Sir Ronald Cohen, founder of UK's largest Venture Capital Company, at Oxford University.

Apax Venture Capital, $51 Billion in assets.

I was lucky to get an invite to this exclusive video call from Exeter College, Oxford University, where Sir Ronald Cohen was an undergraduate.

After graduating with an MBA from Harvard Business School, Cohen worked as a management consultant for McKinsey & Company in the UK and Italy. 

In 1972, along with two former business school colleagues as partners, he founded Apax Partners, one of Britain's first venture capital firms. 

The company grew slowly at first, but expanded rapidly in the 1990s, becoming Britain's largest venture capital firm, and "one of three truly global venture capital firms". 

Apax provided startup capital for over 500 companies and money for many others, including AOL, Virgin, Waterstone's, and PPL Therapeutics, the company that cloned Dolly the sheep. 

One of the firm's co-founders, Alan Patricof, was an early investor in Apple Computers. 

My favorite part of the discussion was when Sir Ronald Cohen was talking about his career progression. Ronald said that Oxford was the more intellectually challenging of the two institutions he attended. He said that Harvard Business School was more 'like a trade school'. 

Sir Ronald made the world's most prestigious business school sound like a cookery, electrician or plumbing school! 

Harvard Business School has the most famous MBA program in the world where titans of industry, like Steve Schwartzman, founder of The Blackstone Group, Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan, and Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, all studied.

To be fair, Ronald said later that he wouldn't have achieved the success he did if he hadn't attended Harvard Business School. If you are eighteen or nineteen at Oxford, studying a subject like PPE, you would have had various intellectual stimulations. But getting an MBA is a much more focused endeavor. 

Below: Steve Schwartzman, Founder of Blackstone Group.

This webinar suffered somewhat from the same malaise as the Steve Schwartzman of The Blackstone Group interview that I attended at the LSE a few years ago. 

Just like the LSE student who interviewed the founder of Blackstone two years ago, Sir Ronald Cohen's interviewer was too deferential for my liking.

- Don't you find these types of talks more entertaining when the interviewer throws in a few hardball questions? 

Also, these interviews with the Super-rich talk about how awful inequality is, has been done to death. 

I would have loved to hear more about his career and the birth of the VC industry in the UK, which he described in his excellent book 'Second bounce of the ball: Turning risk into Opportunity'

On a macro level, how effective will these initiatives be? Government can do more to 'level the playing field'. But I'm still open-minded, and Sir Ronald did make some excellent points worth considering, on how social investing can benefit society. 

Investors are increasingly considering all aspects of the businesses they back - not just how much money it makes, but also how much the industry contributes to society. 

Is the company a significant polluter, like BP or Shell? Or does it have a vision for a greener future, like Tesla, which has seen its share price grow 300% this year? 

Here's Sir Ronald Cohen's new book: Impact: Reshaping Capitalism to drive real change.

And his previous one, which I enjoyed reading: The Second Bounce of the Ball: Turning Risk into Opportunity.

Video spikes during sporting events - Velocix can help your network

Video traffic peaks during sports events

Viewing spikes during big sports games like the NFL and The World cup can reduce video quality. Hybrid-cloud architectures provide the solution combining the quality and efficiency of dedicated infrastructure with the flexibility of cloud-based services. Find out more in our newest blog post.

Read more here

Velocix will be making a major splash at Mobile World Congress this year. Click on the image above to find out more about the event.

Velocix was recently sold by Nokia to Constellation Software, a $30 Billion Canadian company that makes brilliant bets on new technology.

The Video Streaming business is set to increase exponentially in the next ten years. Why not come and meet the team and me there early next year? Let me know if you're interested by clicking here.

Learn how you can strengthen your revenues using highly targeted ads that can command a 50% price premium. Download the report.

10 Stock Picks in the Covid-19 Crisis

My first experience of investing in the stock market was terrible. Back when I was young and naive, I got a lump sum after my brother decided He wanted to sell a property we owned together. I did not know what to do with my half of the proceeds of that sale.

So, on the advice of an old family friend, who I trusted at the time and who was well versed in business and finance, I invested the money with a broker at a well-known Bank.

Unfortunately, the fund did poorly, and it lost most of the money. Besides, I had to go through an elaborate ritual (sending faxes, etc.) to extract my own money from this Bank. Not only was my broker charging a significant fee, but he was also arrogant and uncooperative whenever I asked him why he was losing my money. 

