In this interview, I speak to Ron Shaich, the extraordinary entrepreneur who founded Panera Bread and Au Bon Pain. We discuss the realities of life as an entrepreneur and what it takes to build a $multi-billion business, with over 100,000 employees. He is also the author of the best-selling book…
Thought Economics

 

Mike Maples Jr. is a co-founding Partner at Floodgate.  He has been on the Forbes Midas List eight times in the last decade and was also named a “Rising Star” by FORTUNE and profiled by Harvard Business School for his lifetime contributions to entrepreneurship. Before becoming a full-time investor, Mike was…
Thought Economics

 

In this interview I speak to Theo Paphitis, Serial Entrepreneur, Philanthropist & Star of Dragon’s Den. We discuss his incredible career in entrepreneurship, his learnings on what it takes to build successful businesses & brands, the future of retail, and the realities of what entrepreneurial life is really like. 
Thought Economics

 

John Chambers is an extraordinary leader. During his 25 years at Cisco, he took the business profitably from $1 billion, to over $49 billion in annual revenues. Not only is this one if the internet-era’s greatest success stories, but one which built much of the infrastructure of the modern internet.…
Thought Economics

 

Bjørn Lomborg is President of the Copenhagen Consensus and Visiting Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. His new book Best Things First brings together 12 new, peer-reviewed studies which highlight how to make the world a better place, in the best [and most cost-effective] way. These studies show that by…
Thought Economics

 

Mitchell Kapor is a pioneer of the personal computing revolution. He is the founder of Lotus Development Corporation and the designer of Lotus 1-2-3, the "killer application" which made the personal computer ubiquitous in the business world in the 1980s. In 1982, Mitch took lotus public, and in 1990 he…
Thought Economics

 

Dame Stephanie Shirley CH, also known as Steve, is a workplace revolutionary and successful IT entrepreneur turned ardent venture philanthropist. At 88 years old, her story has many strands which, woven together, have produced a lifetime of exceptional achievements. Dame Stephanie’s story begins with her 1939 arrival in Britain as…
Thought Economics

 

In 2001, Adam Neumann arrived in New York after five years as a conscript in the Israeli navy. Just over fifteen years later, he had transformed himself into the charismatic CEO of a company worth $47 billion. With his long hair and feel-good mantras, the six-foot-five Neumann looked the part…
Thought Economics

 

Abigail E. Disney advocates for real changes to the way capitalism operates in today's world. She has worked for thirty years with programs for low-income families, women's rights, and global poverty. She is an Emmy- Winning Documentary Filmmaker and co-founder of Fork Films, a nonfiction media production company, which produces…
Thought Economics

 

Steve Jurvetson is the Co-Founder of Future Ventures. He is an early-stage venture capitalist with a focus on founder-led, mission-driven companies at the cutting edge of disruptive technology and new industry formation. Steve was the early VC investor in SpaceX, Tesla, Planet, Memphis Meats, Hotmail, D-Wave, The Boring Company, Zoox…
Thought Economics

 

In 2008, during the turbulence of a global financial crisis, a person (or group) called Satoshi Nakamoto released a white-paper called Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System. The principle was simple but revolutionary- a technique to record digital transactions in a way that was public, permanent and verifiable without requiring…
Thought Economics

 

In this exclusive interview, I speak to Max Parker (Founder of Matchstick Group) and Danny Jones (Investor & one-quarter of the multiplatinum British pop rock group McFly) about managing talent in the digital era, and the mental health impact of public profile and fame.
Thought Economics