On Conference calls

Besides, in Silicon Valley being "worth" a certain amount of money if you own an online company really means what your shares of stock are worth on the stock market at any given moment. This varies constantly, and is not really meaningful. Journalists apply it constantly to Bill Gates, but what if he got off his Conference calls long enough to go out and sell all his shares of Microsoft? Would he get the same market price for all them? Not a chance. Somebody trying to sell so many shares would drive the price down drastically. And once the market figured out that the person selling was Gates, the price would go down even more, because people would figure the company would never be the same (true, and the best case) or that something was really wrong so if Gates was getting out they better also.