Has your fund manager lost most of your money?

I learnt one fact then that has stayed with me and now has been absolutely confirmed by one of my own investment gurus, Nassim Nicholas Taleb (of 'Fooled by randomness' and 'Black swan' fame): Be wary trusting people's advice when they have no 'skin in the game'. 

It's easy giving people advice on other people's money. It's even easier managing someone's money when they don't have a lot. A bigwig might ruin your reputation. But if you lose a small-time investors money, 99 times out of a 100, you'll have zero repercussions. 

In the twenty years since that broker lost my money, I put myself through business school, took an internship at a US investment bank in New York City, graduated with an MBA in Finance and worked for several years as a financial analyst.

I trade stocks myself now with my own account. My portfolio is up 50% since the Pandemic, while the S&P is down 10%. The UK FTSE 100 is in even worse shape, down about 16% over the year. Most fund managers have lost money this last year. The UK property market is also underwater, maybe even by as much as 20%, no one knows the exact figures for that yet.

I have used my experience in Cyber Security to select some reasonably safe, but high returning Cyber stocks. I have invested in Gold as a hedge against currency devaluation due to massive government economic interventions.

Please also sign up for my Cyber Security Investments Webinar on Saturday, July 18th at 4pm UK/ 11am EST/ 8am PST talking specifically about my own investment strategies, mainly in the Cyber Security sector. 

This is not a 'snake oil' pitch. I am not claiming that my strategies are a foolproof way to make money. All I am saying is - here's what I'm investing my own money in and here's why I'm doing that, and up until now, it's been successful. 

This webinar is simply my attempt to stimulate a discussion on investments. Maybe, like me, you'll start making some good money from it. I'm keen to hear your views as well as your questions too. Perhaps I will learn more from you than you will learn from me?

Of course, you need to practice discretion and wisdom when investing your own money. You are the best judge of that decision. But why let some broker who doesn't value your money trade with it, especially when most fund managers can't even beat the S&P or FTSE 100 index? Why give them a fat commission for that? 

 

Get the report here.

Five things to think of when you're moving country for work or study

MBA Class of 2008 dinner
Boston, MA, USA

The first big move I made for my career was in 2005 when I decided to take two years out, to study for a full-time MBA in the USA. I hoped to work in the USA for a few years afterwards and get some good experience there.

If you gain a Master's degree in the US, you can work there for one year afterwards. Often foreign graduates are then 'sponsored' by their employer company to continue working in the USA with an H1B work visa.

I got a scholarship and a part-time job in the Marketing Department at Northeastern University - Office of Corporate Programs. So that also helped financially.

Returning from Boston to move back to London, 10 years later (2015), was a far bigger and more complicated affair. I was now married, with a 6-year-old son, with disabilities (ADHD and Dyspraxia) and a 9-year-old daughter.

My wife, Catherine, born and raised in Worcester, Massachusetts, had always wanted to live in the UK. She was running College recruiting at her company, Akamai, in 2015, when she was offered the chance to go to London, to run EMEA recruiting there, managing a team of twenty-five recruiters.

I found a great job too, setting up Lead generation in the UK and Europe, for a little-known Cybersecurity start-up called Zscaler, founded in 2008. It has since had an IPO and is now valued at twenty-three billion US dollars on The NASDAQ. 

This brings me to my next point:

1. Paperwork: Other than the usual challenges of getting an MBA; Taking The GMAT, making the applications, writing the application essays, interviewing for the schools, and finding the money to go; I'd say getting the Visa sorted out was the hardest part.

It required me to complete a lot of complicated paperwork. Further down the road, when I finally got my US Permanent resident card ('Green Card'), it was even more problematic. There were so many hoops to jump through that I eventually had to hire an Immigration lawyer at considerable expense to expedite it.

Equally important, though not as hard; after two years of living in the country, I had to pass my US driving license - many years after passing my British driving test. Ironically I passed my UK driver's license the first time. But for my US one, I had to take it twice!

Help, Where's my car? I need to get to work!

2. The Weather; My second shock was rather more prosaic; I was just not prepared for Boston's weather. In the winter, it gets down to -25 C. You also have big snowstorms.

For example, the last winter I was in Boston, in 2015, over 14 feet (4 meters) of snow fell in the city. In the summer, you need air conditioning in your apartment. It gets up to 40 degrees centigrade.

