From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
The venture capital industry exists to get capital in the hands of deserving entrepreneurs, but the data tells us that venture capitalists often have only a narrow definition of what 'deserving' means—and it often corresponds to being white and male.
The smallest male can be dominant based on his social skills. Think about it; nobody walks into a big store in London and assumes the biggest person is the boss! It might be the old man; it might be the young woman!
A lot of people fail at what I do because they group all talent together. Just because they are labelled as 'talent,' doesn't mean they are similar at all. They are individuals with unique business models.
The truth is nobody needs a diamond. You don't need a diamond to heat your home, run your car or power your cell-phone. As a business, it's clear to us that there is only one source of value for diamonds- and that is the consumer's desire for the product.
One major overhead entrepreneurial business often grapple with is the exorbitant rent in cities. Moving to a smaller town offers a significant reduction in these costs and promotes regional economic balance.
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'.
Growing up in West Virginia, we were at the forefront economically— the chemical and coal mining center of the world. However, due to an inability to adapt to changing market dynamics and transitions, our position plummeted to the bottom ranks among the US states... I firmly advocate the idea of reinventing oneself every 5 years.
You don't want to go into a negotiation thinking you will do A, B & C to get to D… you want to think about your goal – negotiation is not about reaching agreement, it's about meeting your objective as best as possible.
We compute some level of default and losses because of those defaults- and perform IRR calculations to create yields and then we haircut it some more because, in truth, we have no idea!
Alibaba's vision statement includes a mention of how long it wants to last, and that is specifically 102 years. 100 years sounds like a cliché, it doesn't sound special or memorable… 102 years sticks in your mind, and the reason for this specific figure is that Jack Ma wanted Alibaba to be the only internet company that spanned three centuries.
Every business makes money as a secondary purpose. It's the coincidental result of creating customer value and changing the world in some way that people are willing to pay for and find valuable.
For me, it's about the power of storytelling. Everything we do is rooted in story. People resonate with stories. I can't tell you how many times I've sat with some of the most famous or richest people in the world, and when you share a story, you can see them reflecting on their own families, their own experiences.