Ken Marlin

And separately, I actually think it was a smart price.

I contrast that with Microsoft buying LinkedIn.

And I should say that I love LinkedIn.

I'm one of the first thousand users of LinkedIn.

We use it extensively in my company.

I think it's a great service.

And yet I think it has zero strategic fit with Microsoft in spite of their press releases.

You know, we see Microsoft make these sort of defensive plays and sometimes offensive plays a lot.

They bought AQuantive and then wound up writing it down.

They bought Nokia's handset business and wound up writing it down.

They do this a lot.

And defensive measures only make sense when they advance you towards a clearly defined strategic objective.

Otherwise, they just waste people's time and money.

I lived in search of excellence quite a long time ago and a concept that they espoused in that business called managing by wandering around.

We deal with managers all the time, and the best ones are not the ones that are always in their office, and I can always find them there.

They're out wandering around, talking to employees, talking to customers, talking to suppliers, and hearing firsthand what are people's issues.

I am always talking with CEOs.

I'm always watching them and observing them.

Right now, the guy I'm paying the most attention to, I suppose, is a CEO, but he's the CEO of a venture capital firm, and his name is Fred Wilson.

And I think he is the smartest guy I know in terms of identifying new trends and taking advantage of them.