From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
Today, American capital markets are a detriment for competitiveness. The private markets are doing well, but we need a new way forward for competitiveness that works better for companies and the people.
We don't necessarily hire the best CV, we hire the right CV. We try to hire the right people. If someone is 10/10 skills-fit, but doesn't seem interested in our long-term vision? I'd rather have the 8/10 candidate who's passionate about where we're going.
I wish I could sit here and say that a group of us built a strategy, formula, and tried to work it all out – but it was nothing like that. It was organic. It was reaching out to our heroes on YouTube to see if they liked our kit. They loved our kit, they started wearing it and we started to get to know them – and eventually invited them to our events. It was super organic.
Not in our wildest dreams did we ever think Infosys could grow as big as it did. This was a different world, a different era.
The great thing about film is that the capital structures allow you to pick where you want to be on the risk-return spectrum. If you're looking for lower risk, you can sit where the banks used to- advancing money against known collateral.
As Carl von Clausewitz said, 'no plan survives first contact with the enemy.' It's not about having a plan, it's about planning. When you are in a fluid situation, things change, and you have to adapt quickly. You cannot freeze into inaction.
You have to keep your business in what Jeff Bezos calls day one state. You have to keep your business on its toes, you have to be high energy, and push your people and business to do better. Never let them fall into complacency, into a day two business state. They'd rather always keep them young, energetic, on their toes and hungry.
I invested most of our money, not in marketing, but in service. That was crucial to our early growth- starting in Europe, but then in America, Japan and the USA.
we are moving towards a global theatre where even though each actor (country) may be at different levels of economic growth, the technologies which exist to enable the globalisation stimulate high levels of transparency, meaning that each agent (companies, customers, suppliers, politicians, etc) will be accountable for their practices, and so must act with greater consideration (and less arrogance!)
If you asked most people to categorise good trades and bad trades, you would find the answers to be quite simple… If it makes money it's a good trade, and if it loses money, it's a bad trade. That's not true at all… There's a very simple test to see whether something was a good or bad trade. You have to ask the question: 'If I was faced with the exact same information and circumstances again, would I still make the same trade?'. If the answer is yes, then it was not a bad trade.
Corporations find themselves in a bind, torn between clinging to the notion of solely enhancing shareholder value and making vague promises to cater to all stakeholders, which can be perilously misleading.
With Foursquare, our original app was a good idea but it wasn't a hundred million users good idea. The data behind the app, and what we do with the data? That's our good idea. That's our hundred million dollars in revenue idea.