New Billion Dollar Board

Imagine if you could have a Board that had Bill Gates as the Chair and included well-known billionaire entrepreneurs like Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Reid Hoffman, Michael Bloomberg and Marc Benioff, and the leading entrepreneurs in their countries, China’s Jack Ma, Japan’s Masayoshi Son and India’s Ratan Tata to advise you?

This isn’t a fantasy, but a real life board that was announced this week to run the new billion dollar fund, Breakthrough Energy Ventures. The goal of the fund is to invest in companies that reduce greenhouse emissions.

And the board members - who have a combined net worth of $170 billion - are all committing their knowledge and networks to the future sustainability of the planet.

Put another way, Planet Earth just got itself a new billion dollar board.

Started by Bill Gates, this is his biggest new initiative since the launch of the Gates Foundation.

As he said today: “We need affordable and reliable energy that doesn’t emit greenhouse gas to power the future - and to get it, we need a different model for investing in good ideas and moving them from the lab to the market.”

“That is why today, I, along with an incredible group of people who care a lot about energy innovation, am announcing the launch of Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a fund that will invest more than $1 billion in scientific breakthroughs that have the potential to deliver cheap and reliable clean energy to the world.”

The board will focus on “five grand challenges, corresponding to the biggest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions around the world:”

1) Electricity: How can we deliver reliable, affordable zero-carbon electricity to the world?

2) Buildings: How can we eliminate emissions from our homes, offices, hospitals, and schools?

3) Manufacturing: How can we make everything we use without emitting greenhouse gases?

4) Transportation: How can we get around our communities and the world without emitting carbon?

5) Food: How can we feed the planet without contributing to climate change?


Lesson from Bill:

Which means by thinking bigger, one day you can have a board like this thinking on your behalf.

In fact, given that they’re working on behalf of Planet Earth, you already do.



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Biggest Breakthrough in Battery Technology

When is it too late for success? 94-year-old John B. Goodenough made the news this week for creating a breakthrough battery that stores triple the energy and is safer than lithium-ion batteries.

John also happens to be the inventor of lithium-ion batteries, which he invented when he was 57 years old - 37 years ago. Today, lithium-ion batteries power all our smart phones, tablets and laptops - as well as electric cars.

His new battery invention will dwarf his first invention, as it will power our future solar powered and electric vehicles, homes and industries. It makes the current lithium-ion technology redundant (including Elon Musk’s brand new $5 billion lithium-ion battery gigafactory).

How do the new batteries work? They’re made of glass electrolytes, which are solid instead of the liquid electrolytes in lithium-ion batteries. They will allow electric cars to go three times the distance, and recharge in minutes instead of hours. They’re also far safer as they won’t explode, and they can operate in sub-zero temperatures with no danger of freezing.

At 94 years old, John still works as a Professor at the University of Texas, and he isn’t finished yet.

John believes humanity has a 30 year window to come up wth an even more powerful “super battery” to take us entirely off fossil fuels, before the environmental damage we are creating becomes irreversible and says:

"I want to solve this problem before my chips are in… I still have time to go.”

So if you’re ever thinking it’s too late to be successful, just remember John B. Goodenough.




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Winners never Quit and Quitters never win

In my 20's I would ask mentors what they thought the most important key to success was. They all had different opinions. Then one gave me the very best answer. He said "All the most successful people have many differences, but they only have one thing in common. They never gave up. The ones who gave up you don't see. You only see the ones who never gave up. So as long as you never give up, no matter what, you'll be fine."

"Winners never quit and quitters never win." - Vince Lombardi

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Some important Lesson From WILL SMITH's Story

If you’re up against adversity or overcoming challenges, this story is for you.

Will Smith's first career as a rapper led to him going broke in 1990 when the IRS came knocking. Will says, “They wanted $2.8 million and I had two dollars and eighty three cents.”

“There’s nothing more sobering than having six cars and a mansion one day and you can’t even buy gas… the next.”

Overnight, his hip hop friends disappeared and he was left trying to figure out what to do next. Early success and fast spending had led to big failure.

It was producer Quincy Jones who became Will’s white knight. Quincy was planning a new comedy for NBC, and thought of his own experience bringing up his kids in Bel-Air. He remembered one call from his daughter who was away at camp: “Dad, the water here sucks. Please FedEx Evian.”

So Quincy put his experience together with Will Smith’s “Fresh Prince” image, and created “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air”. Will auditioned while struggling with no money, and took the job. The series became a hit, but Will had to keep paying 70% of his pay to the IRS for the next 3 years.

Given a fresh start, with just enough to money to survive, Will threw himself into acting: "I was trying so hard," he said. "I would memorize the entire script, then I'd be lipping everybody's lines while they were talking… My performances were horrible.”

Will persevered, and set himself the goal of being "the biggest movie star in the world”. He threw himself into studying other movie stars and what they did. Then he picked the right movies:

“The biggest movie stars make the biggest movies, so I looked at the top 10 movies of all time. At that point, they were all special-effects movies. So Independence Day, no-brainer. Men in Black, no-brainer. I, Robot, no-brainer.”

His mix of failure, resilience, determination - and another 20 years of work-ethic - finally led him to his goal:

Will is the only actor to have eight consecutive films gross over $100 million in the domestic box office, eleven consecutive films gross over $150 million internationally, and eight consecutive films in which he starred open at the number one spot in the domestic box office tally.

He’s been ranked as the most bankable star worldwide by Forbes and set a Guiness World Record for attending three film premieres of films he featured in a 24 hour time period.

