From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
When it comes to the growth of knowledge, you need to double down on the capacities you already have; you want to build on cities that possess a foundation. When you build in a remote location, costs skyrocket, attractiveness is hard to engineer, and the complementarities that help knowledge stick to a place simply aren't there.
I'll start by emphasizing that this will be a long journey. Think of fundraising as refueling your car for the trip. It's essential – you can't undertake the journey without fuel. But that's all it is: fuel. It isn't the objective of your journey.
The reality is, not every business model is designed for scalability. Some businesses don't necessarily need to scale to be successful. The key lies in intellectual property. Once you've developed a piece of IP, the cost of distributing it to one person versus a million is remarkably similar.
That's the reason why I tend to say that B2B brand stands for "Boring to Boring" branding. Today, people fundamentally believe that business to business branding has to be incredibly serious… My view is that you should infuse a little bit of emotion into it.
highly motivated teams, who are motivated by the 'end' (the cause) rather than the 'method' (the task)
From there; one thing led to another. I ended up doing a TV show that never saw the light of day, and then a series called Hum Paanch for about a year and a half. I got into a few attendance issues at college, and had to quit that – but ended up doing ads.
I look at every negotiation as an opportunity to solve a problem between me and the other negotiator. They are not my adversary – I need them – and they need me.
We're platform agnostic. People tend to see the market in terms of discrete sectors such as film, TV, music, video games, live and so on. We like to invest in content you can view many different ways- and that gives us depth and diversity within our portfolio.
Human beings have a real tendency to overreact on the upside and the downside. We are not rational investors. I do not believe that people make rational financial decisions! If you study financial decision-making you will find that human beings are irrational in a very predictable manner.
When we open a new show, it started with about 20 creators at the table, and I will say to the rest of the company, 'leave them alone. I don't want them to be bugged by HR or finance or administrative stuff. I want them to breathe and eat and sleep only about the artistic content of the next show'.
Your social mission has to genuinely deliver for society and genuinely deliver for business. If your social mission isn't rooted in delivering for the business, it simply isn't going to last.
Negotiation is really a life skill, and it's essential in this day and age.