Things Michael Moritz Has Said on Podcasts

“There's a gaping hole in the dashboard… So I said, Bill, what happened? Where'd you get ripped off? And he said, I didn't get ripped off. I had it removed… I don't want to have a radio that I can switch on that takes my mind away from Microsoft. And I thought, maybe that story should be a definition of the word obsession in the Oxford English Dictionary.” — Michael Moritz, The Investor's Podcast (We Study Billionaires) - The Investor’s Podcast Network

Moritz recalls reporting on a young Bill Gates for Time magazine in the early 1980s, when Gates gave him a ride in a Mercedes with the radio missing. He offers it as an example of how Gates cut every distraction from his life to focus on Microsoft.

The Investor's Podcast (We Study Billionaires) - The Investor’s Podcast Network · 2026-10-11 Permalink → Listen →

The Investor's Podcast (We Study Billionaires) - The Investor’s Podcast Network Around 44:08 into the episode

Michael Moritz

…obviously, to the two of them. But I think the contemporaneous nature of our age may have been a little bit of an advantage. I mean, these, I'm not putting myself for even the slightest moment comparing that. The only thing I had in common with them was, you know, I was really roughly the same age.

William Green

…you say he looks like an undernourished grad student as he waits for his plane at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. But then you just describe, you know, there's this really lovely portrait of just a fanatically focused guy. And I wonder if you could talk about that. That really comes through.

Michael Moritz

…a great sponge for knowledge and had such enormous curiosity. But I think the thing that you were referencing was after we finished our interview, we were both flying back to, or I was flying back to San Francisco and he had a meeting with Intel and with Andy Crow. And I got into the car and he offered me a ride and he had this, you know, he had this Mercedes sedan and there was no radio in it. There's a gaping hole in the dashboard, which looked just like every gaping hole in the dashboard of a of a radio that had been ripped off from a car. So I said, Bill, you know, what happened? Where'd you get ripped off? And he said, I didn't get ripped off. I had it removed. Why did you have it removed? Well, I'm in the car between my apartment and the office and then between the office and the airport. And I don't want to have a…

William Green

Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors.

Speaker 4

Curious about online trading, but haven't taken the first step yet? You're not alone. And Plus500 Futures is a great place to start. The futures markets are moving fast. And with Plus 500, you can explore popular assets like oil, gold, SP 500, Bitcoin, and more. From crypto to commodities, there's…

William Green

All right, back to the show. Yeah, it's really fascinating. I think I was very struck as I was going through those old stories that you wrote about him of how many, in how many ways he sort of established a prototype for what you would see again and again with great founders, right? So you would…

Speaker names from our own diarization · position estimated from where the line sits in the episode

“Most investors are congenitally incapable of doing nothing… When somebody says to me, "Well, don't you think we should sell it? It's trading at an all-time high," my question to that person is: in the 30 years or so that Amazon has traded as a public company, how many days has that stock traded at an all-time high? That question always stops people in their tracks.” — Michael Moritz, The Investor's Podcast (We Study Billionaires) - The Investor’s Podcast Network

William Green read Moritz a Charlie Munger remark that his edge at Sequoia was temperament: he held on to his winners. Moritz's answer is that selling at a new high is usually a decision about the past, and that nothing beats the compounding of a well-positioned company.

The Investor's Podcast (We Study Billionaires) - The Investor’s Podcast Network · 2026-10-11 Permalink → Listen →

The Investor's Podcast (We Study Billionaires) - The Investor’s Podcast Network Around 1:04:04 into the episode

Michael Moritz

…that is fresh and something that is new, if harnessed with the right management team with the right business outlook, can outmaneuver, outrun and conquer incumbent companies. But for an investor, it's all about being open and being willing to be educated by somebody a lot younger than you are.

William Green

…best was Michael Moritz, and he was not the leading intellect, but temperamentally, he was able to hang on to everything. He did better than all his brighter partners. And I just thought that was a really interesting insight. I don't know if that's accurate. What's your reaction to that insight?

Michael Moritz

Most investors are incapable of doing nothing. Well, first of all, I'm incredibly flattered that he's right about the insight. I'm incredibly flattered that he would even remember or have said that. Most investors, doesn't matter what arena, Berkshire Hathaway is a standout in this regard. Most investors are congenitally incapable of doing nothing. They just, they have to do something. Now, if you're a venture investor and you have shares in a private company, until the last five, 10 years when the secondary market has kicked in in a big fashion, if you have shares in a private company, you can't do anything. But when it becomes public, you immediately have the opportunity to sell it. And, you know, people buy a stock because. Whether…

William Green

It's an amazingly important insight, I think, typical of Charlie that he homed in on something so important. You led or co-led Sequoia for many years, I think 16 years or so before you stepped down as the official leader, day-to-day leader. I'm very curious about what you learned about being a…

Michael Moritz

I wish I'd known him earlier in my and you know, I didn't really get to know him until about 20 years ago. And coincidentally, I can't resist this, we have another book that's coming out. It's getting published in Britain at the end of next week called The Games of My Life, which we worked on for…

William Green

I was very struck by a story you've told before about after David Beckham once again ruined our chances in the World Cup and got sent off for some ridiculous

Speaker names from our own diarization · position estimated from where the line sits in the episode

Things Michael Says on Podcasts

Where to Find Them

What They Said

Collections They Appear In