Entrepreneurship

It is the difference between an investor asking, 'so, what's your product…' and 'so, what's your idea, and what steps can we take to turn that into a product.'

Viewing entrepreneurship as experimentation allows individuals and societies to evaluate businesses and technologies in domains with greater uncertainty than otherwise possible, unlocking deep growth opportunities.

Entrepreneurs and investors must make discrete choices, often with quite incomplete information and uncertainty about the future, about which ideas to progress and which to shut down. Financiers rather than markets dictate which projects are realized, as they choose which experiments to attempt, how to interpret the results, and whether to continue or abandon the investment.

When you've founded a business, the last thing you want to do is let-go. It's part of the psychology of most founders- but let-go you must, and if you handle it right, it can work extremely well.

Delegation is about giving the right people in your organisation the ability to excel at what they do, and in turn- to help you (as a company leader) to achieve the objectives of your enterprise.

You need to hire people who are smart, ideally smarter than you. There's a reason Google, Apple and their peers are filled with PhD's. The smarter your team (whether academically, or in experience) the more they will deliver.

For the people I documented, money was secondary… They knew absolutely they would make money, but changing the world and doing cool stuff was the primary goal; that was their mission.

They all had a wilful denial of reality… against all evidence to the contrary they had to believe they would succeed.. that's ultimately what entrepreneurs do.

Guess what, it turns out that you can't make big-breakthroughs without crazy optimism and idealism! With the exception of Elon Musk, that attitude is largely missing right now.

Always remember – it's best to own 10% of a big number, than all of nothing!

As founder(s) you cannot be scared of making tough decisions for the good of your business; the longer you let things lie, the tougher (and more expensive) it can be to resolve them.

You have to empower your board to make their own decisions, follow their instinct, and execute. Think of your board in many ways as a team of entrepreneurs that you're investing in, rather than as employees that you manage.

Many entrepreneurs make the mistake of hiring a table of yes-men. This is great for ego, bad for business. You need to hire people who are smarter or more experienced than you in those specific roles. They may often challenge you and re-structure your thoughts, but this is important for good governance.

People should adopt a fearlessness where they are trying new things, but then accept that by doing this- a certain percentage of things will fail. Failure is not a necessary evil, but rather- it is a positive part of on-going progress.

Co-Founder of Pixar & Pioneer in Computer Graphics

Understanding truly why a failure occurred and making peace with it is the first step to being able to move-forward- it allows you to identify where the gaps where in you and your enterprise, and hopefully will give you insights into where you need more support, education and attention.

They took a relative view of risk... They had an understanding of the risks of something going wrong, but balanced that against missing an opportunity. When that opportunity exceeded the risk of going wrong? That's when they jumped.