Another hugely common mistake is optimising your business for investors, and not customers and employees.

Once one understands the disadvantage of being at the bottom of the stack, it becomes much easier to understand the importance of speed in HFT. As new price levels form, HFTs compete with other HFTs to join the new price as quickly as possible in order to secure advantageous stack position for passive orders.

There's just enough in your control where you think you should be able to perform or deliver on any given day – but when you really sit and think about it, you're basically trying to be predictive text for the ocean.

Mirroring is a crazy skill, it's so insanely effective. Just repeating the last 3 words of what someone said or picking out 1-3 words from the middle of the statement, can get you the outcome you need. Using mirroring, you feel like you can work Jedi mind tricks!

The idea that if you are proud to be British you need to be proud of British history is nonsensical. Does it mean you have to be proud of all of history? Of slavery? Of abolition of you? Or me? Or Lenny Henry? You might as well be proud of biology or jelly. It makes no sense…

Our brains are adept at concealing our motives from ourselves, convincing us that we are not as interested in status as we might actually be. This self-deception, paradoxically, enhances our ability to argue our lack of interest in status, which, in turn, can ironically increase our standing within the social group.

Fundamentally you build trust with people by giving them trust.

Over 70% of the labour force in sub-Saharan Africa is involved in agriculture. This means the sector forms a lynch-pin of society.

Unfortunately, we've become so adept at concealing our problems that we often brush aside reproductive and women's health issues. It's as though discussing them is taboo. Now, it feels like showing strength means not voicing any discomfort or pain. However, there comes a point when silence is no longer an option.

Our singular filter is to find the people, projects and opportunities that we think are going to be game-changing for humanity. If you succeed at doing that, you'll make plenty of money (even if you fail half the time).

There's a compelling mission—both because of the enormous economic opportunity it represents, if it succeeds, and because of the broader impact it can have on the world. The mission is defined by a stubborn technical challenge. It has to be hard. No one wants to work on something that isn't difficult, and in a sense, choosing the hardest problems becomes a moat.

If one wants to treat societal problems, then philanthropy and government spending are fine. If one wants to cure societal problems, one has got to come up with sustainable solutions- and that means attracting for-profit capital.