From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
It's about finding the right balance between being bold, patient, and persistent. For me, it's about not thinking it's crazy to reach out to an Oscar winner or a billionaire, but realizing it takes patience and time.
Criminals are not looking for challenges, but opportunities. Hackers don't cause breaches, they wait for doors to open; and we're making it so easy for people to steal from us that we're creating unlimited doors.
Our apps and platforms are addictive by design. We know this both because the tech titans behind them have admitted it publicly, and because the dominant apps and social media platforms use the same suite of techniques that are well-proven to ensnare us.
Early customers are animated by belief, not utility. They buy for aesthetic reasons, not practical ones. There's an aesthetically superior future they co-create with the founders. You only want to talk to people who are primed to move to that different future with you.
As a player, you are your asset. You have to manage and keep your performance- as an athlete- at the highest standard. This is key…. after all, you can't market something that's not working or performing well.
highly motivated teams, who are motivated by the 'end' (the cause) rather than the 'method' (the task)
Businesses have a tremendous amount of power to have impact through practices and business models that operate ethically, create useful goods and services, create jobs with dignity, and create opportunities in communities that may not have existed before.
Without the existence of Europe, smaller countries like mine [Estonia] would have a difficult time to survive economically or even from a defence perspective. The internal European market is absolutely vital for the functioning of the very different economies of the continent.
Your competitors are looking for the product, idea or feature that gives such a competitive advantage that they can take all your customers away from you. You need to work like someone's trying to take it all away from you, because they are.
Wine making is also alchemy, not everything is controllable – you are dealing with nature. There's a savage element to all of this. A great winemaker is an artist.
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.
I realized: I'm working for a company that makes people happy. You don't leave that.