By Chris Bishop



South African Billionaire Christo Wiese says he is an incurable optimist who believes his country will adapt to survive and rise above the COVID-19 outbreak that threatens to decimate its shaky economy. He also believes his struggling British High Street clothes stores will weather the storm.



Wiese also spoke of plans to announce his own relief fund – as many African billionaires have done- to feed the hungry rather than save small businesses.



“I think the most urgent need at the moment there are people going hungry. We forget that we have to keep small businesses going, we have to keep big businesses going,  but there are literally thousands of people who need a square meal a day. So, all of us will do things in a different way,” Wiese told CNBC Africa.  



<figure class="wp-block-embed-wordpress wp-block-embed is-type-wp-embed is-provider-cnbc-africa"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
https://www.cnbcafrica.com/videos/2020/04/20/african-billionaire-christo-wiese-on-covid-19-crisis-and-its-impact-on-sas-economy/
</div></figure>



Wiese admitted in the interview that the COVID-19 was the biggest catastrophe he had seen in more than half a century of thick-and-thin in business.



“It is the worst I could have ever imagined. I mean if somebody had told me such a thing is possible, I would have disputed that.- I don’t think the world has seen anything like it is going through at the moment,” says Wiese.



“I am an incurable optimist and I believe that through this crisis that a lot of things may shake out correctly in a shorter space of time than they would otherwise have been. You know people talk about can the economy survive? &nbsp;I don’t know what they mean by that because there will be an economy when the dust has settled on this thing, so it is not a question of survival, but how we adapt…People are resilient, South Africans in particular, and we will adapt.”



Wiese also believes his struggling fashion store chain in the United Kingdom will weather the storm with the help of restructuring at the end of last year. He owns New Look fashion stories through his investment vehicle Brait and shut down a number of them &nbsp;as the High Street struggled. &nbsp;



“New Look has upped their game as far as e-commerce is concerned they have got their warehouses running so here and there people are managing to keep the ship afloat. People have been predicting the death of the High Street retailing in the UK for the last two or three years. I don’t think businesses just die like that, businesses do adapt and we have taken several initiatives in the last year with New Look in terms of a CVA (a cut down of store space and employees) to lessen the burden of leases and all those actions are being taken with a view to survive,” says Wiese.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



CNBC Africa also asked Wiese about when the lockdown in South Africa should be lifted. “One of the many things that I am grateful for is that I am not the person who has to make that call. We are all by now fully informed about what the risks are and the downsides are and it is not a South African problem it is a global problem. It will be a very, very, tough call that has to be made but having said that I think people have learned a lot of lessons over the past few weeks and hopefully those lessons will be properly applied so we can start with gradual relaxations as you know people are talking all over the world, in the United States and the United Kingdom, and I just hope common sense will prevail,” says Wiese.

Billionaire Christo Wiese Interview

I’m an incurable optimist!  We will adapt to survive COVID-19 says African billionaire Wiese

By Chris Bishop



 It was words from a son and a grandson that set the richest man in South Africa on the road to save the incomes of thousands of South Africans working for cash strapped small and medium-sized businesses across the country. COVID-19, with all its lockdowns and fear, threatens to close scores of these businesses seen as the engine of the economy.


		
						
				<div class="vjs-pip-container">
					
					<video-js id="6145985650001"
							data-account="1571595826001"
							data-player="c0AOssA7"
							data-embed="default"
							controls playsinline autoplay 							data-video-id="6145985650001"
							data-application-id=""
							width="100%" height="315">
					</video-js>
					<script src="https://players.brightcove.net/1571595826001/c0AOssA7_default/index.min.js"></script> 				</div>
				
				<script src="//players.brightcove.net/videojs-pip/1/videojs-pip.min.js"></script> 				<script>
					videojs.getPlayer('6145985650001').ready(function() {
						var myPlayer = this;
						myPlayer.pip();
					});
				</script>
						
		


 Nicky Oppenheimer, the 75-year-old scion of the billionaire family that made a fortune from mining and diamonds, was one of the first to come up with a billion rand to ease the pain for South African companies in the shadow of COVID-19. In South Africa, money and Oppenheimer are synonymous. His grandfather Ernest Oppenheimer, the son of a German cigar merchant, started out working for a London diamond dealer. Near the end of the 19th century the company posted the then 21-year-old to South Africa where he found his way to the Kimberley diamond diggings and a fortune. His son Harry consolidated the family wealth with De Beers and Anglo American – a pile, according to Forbes, that stands at $7.5 billion. Now a slice of that money will be ploughed back into the South African economy from whence it came.



