From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
Always remember – it's best to own 10% of a big number, than all of nothing!
I do this thing- I say something out-loud–announce it to the public–and then I'm forced to do it because people are excited and I don't want to let them down.
One of the biggest myths in startup-land is this idea that the pinnacle of startups is building a venture-scale company, backed by venture capital, growing exceptionally fast and being OK with high failure rates as a result; in other words, returning a significant amount of capital to an investor rather than any other outcome.
By using the Straight Line System, you can get yourself to a level where you're certainly good enough at sales, where your skill in that area is not going to be what holds you back in life.
A great entrepreneur always acts with full intention and without limitation, always striving for the best in everything they do. From an early age I knew I had to rely on myself, look after myself, to not be afraid of anything. It gave me huge confidence and unshakable belief.
My wife Freada coined a phrase, distance travelled. We're very interested in where somebody started in life, and what hurdles and barriers they have already overcome in their journey – and how that grit has got them to where they are now.
Entrepreneurs that do it for greed of money fail. Entrepreneurship isn't about greed, it has nothing to do with that; what matters is personal freedom.
Entrepreneurs and founders have to learn to be the most adaptable people in their business- that's really important – otherwise, the business will outgrow the founder, or the founder will cause the business to stagnate or slow.
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.
You can't be successful unless you're genuine as a human being and honest. The startups in our world that are really successful are both genuine and honest; they bring that pure level of passion to the table and they're very honest about the world around them.
Small companies will get an idea and try to scale up. Big companies have to decide when to extend, when to extend and scale, and when to do something new. They need to build capabilities in terms of insight and execution to do the new thing.
My entry into this space came in 2019 when I read a paper by Demis Hassabis of DeepMind advocating for machine learning and AI researchers to go back to their roots in neuroscience. I took that literally — I went back to the neuroscience department at my alma mater, the University of Melbourne, and asked what was exciting them.