From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
I'd never even heard the word 'entrepreneur' growing up – I didn't know what that meant. If I go back to my grandfather – he was the real entrepreneur. He developed things… he made spiked running shoes when he was only 15 (in 1895!). My grandfather died in 1933, I was born in 1935 and my grandmother insisted I brought his name with me – so I became the next Joe Foster.
For me, the key has been to become more and more humble over time in a way that I realise that I shouldn't be interfering with the magic and beauty of what an entrepreneur can do.
You must surround yourself with great people, and as you grow, never forget the generosity gene. Building a great team is what this business game is all about. The team with the best players working together wins.
Don't aspire to be an entrepreneur. Aspire to create something that solves a problem. My message to young people with an idea is build a prototype and test it. Test it again and again, making the changes, learning from failure.
Consider a significant issue, something genuinely worth addressing, a problem whose solution would make the world a better place. The subsequent step is to identify who has this problem. If you find yourself to be the sole bearer of this issue, consulting a therapist might be a quicker and less expensive option than launching a startup.
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.
Nobody will ever be an entrepreneur for the sake of being one. No successful entrepreneur ever woke up and was like, 'I want to be an entrepreneur...' Almost every successful entrepreneur woke-up and experienced or identified a problem they passionately and vigorously wanted to solve.
In the last 20 years I believe I have become a hybrid entrepreneur – believing in the power of technology and process, but also in the very deep humanistic point of view. I guess it's a weird mix of Italian with Silicon Valley.
Many forms of entrepreneurship don't lead to wealth, and but they are no less entrepreneurial.
Born into a family where my father made about £35 a week and both of my parents worked tirelessly, we didn't have the luxury of material wealth. Yet, we were enveloped in an abundance of love, which I view as the ultimate luxury. This upbringing imbued me with empathy towards families facing similar circumstances.
We are more than we appear to be. The technology cannot be uninvented — I know, until I die, that we did that, and I was a key enabler of it.
One of the things I'm interested in encouraging people to think about is the whole area of risk. What really is risky?! In many ways I think it's actually much safer to take things into your own hands rather than trusting your destiny to an uncertain jobs market.