3. Get help: Make sure you employ all the services you can. For this, we used a corporate relocation company to manage our move. Moreover, we used an army of staff, from childcare professionals to cleaners.

Corporate relocations have experienced a paradigm shift in the last fifty years. In the twentieth century, the husband usually worked, and the wife, who did not, would manage a lot of the move.

Today, more often than not, you are dealing with 2 parents, who both have to manage demanding jobs. Consequently, anything that will save you time is an absolute necessity.

My son, Jack, in our dining room in Boston, Massachusetts, USA 

4.  Make sure you employ technology to your advantage. We live in a digital world for a reason. It's fast and efficient. Everything from using DocuSign to sign all our documents (including the sale of our house in Boston) to Skype or teams for all those international calls, to using video surveying tools to track where all our furniture was.

5. The importance of having flexible work. There is no way We would have managed this move so effectively without remote working.

I had two weeks of training in Austen, Texas, and I travelled back to Europe several times to run conferences there. Just after the move, I had to go from England to a Sales kick-off in Las Vegas.

During this time, I was partially renovating and selling our house. We were unhappy with our real estate agent, so we had to switch agents mid-way.

Throughout this, Zscaler allowed me to work remotely for the UK office, from Boston, USA, for almost four months. Zscaler's and Akamai's flexibility made a big difference to Catherine and me.

Original Post on Buzzvault (Insuretech's website) 

Can we be happier?

'Did you know the time of the week that the average British worker is most miserable? When He's meeting with his manager!' As Professor Lord Layard said this, the entire audience laughed. This is from his research from his latest book, 'Can we be happier?'.

Last night, I attended a great lecture with Professor Lord Layard, the happiness expert at the LSE, where I was an undergraduate Law Student.

Below: Dame Minouche Shafik and Professor Lord Layard

          

Lord Layard started by talking about the foundation of the LSE, by Beatrice and Sydney Webb, Fabians, who believed in the importance of improving society. William Beveridge, who set up the modern welfare state in the UK, was a Director of the LSE and was also profoundly concerned about the happiness of society.

Then Lord Layard talked about how society seemed to be getting less happy. This is confirmed by looking at life expectancy, which is now going down for the first time in recorded memory in the USA and to some extent in the UK. I believe that Coronavirus will accelerate this trend.

As Society has become more selfish, individualistic and competitive, according to Lord Layard, unfortunately, we have created a happiness 'Zero-sum game'. Each time I 'go up', someone else must inevitably also 'go down'. 

How can that philosophy of one-upmanship that many live with create happiness across society? Perhaps that's why, despite all our improvements in material circumstances, we, as a society, are more miserable than ever before.

Professor Lord Layard mentioned that the best way to determine an old person's life expectancy is not their doctor's 'physical' exam, but simply asking the patient 'are you happy?'. 

We put together a stimulating group for drinks and dinner after the event. This included a school teacher, Polly, and her husband, Ben, a software programmer, who works for Google's Deep Mind. My old school friend Lucas, studied PPE at Oxford University.

Lucas was the smartest pupil at my school - he got the second-highest first-class degree in his year, studying Politics. Philosophy. Economics at Oxford (this was back in the days when very few students attained a first-class degree). Then he took a PhD at the University of Pennsylvania. He is now a Professor of Philosophy at Bogazici University, in Istanbul, Turkey.

Lucas brought along a close friend from Oxford University, Tara, a management consultant. I also invited Steve, who studied at Oxford and is a Doctor and Professor of medicine. We had a wide-ranging discussion about happiness. Some of the topics we covered.

Steve said he preferred the word eudaimonia —Aristotle's concept of flourishing—rather than happiness, which seemed to be more based on luck (Eutuxes) than living a good life.

Tara said that certain people, 'Eeyores' are always going to be miserable, and others will usually be happy. Then, Lucas, Polly and Steve discussed how bad the education system had become in the UK.

They all agreed that the institutions' constant performance monitoring was sucking the life out of any innovation. You can read more about this here - Moonshot thinking to unleash innovation.

Go to my website.

Six reasons why long-term productivity growth has flatlined in the UK .

                                      

One business issue that keeps resurfacing here in the UK is that of productivity. The big question is, 'Why has it flatlined here since 2008?' I noticed that, yet again, the Bank of England has predicted 0% productivity growth for this year in the UK.

