Business

What Silicon Valley needs right now is some realism. It needs people who are watching-out and identifying what's real and what's myth. There's a lot of genius and brilliance here, but also a lot of salesmanship.

Editor-in-Chief of Wired Magazine & Cybersecurity Expert

Capital has poured into San Francisco and the Bay Area but the growth hasn't distributed itself beyond the top percentile of the community. If you are in one of these companies, you may have a stable and survivable life in the Bay Area, but if you're not? You're going to have to make some incredible trade-offs.

In Silicon Valley there's a sense that there are 30 individuals who are 10x more capable than most people, it's like a power law scaling of talent... founders get immense leeway, capital rushes toward them... it also creates biases and situations where founders have more power than they should in their company.

Editor-in-Chief of Wired Magazine & Cybersecurity Expert

People think these founders are all brilliant and can't make mistakes, we've found that; there's a sense that they can fix everything or have the answers for everything… they don't, and they can't.

Tech Journalist & Co-Founder of Recode Media

I walked into a club that I didn't even know had my record – thought it was a demo – the engineer who recorded it also happened to be a DJ, he'd been playing it for 2 weeks and it'd become the biggest song in the club, this unknown group called Chick or Cheek or whatever, he didn't even know what to call it.

Legendary Guitarist & Producer: Chic Founder, Producer for David Bowie, Madonna

Our mate choices are the ultimate form of consumer choice. I can pretty much fit most of our purposeful behaviours under the umbrella of consumption.

Evolutionary Psychologist & Author Known for Consumer Behavior Research

Not in our wildest dreams did we ever think Infosys could grow as big as it did. This was a different world, a different era.

Co-Founder and Former CEO of Infosys, Indian IT Pioneer

When a customer sees that a company from India is performing in the financial markets better than their local partner, their attention is caught. We leveraged the financial markets for building brand, for competing in the marketplace.

Co-Founder and Former CEO of Infosys, Indian IT Pioneer

Scaling any business is about creating a model, debugging the model, making sure you understand the ingredients that need to be scaled up, and making sure you have a process to scale. All of this needs to be wrapped-up in a financial model that allows the scale to be funded.

Co-Founder and Former CEO of Infosys, Indian IT Pioneer

Free trade, openness, security, and a stable government framework have been the key factors behind the emergence of Dubai as an international business hub.

Founder and Chairman of Damac Properties, major UAE real estate developer

Having forefathers as merchants that forged their own paths pushed me to pursue a similar journey. At this point I got a lead that there was a lot of potential in catering, and so in 1982 I set out to make my mark competing with major international companies.

Founder and Chairman of Damac Properties, major UAE real estate developer

The only way to engineer virality and make a product work is to understand the consumer, and that changes from city to city, from country to country.

Founder and CEO of dating app Bumble, feminist entrepreneur

Success really is a team sport. There are very few successful people who competed the journey solo, and figured out how to do everything themselves.

Co-Founder and CEO of Blackstone, Major Philanthropist

Speed and pace are important – the circumstances that brought people to the table can change over time, nothing is forever, nothing is static.

Co-Founder and CEO of Blackstone, Major Philanthropist

I've always felt negotiation is pretty-easy. You have to look at any situation from the perspective of all sides, and find a zone of fairness in between.

Co-Founder and CEO of Blackstone, Major Philanthropist

Excellence means you do the absolute best you can in every situation that you face. It's an aesthetic concept, a performance concept, and helps you create the most perfect balance for success.

Co-Founder and CEO of Blackstone, Major Philanthropist