From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
Instead of saying 'I'm a technology entrepreneur…' you might say, 'well, I run a technology business, but I love philosophy and playing the piano…' the person you're speaking to now has a few more dots to connect!
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.
I don't really like the term entrepreneur because I think to some it implies that you start businesses for the sake of starting businesses. My view is this. If there's something you want to see in the world that doesn't exist, go build that thing. If that means you have to build a company? so be it.
Just get in the goddam car and get driving. Things will go wrong… plans may go half-cocked… you're not an idiot, you're not going to burn money… just be smart and get driving.
The business plan is about management not exposition, it shows commitment to milestones.
Delegation is about giving the right people in your organisation the ability to excel at what they do, and in turn- to help you (as a company leader) to achieve the objectives of your enterprise.
Technology should be leveraged to enhance the physical and human experience, not replace it. There is something magical about the physical retail experience that digital will never completely replace.
Most of the time, startup ideas don't work. Most of the time, the world stays as it is. The status quo has an advantage; it has a built-in upper hand. For a startup to win, it has to be not merely better than what's there; it has to propose something radically different, something that never could have existed before.
A lot of negatives have already happened in Greece, and now there is an opportunity. Most Greek assets have been going down in price at some time, and if you happen to hold the right assets? You'll make a killing!
Look at Jeff Bezos telling his 1.5 million employees to 'wake up every morning terrified and stay terrified all day.' They're not getting rich; they're barely scraping by. Yet he wants them living in terror so he can get even richer. That's crazy. That's a crazy society and a crazy life.
I haven't remained still since I started in business, I am always moving forward, always looking ahead. I have always said 'the sky is the limit' and have lived by that motto every day.
This isn't about shareholders becoming like Greenpeace but realising that return on investment requires you to understand your risks and that requires you to understand, and act on, your relationship with society.