Best quote from the Bill Gates Playboy Interview (1994)

PLAYBOY: Is it true that  that you supposedly paid $242  for a pizza to be delivered one night.
GATES: That is just reporter’s randomness to the max.

Read it here. Inspiring and sometimes hilarious. Billg at his best.

Quote of the day

“When we were at Netscape, John Doerr introduced us to the CEO of AT&T. That’s great, but he’s not buying a Web server. If you have no relationship at that level, it’s not as powerful, so we invest a lot in that.” Ben Horowitz (software entrepreneur, VC, and valuable blogger)

Why Andreessen Horowitz Models Itself After A Hollywood Talent Agency

Some news

Now that  @loic has published my official obituary, I can only confirm that I’ll be joining Facebook next month. (and  I’m thrilled about that).

I don’t want to write about that right now, I’m still  happy Microsoft employee    and I have a lot of things to do before leaving, in 3 weeks. ( including the Failconf, the techdays, etc..).

Last month, I started writing a very long post to express my gratitude to the people who hired me and helped  me to learn and grow at Microsoft. To name a few: Marc Jalabert, Cliff Reeves, Eric Boustouller and Dan’l Lewin.

I only have great things to say about that company  (and the people I’ve worked for/with) and I’ll publish that later.

PS: You’ve certainly seen some idiots who left Microsoft  and then started , almost overnight, praising the competition…. this is not gonna happen here

Releasing the Kelbook, for free, on Frenchweb

5 years after its release, I’m very happy to offer the Kelbook  a second life: free and online. The Kelbook is a book we published with Pearson in 2005, it basically tells Kelkoo.com’s success-story, from the INRIA research Labs to the half-a-billion acquisition by Yahoo. The great story of computer science nerds who became successful internet entrepreneurs, importing the pay-per-lead business model in Europe, thanks to a great piece of technology invented at the INRIA.

Cyrille (aka @Vinvin) and I spent a full year working on that book. Meeting amazing people across all of Europe. 

It represents a lot to me and I’m glad we can share this with as many entrepreneurs/developers as possible.

You can now read the book on your PC, your phone, your Kindle, your iPad, etc.. anything that can read PDFs.

I hope you’ll find inspiration… get the kelbook here, thanks to Frenchweb.

Don’t miss that interview of A.Tamas, from DST @leweb

 

Talk about an investment strategy.  His firm is buying big chunks of internet superstars like Facebook, Groupon or Zynga, sometimes from employees themselves. This is one of the most interesting ITW that I’ve seen at Leweb this year.

DST is listed on the London stock exchange, un der the name mail.ru group (could not find the annual report though)

11.12.55: Never Forget.

Best of video: Pitch your App to SteveB