Mary Meeker Quotations

Yahoo!'s financial model shows great flexibility, in our view, ... Yahoo! should be a core holding for growth investors. The company has one of the best financial models we have ever seen and we consider it to be one of the world's most powerful brands.

The reality here is we're dealing with a market environment that was overheated.

One of the greatest investments of our lifetime has been New York City real estate, and investors made the highest returns when they bought stuff during the 1970s and 1980s when people were getting mugged. The lesson is that you make the most money when you buy stuff that's out of consensus.

I grew up in a small town in northeastern Indiana. I had an all-American childhood. And I grew up as an optimist.

It isn't uncommon this time of year for prices of technology stocks to contract when catalysts are insufficient.

Most have a trickle of volume and the bulk will remain of marginal import in the scheme of things. We saw an exchange for the worldwide market in Ferris wheels recently -- we started to wonder if we are reaching the peak.

We continue to believe that, at the margin, Microsoft shares should outperform over time, owing to the outlook for above-average revenues and profit growth, ... But there are qualifiers, and finding catalysts is key.

We believe the first 10 years of the Internet were a warm-up for what's about to happen.

We aren't at all opposed to disciplining Microsoft, but we think a breakup is simply too harsh. We continue to believe that a more appropriate remedy would relate to behavioral changes, government changes and perhaps an economic hit.

We are in or are entering TWO cycles instead of one broadband Internet and mobile.

We believe that 10 percent of the internet stocks are undervalued, 90 percent may be overvalued.

I've never seen this kind of activity from these kinds of companies.

I've always wanted to invest. That's why I started working on Wall Street in the first place, back in 1986 when I went through the Salomon Brothers training program.

The beauty or scary thing about Yahoo! (depending on your perspective), is that is has created this big ... base (and database) of users -- more and more of them keep going to the site a lot, they keep doing things with Yahoo!'s integrated sets of services and the users become dependent on the site and services and they don't pay a cent for them.

If Microsoft can't get operating leverage when it's in its biggest product cycle ever (and customer interest is high), when can the company show leverage?

The idea of the U.S. as a corporation is more than a thought experiment. It's a way to reposition our approach to long-term problems. What would U.S.A. Inc. be worth? Who would want to buy its shares?

Among Internet leaders, we think Yahoo!, owing to its revenue concentration, is most at risk to Internet ad spending trends.

Internet TV is replacing linear TV.

I grew up believing that one person could make a difference. In Indiana, you saw that with basketball. The small town could beat the big town, like in the movie 'Hoosiers.' That is one of the things that attracts me to entrepreneurs.

A captivating moment was when I realized that people, including myself, were not saying, 'I just bought an item on eBay.' They were saying, 'I just won an item on eBay.' It was the thrill of the hunt. I bought a car on eBay.

I've made my best personal investments when I've been a user of the product. Like Apple. The epiphany for me came when I purchased my fifth iPod and I hadn't unwrapped my fourth. It was still in the plastic case.

You could take the Internet enthusiasm that was happening in 1999 and 2000 here in the U.S., and in China it was three-to-five times more ebullient.

When, within our souls and psyches we are made aware of a safe but insistent drum beat, repeated like butterfly wings in motion, we sense the message...that our inner self has begun its search for freedom.

The internet is the most underutilized advertising medium that's out there.

I love data. I think it's very important to get it right, and I think it's good to question it.