I have much experience of living and working in other cultures. I was born in the Netherlands and lived there for a time. I have also lived and worked in South America, Spain and India, and most recently, in the USA from 2005-2015. Therefore, I have some practical context to explain what's happening in the UK, relative to other global economies.


1. Business transactions take too long to carry out here in the UK. For example, buying and selling our house in Boston took less than a month. In the UK, it takes far longer.

2. Business people need to be bolder. They also rely too much on gut feeling and should incorporate more data, more rigorous thinking, and fewer biases into their decision-making

  

3. Training and education. A lot of British businesspeople need help to write accurate, grammatical English. They need help to do basic maths. 

Lack of education has got to be a key reason for our poor productivity. We need better education - more executive coaching and business education, both online and traditional. 

And the general level of primary education needs to improve here. Spelling, grammar, maths, you name it. Knowledge of foreign affairs, news and even a foreign language is good too.

4. Investment has got to come a close second. If you want to be a productivity ninja, you need the tools. I worked at one company where I was managing a six-figure marketing budget, but the company gave me a faulty computer that crashed the entire time.   

Talk about an unproductive false Economy! All the evidence points to us needing to spend more on equipment, from essential productivity apps to tools like DocuSign or Microsoft Teams, to speed up business interactions. In addition, there is far more employee training in the US. 

When I was at business school, many MBAs were financed by their employers. I rarely see that in the UK. Why aren't UK companies trying to develop their employees -  sending our employees on professional training to boost their skills or even actively encouraging employees to get training themselves. 

I have done much of this in my career, but these efforts were only supported regularly in the US. In the UK, companies prefer to poach talent from other companies rather than develop talent internally.

5. We have seen a fall in leadership quality in the UK. You only have to look at the government right now. Our Prime Minister pledged five points that he would improve. Most of those situations are now worse, and he hasn't even improved one

Failing to hit these goals will undoubtedly reduce our productivity and competitiveness as a nation.

 

6. We in the UK have a fatal weakness for conventional wisdom. I'm paraphrasing Dominic Cummings here. But undoubtedly, one of the reasons his Brexit campaign defeated the much better-funded and institutionally backed remain campaign was because his team was creative and unorthodox. The other side was neither (To clarify, I was and am pro-European Union, but I admired the Brexiteers' strategy and execution).

The current conventional wisdom is that productivity will rise if we all return to working in the office. 

Even though productivity declined for fifteen years or more before the trend for remote work even began. 

If you want help thinking more unconventionally, I recommend this Malcolm Gladwell book for inspiration. 

website.

Bela Hatvany, Harvard MBA, inventor of the touch-screen, talks about keeping his investors and employees happy.

 Successful business founder and investor, inventor of the touch screen, Bela Hatvany, talks about founding your own business.

After selling multiple companies for many hundreds of millions of dollars, Bela founded the world's first charitable giving site in 2000, Just giving.  

Bela talks about his start-up business philosophy: He embraces not only looking after his investors but his employees too.

Four reasons you should be allowed to work from home.

A long time ago, I had a boss who insisted that we always meet up in craft beer pubs even though two of the marketing team were non-drinkers and none of the group enjoyed craft beer.

He also insisted we wore jackets at a retail digital marketing event in July in Chicago when it was baking hot and all the other attendees were in t-shirts and button-downs.

He got mad at me because I took a day off after an exhausting three-day event to go skiing at a mountain resort nearby. 

Well, he also didn't allow our team to work from home on Fridays when the ENTIRE rest of the office (including him) was working from home on Fridays. 

Why do companies, even some nimble tech startups insist that all their workers work in the office EVERY. SINGLE. DAY?

Here are my reasons why you should let your employees work from home

1. Productivity. In the UK this is at an all-time low. And I have to assume part of the problem is created my distrusting management who can't believe that their team is conscientious enough to clock in a full days work while they are at home.

The most productive I've ever been is when I've worked from home one day and in the office for four.  I almost always end up getting more done on that one day I'm working from home.

But I'm a big extravert (100% extravert in Briggs Myers). If even someone like me who thrives on working with others, benefits so much from working from home, imagine how much your talented, hard-working introverts will gain from it.

2. Open-plan offices. The preponderance of open-plan offices is proof that, as the writer, Somerset Maugham put it “The fact that a great many people believe something is no guarantee of its truth.” 

