Business

Scaling up is incredibly challenging; it's definitely been the hardest part of my own entrepreneurship journey. You might be familiar with The Peter Principle, which states that people are promoted to the level of their incompetence. It's exactly the same in the real world: if you're good at your job, it leads to advancement in your career, and then you don't get to do those things anymore that made you deserve that advancement.

Co-Founder of Slack, Former CEO & Creator of Flickr

Fundamentally, it's really hard to work on intellectual and complex projects collaboratively. Complexity is underestimated, even by the people who are in the thick of it. There's a lot of anxiety or even resentment towards the tools and process of business that manifests in satire with shows like 'The Office', the movie 'Office Space' or the cartoon 'Dilbert'.

Co-Founder of Slack, Former CEO & Creator of Flickr

That's what entrepreneurship is all about–experimenting and finding a way of achieving some goal in the context of business. It's something I've always found fascinating.

Co-Founder of Slack, Former CEO & Creator of Flickr

I came to the conclusion that clubs would be better of promoting strategies that induce home-advantage rather than fighting for higher ticket price because the incremental value of each point lost is higher than the value of those more expensive tickets. If you drive your home advantage, your revenues go up!

Manchester City Captain & Belgian Football Legend

As a player, you are your asset. You have to manage and keep your performance- as an athlete- at the highest standard. This is key…. after all, you can't market something that's not working or performing well.

Manchester City Captain & Belgian Football Legend

My ultimate legacy would be to retire from Atlassian one day and see it going on to bigger and better things in twenty, fourty, or fifty years after me!

Co-Founder of Atlassian & Technology Entrepreneur

It's hard to create a very successful company, not many people do that. It's even harder to create a company that is durable. Our aim is to create a company that outlasts its founders, and to build a hundred year company you need to provide great customer value, have great employees and great processes.

Co-Founder of Atlassian & Technology Entrepreneur

I started my entrepreneurship journey straight out of college, and at the time my goal was simple. I didn't want a real job, and I didn't want to wear a suit…. Anything more than that was a bonus.

Co-Founder of Atlassian & Technology Entrepreneur

The systems we now use exist at a scale that's actually hard to comprehend as human beings. On Facebook, you are one of several billion people and at that scale, it's easy to become a number, or simply a wallet. At that scale, it's very hard to make any meaningful change as an individual.

CEO and Chairwoman of Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla Corporation

Another hugely common mistake is optimising your business for investors, and not customers and employees. If you don't believe me, look at the fact that consulting businesses have a 5 year survival rate of 60% and venture backed businesses, less than 10%.

Founder of Moz, SEO software company and industry thought leader

One of the biggest myths in startup-land is this idea that the pinnacle of startups is building a venture-scale company, backed by venture capital, growing exceptionally fast and being OK with high failure rates as a result; in other words, returning a significant amount of capital to an investor rather than any other outcome.

Founder of Moz, SEO software company and industry thought leader

If you are able to share the things you're scared people will find out? That's real transparency, and that's how you earn the trust that transparency can bring, but if it doesn't feel uncomfortable, it's just marketing.

Founder of Moz, SEO software company and industry thought leader

When you're not in a geopolitical recession, political risk still matters, but it matters largely at a country level and primarily in emerging markets. But in a geopolitical recession, suddenly the biggest macro risks are by their nature political. And you focus less on growth and more on stability and resilience, and that's a problem because the free market model tells you 'don't focus on resilience and stability, focus first and foremost on growth and everything else will take care of itself'.

Founder of Eurasia Group & Political Risk Analyst

Our apps and platforms are addictive by design. We know this both because the tech titans behind them have admitted it publicly, and because the dominant apps and social media platforms use the same suite of techniques that are well-proven to ensnare us.

Psychologist & Author specializing in behavioral psychology and irrational decision-making

To my mind, the essence of capitalism is that decentralised economic decisions can be taken in firms that compete against each other in structured markets, and do so under strong incentives for growth and the increase of productivity. It's the only system we've ever hit-on that appears to be capable of driving mass prosperity.

Economist specializing in poverty, conflict, and development in Africa

The luxury industry is built on heritage, craftsmanship and relationships – we have spent a decade building those relationships and nurturing and caring for the brands' heritage.

Founder and CEO of Farfetch, luxury fashion e-commerce platform