first team to build out this hybrid model between the Rockets and the Vipers, which led to wonderful success… four G-League championships, we got our first one in 2010, three coaches now in the NBA, including Chris Finch who was my coach at RGV, and now he is on the cusp of taking the Timberwolves - knock on wood - to the NBA title. Nick Nurse succeeded him, and as you know, Nick Nurse was an NBA championship coach with the Raptors

The thing is, occasionally in the world, the game changes. Bloomberg was really good at getting data from exchanges, they were perfect at that and we could never compete. But now it was about crawling data, getting data from the web, spinning up data models pretty quickly, getting your fingertips on the newest technologies - and there are no specialists on that because it’s new technology. So we had a shot.

The world is so competitive, you really do need to focus on one thing to be great at it. There are obviously exceptions like Jack Dorsey and Elon Musk, who can be the CEO of more than one company and lead it to great success, but for the rest of us mortals, I think focus is really key.

Let me tell you something bro. No matter how you cut that sandwich - square, diagonal - the bread comes first.