Almost every company has them, and virtually every piece of research on them shows that they are ineffective. They do not create open, warm, friendly, convivial environments. Generally, they create the opposite. 

If you want to have a great, honest conversation with a colleague, your open-plan office is not the place to do it. 

3. People have lives. When I had that boss who refused to let me work from home on Fridays, I had two small children. My wife was also working a demanding job, full time as a recruiting manager for another tech company. 

I also had some health issues which thankfully I don't have anymore. It would have meant the world to me, my wife and family. It would have multiplied my loyalty to the company more than anything, including money. 

4. Commute. Some of the companies I've worked for have been one and a half hours from my house. If I had had to go into the office every day, that would be fifteen hours travelling a week. Some part-time jobs are fifteen hours a week! Not to mention the toll on the environment of all that travelling. And the cost. 

And two of the ways companies still manage to screw up the work from home experience....... 

1. Out of sight. Out of mind. Yes, I'm working from home. No, I'm not happy to be ignored entirely. I've worked in a few roles that were WFH almost wholly, and this happened way too often. When it did, I found it almost impossible to have those tough but necessary conversations like thrashing out the annual budget.

2. Some people don't adapt to it well. HR directors having conversations over the phone that should be done face to face, at the very least on a video call. 

Bosses that keep shifting conference call times, or being late for them, in a way that they would never do for in-person meetings - they'd be too ashamed... You get the picture!

Social media has turned the world upside down - How have marketers responded?

The Doors is my favourite rock group. Their lead singer, Jim Morrison, graduated with a degree in Film at the prestigious UCLA Film School, where he studied with acclaimed film director Francis Ford Coppola. Jim Morrison was also a poet*.

Yeah, you can say it's 'dad rock'! - but firstly, yeah, I am a dad. Secondly, even my daughter Charlotte, who is seventeen and hip, likes this band too. If I recall, her favorite track is 'LA Woman'. I heard from her friends that the Doors 'slay'.

One important aspect of Marketing is getting attention. Almost fifty years after his death, Morrison still generates a massive following on social media, and The Doors are still as relevant as ever, and sell many records.

 

Back in 2005, when I was at Boston University School of Management, pursuing my full-time MBA, I had the idea of writing a paper about organisations like the Doors that had a devoted fan base that was drawn, above all, to their authenticity.


When I wrote my paper about 'realness' in Marketing back then, I was influenced by a Harvard Business School case study** written by the new Dean of Boston University's business school, Susan Fournier. 

She wrote a case study about the Harley Davidson Owners Group, or ‘Hogs'. It was HBS's first-ever 'multi-media' case study.

Harley-Davidson does not compete with other motorcycles in any typical way. Its motorcycles are not particularly fast, reliable, or eco-friendly.

They are certainly not cheap. BMW’s, Yamaha's, Ducattis's or Honda’s will outstrip them here in every way. But what Harley-Davidson does have, which the other brands lack, is a unique bond with their customers.

The Harley Davidson Owners Groups ('Hogs')

The Hog Club goes on rides, and the riders catalogue their adventures. A few years ago, a marketer suggested that Harley start using dirt—and grease-free chrome. 

But the Harley team shot this idea down instantly. They believed that part of the appeal of having that bike for a Harley owner is cleaning the grease off of it after a hard day's ride.

Lululemon (image below) is another top brand with an almost cult-like following. Lululemon isn't just a product; it's a lifestyle.

Since I wrote that paper, a celebrity and property developer, Donald Trump, first put himself forward as a candidate as a publicity stunt to increase TV ratings on his show 'The Apprentice'.

Donald Trump made many outrageous statements during this period. Yet every time the political experts said ‘that’s it, he’s crossed the line. He's finished’, he just got more popular. The pundits couldn't believe it. (to be clear I do not condone or agree with his views).

Similarly, Nike took a decidedly political stand on Colin Kaepernick, quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, kneeling during the National Anthem to protest against racism in the USA.

Most marketers at the time said that Nike made a terrible mistake by releasing this ad. Today, 80% of marketers still say that you shouldn’t take a strong position at the risk of alienating your customers.

However, just as with Trump, being controversial worked for Nike. Nike has made six billion US dollars since that ad, which was loved and loathed in equal measure. 

*Extract from ‘The Movie’ a poem by Jim Morrison

The auditorium was vast and silent

as we seated and were darkened, the voice continued.

