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team or the people who are leading the thing do not get along. And it s deadly when they don t get along in front of the troops. I ve come to realize over the years that companies are just the people that make them up. We like to think of them as business enterprises and having this value and that value. Well, if you are going to distill it down to just patents and you are just going to go after people for infringing your patents, I agree. Those companies are simply made up of intellectual property assets. But any organization that actually has a product they are trying to ship and/or service they are trying to provide, it mainly comes down to the people. And the attitude of the company distills from the top. In an organization that is very large and has existing businesses that have been running for a long time, you could have some not-so-great things happen in the top of the company, and it doesn t have as much impact. Maybe the

employees aren t so happy, maybe they don t think so highly about their jobs, maybe they don t work as efficiently, but the company can keep plowing along. But, in the early days, you ve got nothing. All you ve got are problems problems that need to be solved, obstacles that need to be overcome. You need to have an incredibly strong bond and an incredibly synchronized view of the world amongst the key players if you are going to succeed. A synchronized view of the world doesn t mean you don t argue about things, that you don t have disagreements. You must agree on the philosophy, though, and on the vision. There are many ways to get there, but if you can t agree on the vision, then obviously you re never going to agree on how to execute. And you ve got to respect each other. You ve got to have cordial relationships. You ve got to be decent people. I can t tell you how many times I ve seen companies where people are fighting or arguing or nasty things are happening fists punched through walls. There s one example where a pair of pliers was tossed by the CEO at the controller. They sailed over her shoulder and lodged into the wall behind her. She dropped her papers and said, I quit, and stormed out the door. I ve seen this stuff happen at different places, and these companies no surprise have not prospered. But, then again, I ve seen companies that really have a lot of execution problems. General Magic is a good example of that. They really did not execute well in what they were doing. The product was very expensive; it was over $1,000. It was heavy. The battery didn t last long. The screen was not very bright. And it was loaded with all sorts of features that were not really needed by a mobile professional, which is what a PDA this was 1990 was targeted for. Palm, on the other hand, made something small, light, the battery lasted a long time. It was inexpensive and focused on things like a calendar and address book. I saw General Magic working on getting bunny rabbit animations working to make it cute. It had infrared output, and they were making it so it could tune channels on a TV. They were doing things that were just taking sideways turns from the core product, which were interesting things to work on in a playground kind of environment as engineers, but were not focused on the product execution. But the thing about it is, the three founders were very, very closely bound together. They worked together well, for better or for worse. They projected a common vision. They exuded stability, which made everyone else feel stable in the company. And it made the company strong. They were able to survive. The company ended up lasting over a decade. It did an IPO, though it finally fizzled out. And the product was never successful in the market. It only sold a few thousand units. But it shows an example of where you have so many things working against you the product was not one that was marketable, and you are facing all these problems but because they had a very strong core, they were able to survive as an organization. To me, that was the most important thing. The key thing about Phil and Bruce is that they had hearts of gold. They were nice people. They were not in it to get rich. I mean, money certainly is