From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
The most successful organisations I've met over the years have a very-strong senses of culture (even from start-up stage). This isn't the soft process of drafting a mission statement for your website, but genuinely understanding the type of personality you want your company to have.
None of this is new. The Romans traded forward contracts in commodities 2000 years ago; a Dutch fugitive, Isaac le Maire, conducted the first ever bear attack on a stock in 1610, leading also to the first ever regulatory ban on short-selling that same year.
The idea itself constitutes about 20% of the success, the remaining 80% hinges on execution. This understanding is vital for an early-stage investor to gauge the potential success of a venture.
We're only just acknowledging the importance of those relationships. They're incredibly important because when they're positive, they're a source of joy, energy, productivity, and resilience. There's a lot of research that shows that when we have friends at work, we are more resilient, and we perform better.
I would love to say that we knew all the answers in advance, but the truth is that we discovered our product and opportunity, rather than planning for it.
I started from a position of giving, without expectation of return. I also decided that I only wanted to work with people who I loved to work with.
The tendency is to avoid the need for more options because anything that's unfamiliar, as human beings we tend to flee uncertainty. We naturally go towards what we already know because we know how to deal with something we have done before.
The average is the enemy of the marketer, because it actually disguises what you really need to know, which is the outliers, the unusual use cases, the anecdotal eccentricity, where most of the really valuable information lies.
People play Farmville, they don't play Zynga! In the same sense, people don't go to Paramount movies, they go to see Mission Impossible.
In order to build a truly powerful brand, you can't just sell a product. You need a brand that is authentic and resonates deeply with your fans. The reason we've been able to amass so many followers around the world in such a short period of time is that they aren't just consuming a product; they're finding meaning in it.
Before we came to market, everything in retail was about how cheaply you could pay your employees- and unfortunately, particularly women. There was an attitude in retail that said, '... well, your female employees are just going to get married, have children at 23 and leave, so why invest in them?' The reality of the world was that 60% of university graduates were women- and most women were having children later, entering professional careers.
The problem with market research is that people don't think what they feel, don't say what they think, and don't do what they say.