Bill Maris

Back in the late 1990s, venture capitalists got very excited about the Internet. A whole lot of money was poured into some companies that failed rather spectacularly, and a lot of people lost a lot of money.

Google Ventures has a direct financial incentive to ensure the companies we invest in succeed.

With a regular venture fund, you raise, let's say, a billion dollars, and then over the next three or four years, you've got to invest that money; otherwise, the people who invested with you will say, 'What are you doing? You're just collecting fees on our money.'

Silicon Valley has been a technology capital like New York is a financial capital.

Venture funds get beaten up for not investing in important things. Okay, if you want venture funds to invest in important things, then don't penalize or make fun of them when those important things don't work.

I'm not bothered when other VCs start hiring great designers or start recruiting. That's the direction I'd like it to go.

There are a number of start-ups in Europe that are able to reach beyond their own country. Take Spotify - Spotify just in Sweden isn't that interesting compared to Spotify all over the world.

When you build relationships with entrepreneurs, they're not trying to optimize on price.

Your genome isn't really secret.

VC firms are... responsible for the full life cycle of a company: they find it, help it grow, open up a Rolodex, and sell it.

As life expectancy extends beyond 80 years in some parts of the world, more people are struggling with brain diseases. For older people, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and other conditions become a major impediment to quality of life.

We actually have the tools in the life sciences to achieve anything that you have the audacity to envision. I just hope to live long enough not to die.