Entrepreneurship

I guess that's been my biggest quality – to understand what customer's want, 3 or 4 years ahead of time. That's more or less probably my biggest quality as an entrepreneur.

You should try and copy everything you possibly can! It's just that if you run out of alternatives, if you run out of options to copy, you will realise that your entire life has conditioned you to not only be a great copier, but to hesitate when copying is no longer an option.

Co-Founder of Square & Mobile Payment Pioneer

Most people I would consider world-class, successful entrepreneurs never volunteered for the job. They were kicked out like the guy who offended the king and was kicked out of the city walls.

Co-Founder of Square & Mobile Payment Pioneer

I also want to dispel the hero-myth of entrepreneurs, that they're somehow super-gifted individuals who are better than me or the people I know. I don't know any like that – my friends sleep late, smell funny, do stupid stuff and have weird joint problems.

Co-Founder of Square & Mobile Payment Pioneer

Doing something that has never been done before is terrifying… all the people who love you will tell you not to do it… not because they're jealous, but because they're genuinely scared for you… they're worried for your wellbeing.

Co-Founder of Square & Mobile Payment Pioneer

That is my courage – I see things thanks to young people around me, and go forward fast, implementing before others do.

Founder and Chairman of Diesel fashion brand and Only The Brave Group

Making mistakes is necessary- if you don't make mistakes, you can never grow. Every failure is a little lesson in how to be a winner. Failure is an opportunity to learn, to start again, to see problems, and find solutions. Failing may be the reason you win next time!

Founder and Chairman of Diesel fashion brand and Only The Brave Group

I'm just a person who loves to do things before others. I'm very open to listening to young people, and always have a good relationship with them. I'm curious. Thanks to this, I try to do things before they become huge – I feel the market, the world, and try to be more-close to the world today.

Founder and Chairman of Diesel fashion brand and Only The Brave Group

When you start- the thing that you start with is almost never the thing that becomes successful. Lo-and-behold, in April 1998, when we finally launched this company – they were right, it didn't work, it was a terrible idea.

Co-Founder of Netflix & Streaming Pioneer

The right idea is one that fascinates you, that you can't get out of your mind, that's a puzzle you want to solve. The path from a raw idea to success is a long one- full of frustration, dead-ends. If you don't have something that genuinely fascinates you, you're going to give-up long before the point you finally stumble on the thing that works.

Co-Founder of Netflix & Streaming Pioneer

Six years ago, I got a phone call in Boston, an investor asked me what I thought about cultured meat? ..my answer was that it's probably one of the stupidest ideas I've ever heard in my life.!

If a company doesn't have a purpose, I think they are wasting their life. Making money should be the result of helping people to build businesses.

President and CEO of Cirque du Soleil

You become an entrepreneur, not by intent, but by accident. Those for me are the true entrepreneurs- people that just start building, perhaps even without a plan, they just do it. Look at the most famous ones…. Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, they never went to shows or to training, they just got on with it.

There are two different types of founders. A wartime founder – when things are tough, they act and a poor peacetime founder – it is really fun or nice to work for.

Marketing is not going to solve a bad product, but it will be an easier and smoother with a good product, with repeat purchases and word of mouth as being the two things that are critical.

For the creator economy, NFTs represent a way for creators and producers of content to directly engage with the people who support them. It's a completely different model… a way for artists and creators to monetise much more effectively than incumbent platforms.

Co-Founder and CEO of OpenSea, leading NFT marketplace platform