By way of disclosure, I'm currently doing my MBA at Oxford University (across the pond) and had the pleasure of meeting Tim when he came to do a talk on entrepreneurship.

I really enjoyed Tim's talk. His stories about being a rebel at McKinsey in Mexico were memorable (still remember the peso valuation battles, Tim). And his advice about following your heart (not just your pocketbook) resonated with many of us.

Right or wrong, I believe that inspiring and educating others towards a life of entrepreneurship doesn't require a PhD or a lot of bling. In my humble opinion, it requires a unique combination of smarts, confidence, humility and empathy. And, Tim radiated all of those qualities. I could say more but it would probably cross the line into Cheesistan.

Josh, I hope you get a chance to meet Tim someday. I'm sure you'll come away from that meeting with a different perspective. Good luck to you in all that you do.

Cheers…

- Gagan

Why do I write about education? Stanford? Personal experience, and personal opinion. No apologies for either. I don't think I've ever said anybody needs education as much as I've said people who have the luxury are lucky to have it, and if you have a choice, you ought to want it. I didn't think anybody chose ignorance when they had a choice. I also think I've been comfortably cynical about the MBA degree from time to time … but your opinion is your opinion.

What do I know about growing a business? I know there's a lot of different definitions of success. I've got a business that's been cash flow positive for several years, that has 40 employees, has never missed payroll (except when it didn't pay me), and has 70% market share in its segment, and all that without outside investment, meaning I own it, all of it (shared with my wife and grownup children) and that's not bad. You're right though, I could have sold it several times, but chose not to. So?

Oh, and by the way, there's more than just that one company in my about box.

Tim

I disagree wholeheartedly about virtualization. I'm a consultant who does software development. I couldn't do my job without VMWare Workstation. When I'm done with the customer's software they get a copy of the VM with a fully functional development environment.

Any company of any size that is ignoring virtualization is throwing money out the window. A single server of recent vintage can easily run anywhere from 3 to 5 virtualized servers, depending on the workload. This allows you to follow best practices in service segmentation (don't run your print server on your domain controller) while not spending a fortune on hardware.

Finally, Windows XP is going to be a business staple for at least 5 to 7 years. The move to Vista is not automatic, either. One of my customers is piloting a Ubuntu Linux project. So far the people using it have loved it because it runs better on the same hardware than XP does. It does take a little more expertise to get going, but you're going to have to ramp up skills to deploy Vista, too. With Ubuntu this customer will save more in hardware and software licensing than they will invest in training, and everybody wins.

Your blog appears to be about start up and growth… I am confused as to why you talk constantly about MBAs, Stanford and collegiate education in general, when some of the most successful startups in history did not involve people overly concerned with college educations. Also- What makes you an expert on growing a company? I read about your company and its none nothing remarkable in 20 years? Most big names in business would have sold your company 5 times over and theyd be sitting on millions of dollars.

I don't get why people still waste energy whining about Vista. I blew it off for a long time, but recently I needed a new machine… and discovered that I love it. XP instantly looked dated and clunky. A new OS needs more powerful hardware? Sure it sucks, but it's hardly news. It's time to stop whining.

I found both sets of commentaries on "Anything Green" hilarious. My company is real-world (e.g. large and physical) not online, and from time to time we've talked about green-this and green-that. But the fact is, it's expensive, it's usually hard to find, and the payback is always near-zero or less. I'm burning $55mm to make more money, not to save the whales. On the other hand, I REALLY hope all my competitors go to great lengths to do their part, LOL.