Peter Levine

Probably, if I created a venture fund, I would create a firm with virtual services not too different from the a16z model, but without employing people. So I would get CPOs, engineering talent, marketing people who wanted to be involved with the venture fund and provide services.

With the premise that we look for technical co-founders to run a company, I view myself as being a coach to that technical co-founder. I can help them with their business issues, with the growth issues of taking a company from a very early stage to something much larger.

Technical co-founders are great at envisioning where the company's going from a strategic standpoint. They have what I call the 'gut-feel' of building out their business.

I can certainly imagine a day where task workers, enterprise workers no longer communicate via email but instead use some social vehicle that looks a lot like consumer social networks we see today.

I look at Boston-based companies all the time... There's certainly great companies in Boston. If the deal makes sense on the merit of the deal itself, we'll go and do the deal.

In the old days, I'd have to go as a company, buy computer resources, buy servers, buy storage, and lash it all together. It took a long time to stand up. Now, if I need, I can go to Amazon or Rackspace and buy some computer power nearly instantaneously.

I think with the proliferation of mobile devices and then, eventually, the Internet of Things, we literally have supercomputers in our pockets and supercomputers that will hang on telephone poles and in light bulbs.

When you and I go to work, and we use a computer to work and find that our work apps are completely onerous and the apps we use at home are quite easy, we wonder, why can't it be simpler, easier, quicker, and less expensive?