The path to success is never a straight path, and it’s the seeds we sow in our failures that create our success.

So cut out the noise on the outside, listen to the voice on the inside, and keep your eye on the prize.

All it takes is will.

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Jack Ma's Biography (CEO:ALIBABA)

What does an English teacher know about math? Plenty, if your name is Jack Ma.

Today, Jack raised $4.5 billion (the largest private tech investment ever) for Ant Financial: A company he created in December 2014. The company has gone from zero to $60 billion in value in just 16 months.

Jack Ma has never taken no for an answer. In September, 2014, when he was not able to list his company, Alibaba, in Hong Kong, and with China banning any foreign ownership of its companies, Jack got around the rules by setting up a Cayman Island shell corporation which would receive a percentage of the profits of Alibaba.

He then listed the Cayman Island company on the New York Stock Exchange, raising $25 billion in the largest IPO in history - without giving any of the shares in his China company away.

Before the listing, he took the payment side of the business, Alipay, and moved it into a separate, private company that he controlled, called Ant Financial. As Alibaba has been making headlines over the last year, Ant Financial has been quietly growing as Jack’s second billion dollar business.

Ant Financial now reaches 450 million users (More than the population of the US and UK combined), and has given out 20 million loans to entrepreneurs in China. Alibaba receives 37.5% of the profits from Ant Financial, but does not own any of it. Jack has managed to spin the business off entirely from Alibaba, and then grow it alongside Alibaba while entirely under his personal control, from zero to $60 billion in value.

This has allowed him to pursue his vision of helping the small guys while raising the money he needs from the financial markets and without losing control or giving away any ownership.

Jack’s next step? The former English Teacher plans to list Ant Financial on the China stock market later this year, which is likely to double his current net worth of $22 billion.

While too many entrepreneurs get caught up in how much of their pie to give away, Jack understands that when you own the bakery, you can always make another pie.

How can you create partnerships and raise financing creatively, while keeping true to your vision? How can you organise your own resources smarter? Take a tip from Jack, and never take no for an answer.

“They called me ‘Crazy Jack’. I think crazy is good. We’re crazy, but we’re not stupid.” ~ Jack Ma

Richard Branson's BioGraphy

Mark Cuban said “I’m out” and Richard Branson said “I’m in” to entrepreneur, Jamie Siminoff.

Today, the change in that one word became worth over $28 million after Ring, the company that Jamie founded 5 years ago, raised $109 million from Goldman Sachs and Qualcomm Ventures. 

This, after an amazing 5 year journey that brought Jamie face-to-face with two of the world’s most recognized billionaires.

In September 2013, a year after launching “DoorBot”, Jamie got on ABC’s ‘Shark Tank’ trying to raise $700,000 for 10% in equity for his company

He pitched his product - an app-controlled smart doorbell and video system for your front door - but then Mark Cuban and his fellow sharks all closed the door on Jamie.

‘Mr Wonderful’, Kevin O’Leary, was the only one who gave an offer. He had no interest in buying equity. So instead he offered the $700,000 as a loan, repaid from 10% of all sales and then once paid off, he wanted 7% of all ongoing sales forever. Plus he wanted 5% equity for free thrown in.

Siminoff said no and Kevin replied “It’s that moment when I say you’re dead to me”.

After leaving the Shark Tank, Jamie turned the mass rejection into a positive, saying “We think we got at least $5 million of additional sales through the airing of ‘Shark Tank’. Everything just popped after that.”

Jamie rebranded the company as “Ring” and doubled down on his focus. He grew the smart doorbells into app-controlled security devices with motion-detection technology and said “We’re definitely focused on the ring of security we can build around a community, around a home. We’re stopping one burglary a day, and we’ve caught multiple burglars, so we’ve already become a very important part of homes."

Then by luck, one of his new customers ended up on Necker Island, sitting next to Richard Branson when his smartphone rang. A delivery person was at his door. The customer spoke to him and then with one press of a button the app let him in.

Richard was so impressed, he got Jamie’s number and called him, wanting to invest. What was Jamie’s reaction?

"When Richard Branson asks if he can invest in your company, I think there's only one answer you can give”.

Richard invested in the company, and in August 2015 he led a $28 million funding round for Jamie.

That was followed by a $61 million round in March 2016. Then, today, Jamie raised another $109 million at a likely valuation of around $500 million.

That means if Mark or any of the other sharks had taken Jamie’s 10% equity offer just over three years ago, their $700,000 investment would have grown after dilution by around 40x to $28 million today.

Jamie, who’s products are now in 100 countries worldwide, is now aiming for an IPO at the end of the year. By then, the cost of that “no” could be between $50 million and $100 million.

While billionaires like Mark Cuban won’t suffer greatly from missing such a multi-million dollar opportunity, this story highlights the greatest cost in business: Opportunity cost.

What is the cost of you saying “no” to the right opportunity?

What is the cost of following the wrong opportunities?

What is it costing you by delaying or avoiding action?

Whenever you’re worry about the cost of taking action, remember that the cost of not acting is often far greater.

“There's no wrong time to make the right decision." ~ Dalton McGuinty

short love story

A girl asked a boy if she was pretty, he said "No". She asked him if he wanted to be with her forever, he said "No". Then she asked him if he would cry if she walked away, he said "No". She had heard enough; she needed to leave.

As she walked away he grabbed her arm and told her to stay. He said "You're not pretty, you're beautiful. I don`t want to be with you forever, I need to be with you forever. And I wouldn't cry if you walked away, I would die."