I like what he said about Wal-Mart of China being an on-line company. A lot of the emerging markets skipped fully building out landlines to go mobile. Could a country skip brick and mortar to go largely online?
I can think of a dozen reasons why he's wrong, but I'd have said the same about several of his investments, and he's the one who has been right so far.
I'm more interested in seeing what Mr. Milner will do with Zynga than any of his other investments, especially since ZNGA just closed higher than it's IPO for the first time the other day. As an outsider and a game enthusiast, I'd argue they haven't been pushing the envelope in quite some time (if at all)-- and yet he's still backing them. That to me is interesting, and has me wondering what they have in their pipeline.
Minor quibble: Zynga isn't a game company. They're a social engineering company. They employ people to discover the best ways to get "players" to transfer their money to Zynga. All other priorities are secondary.
Sorry; this is a tangent. I'll blog about it or something.
As a game developer, I don't want my goal (to make fun games) to be confused with Zynga's agenda (to extract money).
I wonder if we should take Milner's statement with a grain of salt. A reporter asked him, essentially, if he is planning on dumping his Facebook shares as soon as they IPO. There's no way his answer was going to be yes. He has to say no, and give some reason why not, no matter what his actual plans are.
I can think of a dozen reasons why he's wrong, but I'd have said the same about several of his investments, and he's the one who has been right so far.