The program for this evening is not new.

You’ve seen this entertainment through and through.

You’ve seen your birth, your life and death

you might recall all of the rest.
Did you have a good world when you died?
Enough to base a movie on?

** Harvard Business School - Building brand community on the Harley-Davidson Posse Ride
https://store.hbr.org/product/building-brand-community-on-the-harley-davidson-posse-ride/501015

Google CFO says sponsorship was the key to her success

I've always admired powerful and accomplished women. So I was excited to go along to see Dame Minoche Shafik, Director of the LSE (who herself was the highest-paid University head in the UK until she voluntarily decided to forgo some of her salary last year), talk to Google's CFO, Ruth Porat, about the future of the school at LSE 2030. Ruth Porat is the highest-paid executive at Google, making $47 Million (£38 Million) a year.

Ruth and her husband, Anthony Paduano (who runs a law firm), met as students at LSE. They were at the LSE to discuss a new endowment scholarship fund they had established for women students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Dame Minoche said at the start of the talk that her ambition for the LSE is to be the leading social science institution with the most significant global impact. It is already ranked 2nd in the world, just behind Harvard University.

Ruth began her discussion by talking about the importance of AI. She said that they were using it at Google to reduce their energy costs by 30%. AI is also at the heart of its algorithmic search engine.

Ruth said that AI is a simple concept and not hard to understand if you break it down right. But that on the face of it, the terminology makes it sound highly complex. The key to understanding AI, as with most topics, is education. 

Ruth added that the future of AI impacts every industry. It takes a combination of Social scientists and engineers to build AI systems. Later in her discussion, Ruth talked about the importance of education. She said that much of business life is jargon, but you need to be educated to cut through that.  

Ruth went on to talk about her father, who instilled the importance of education in her. Her father attained a PhD in physics and then became a Stanford professor, where Ruth also studied (Stanford, University of Pennsylvania, LSE).

Ruth talked about how to change the company culture. She said that this always starts at the top. She gave some great examples of how she changed Morgan Stanley and Google's culture to make it more ethical and supportive of diversity. Any tech company that wants to progress today, needs to be cognizant of these forces.

She asked the room how many women had experienced men talking over them in business meetings. Everyone laughed in acknowledgement.

Ruth then said that when this happens, she always points it out, since, as she put it, 'if you don’t want my voice now, then do you even want me here in the room?'.

The most important part of Ruth's talk for me was how she transformed her career through her relationship with great sponsors. Initially, she said that she had worked at Morgan Stanley for an egotistical boss who had taken credit for all of her work.

Ruth realised that despite her best efforts, she would get nowhere with this individual at this company. So Ruth began to search around for someone who wanted to take a risk on developing her.

She did say that often employees think that this person will just appear as if by magic. However, Ruth said that She had to 'earn the right' to have a great sponsor who could provide her with judgment, insight and help open doors for her.

Ruth explained how one sponsor persuaded her to take a job on the financial trading floor, a notoriously male-dominated environment. It served her in her career, though. Later a sponsor helped her secure a role in Financial Institutions Risk at Morgan Stanley in 2006, which really catapulted her forward to her eventual role as CFO at Google.

One sponsor said to her: ‘I will be your senior air cover. I think you’ll soar, but I will have your back if you run into difficulties.’ Ruth said this is what she now says to those in business that she sponsors. 

Dinner with a fellow LSE alum at The Delaunay after the talk.

What does it take to become a successful entrepreneur?

The most successful start-up I ever worked for was founded by a guy who was brought up in a village in the Indian Himalayas. He is now the richest Indian immigrant in the USA, with a fortune valued at $20 Billion.

Jay founded the Cyber Security Software company Zscaler (Full Disclosure: I have shares in it), for which I worked in Marketing in 2015 & 2016. He founded Zscaler in 2008 and it is now valued at $50 Billion on the NASDAQ. Zscaler had its IPO in 2018.

His house didn’t even have running water. His family was clearly not wealthy. Read about Zscaler, founded by Jay Chaudhry, here.

Jay Chaudry, CEO of Zscaler, grew up poor, in a Himalayan village

(Himachal Pradesh).

The second most successful startup I worked for was also founded by Indian immigrants to the USA. You can read about Visual IQ here. Nielsen bought Visual IQ (I don't have shares) for two billion dollars the year after I left the company.

