It was the first time I'd raised venture capital. I was fairly familiar with VCs from my time at Microsoft, but [in raising the money] I learned a lot about how they think about exit strategies.

Compressing voice in real time wasn't feasible even five years ago, but it is now.

That's been the biggest surprise to me. We're a wholesaler of Internet telephony, and our initial assumption was that the first customers would be ISPs looking to extend their traditional business to include voice. But it's been the traditional resellers selling prepaid calling cards that have moved quickly.

Given a choice, you always want to move to the larger network.

I got a longer elevator than most.