Most startup founders I’ve worked for, have a genius of varying degrees, and an aspect of their personality that psychologists would define as ‘Hypomania’.

Harvard Medical School defines Hypomania as 'a mood state or energy level that is elevated above average, but not so extreme as to cause impairment'. The incidence of hypomanic personality is much higher than the average in immigrants and entrepreneurs (and those living in the USA, a country made up of immigrants).

Many people buy into the myth that the average successful startup founder is young - probably a guy in their mid-twenties. In fact, the average age of a successful startup founder is actually forty-five years old.  Right now, more black women are founding businesses than ever before.

I learned a great deal working for another founder in the US, again called Jay, who had been a child prodigy. At 16, he completed a triple major degree at Carnegie Mellon in Computer Sciences, Russian, and Mathematics. 

He went on to become the USA's youngest MBA at age eighteen and youngest management consultant at Bain & Co., again at age 18. 

Jay once told me that Carnegie Mellon told him that he was too young to pursue an MBA at their University at sixteen. 

He then managed to get an offer for a scholarship to take a PhD in Finance at Wharton. He threatened Carnegie Mellon that he would pursue his studies at The University of Pennsylvania if he was not accepted into their MBA program. 

That's how he got into Carnegie Mellon's MBA program at such a young age. 

I became Jay's Head of Marketing and right-hand man. It was fun, but it was also torture. Jay was 'always-on', which was exhausting for an average 'regular joe' like me.

“Following your dreams is dangerous,” a 31-year-old woman who runs in social entrepreneurship circles in New York, and asked not to be named, told Quartz. “This whole bulk of the population is being seduced into thinking that they can just go out and pursue their dream anytime, but it’s not true.” 

The truth is that founding a company is typically not a purely rational act. A Founder has to have outsized confidence and vision in themselves to put his or her plan into place. 

This is not necessarily the act of a normal person. By that logic, not everyone can be an entrepreneur. The fact that I have worked for so many startups means I have at least a little of the entrepreneur's mindset myself. 

These are the characteristics I've seen in most entrepreneurs I've worked for. You might want to call it genetics, personality, or something else entirely:

1. He (or She) is flooded with ideas.
2. He is driven, restless, and unable to keep still.
3. He channels his energy into the achievement of wildly grand ambitions.
4. He often works on little sleep.
5. He feels brilliant, unique, chosen, and perhaps even destined to change the world.
6. He becomes easily irritated by minor obstacles.
7. He is a risk-taker.

Does this sound like an entrepreneur or founder, as you know? 

Go to my website.

Please check out Feedspot, a great blog founded by Anuj Agarwal. I'm excited to say that Feedspot has chosen my blog to be on its list of the top 200 tech blogs. I'm honored—thank you! Here's their list. 

What's the most important leadership skill?

What skills does a leader need? The top leadership skill listed on LinkedIn is persuasiveness, which is closely aligned with Charisma. See John F Kennedy, below, possibly the twentieth century's most charismatic and glamorous leaders, whose vision led to the first man on the moon fifty years ago.

             Below: 50 years since the first moonshot - Inspired by the leadership of President John F Kennedy

Without persuasiveness, how will you get people to follow you? 

The second is Formidability. My friend John Hynes, a formidable leader, built a $25 billion city in South Korea and redeveloped Boston's seaport for $4 Billion. You can learn more about his formidability if you click on his image.

Below: John Hynes, CEO of Boston Global Investors

One leadership skill that will be absolutely paramount in the next ten years will be adaptability. It won't be the strongest or the toughest that will survive and thrive in a world that's changing faster and more unpredictably than ever.

It will be the most flexible leader, able to change rapidly when needed, sometimes overturning his entire strategy overnight when the circumstances dictate it.

                                  Is Leadership born or made?

Trait theory suggests that it is born. Leaders tend to be extraverted, conscientious, and smart, all of which have a genetic component. Intelligence is between 50-80% inherited, for example.

But there's a counter-argument that 50% of the population believed that you can develop leadership and that it's a learned skill. After all, Leadership is more about EQ than IQ, and Emotional Intelligence can be learned.

The 34th President of the United States, Dwight.D.Eisenhower once said, "The supreme quality of leadership is unquestionably integrity. Without it, no real success is possible, no matter whether it is on a section gang, a football field, in an army, or in an office."