For more on COVID-19 visit: <a href="https://www.cnbcafrica.com/covid-19/">https://www.cnbcafrica.com/covid-19/</a> 



“It was actually a word from my grandson, Sam, that said we have been privileged for quite some time as South Africans and in a crisis like this you need to give something back to the country and this idea developed into something, that I am very proud of, to give money in a trust that we will have no interest in so the money we are giving it as a straight donation,” Oppenheimer told CNBC Africa.



 The family call it the South Africa Future Trust and it will also give interest free loans to keep jobs, income and small and medium enterprises in business. For many companies across South Africa the 21-day lockdown of the country turned off revenue like a tap. Massive job losses are expected even after all returns to normal in what was already a fragile economy, downgraded to junk by all three ratings agencies, heading for negative growth. If there was any doubt in Oppenheimer’s mind that help was needed his son, Jonathan, delivered more telling words.



 “Well my son has a simile that I think is appropriate here and he says that South Africa’s is like a car that has a puncture and you are pulled over the side of the road and you are stopped. But the car has another problem that is that the battery is not as strong as you would want it, so it is absolutely vital that you should keep the ignition turning while you change the tyre. What the South Africa Future Trust is trying to do is to keep small and medium enterprises alive while the tyre is changed,” says Oppenheimer.



 CNBC Africa raised the point that larger companies, employing more people, faced even bigger problems. What about them?



 “You are absolutely right, this is a huge problem and we must all do what we can. We certainly hope that many other business people will look at the structures we have put up and know that this is going to be independently managed and independently run and want to contribute to it and extend its reach,” says Oppenheimer.



 Oppenheimer once told me about his energetic grandfather that if you bumped into him you bounced off. With a billion rand, he must surely hope to spark a movement to imbue South African small and medium businesses with the same resilience.

How SA’s small businesses can access the R1bn Oppenheimer fund

The African billionaire who wants COVID-19 to bounce off business

By <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/tom-popomaronis/">Tom Popomaronis</a>



From building PayPal and SpaceX to running one of the world’s most disruptive automobile companies, <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/24/warren-buffett-and-bill-gates-agree-giving-up-this-one-thing-will-make-you-more-successful.html">Elon Musk</a> has a number of impressive accomplishments under his belt. And he’s only 48 years old.



In a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/elon_musk_the_mind_behind_tesla_spacex_solarcity" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">2013 TED talk</a>, the billionaire entrepreneur revealed his “secret sauce” to achieving extraordinary things: “First principles” thinking, a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/10/billionaire-warren-buffett-use-this-simple-test-when-making-tough-decisions.html">decision-making</a>&nbsp;strategy in which you “boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there, as opposed to reasoning by analogy.”



Of course, Musk acknowledges that reasoning by analogy — or “copying what other people do with slight variations” — is something we haveto do throughout most of our lives. “Otherwise, mentally, you wouldn’t be able to get through the day,” he said.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">A framework for deconstructing complex problems</h2>



The term “first principles” was coined more than&nbsp;<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=8tYcp0vYd5EC&amp;amp;amp;printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&amp;amp;amp;q&amp;amp;amp;f=false" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">2,000 years ago by the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle</a>, who believed that the best way to understand a subject is to&nbsp;<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=8tYcp0vYd5EC&amp;amp;amp;printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&amp;amp;amp;q&amp;amp;amp;f=false" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">break it down to its most fundamental principles</a>.



In a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-s_3b5fRd8" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">2012 interview with Digg founder Kevin Rose</a>, Musk explained how to apply the first principles method, using the cost of car batteries as an example:



Step 1: Identify the problem and its common assumptions.



“Somebody could say, ’Battery packs are really expensive, and that’s just the way they will always be. Historically, it has cost $600 per kilowatt hour,” Musk said, referencing the “common assumption” about car batteries.



Therefore, he continued, most people would just accept that “it’s not going to be much better than that in the future.”



Step 2. Break the problem down to its fundamental truths.



This is often the most difficult part, and the key is to ask the right questions — by challenging the common assumptions. Keep digging deeper and deeper until you are left with only the fundamental truths.



“With first principles, you say, ‘What are the material constituents of the batteries? What is the stock market value of the material constituents?’ It’s got cobalt, nickel, aluminum, carbon, some polymers for separation and a seal can,” explained Musk.



Then, he continued, “you’d break that down on a material basis and say, ‘If we bought that on the London Metal Exchange what would each of those things cost?’ It’s like $80 per kilowatt hour.”



Step 3. Use the fundamental truths to plot a new course.



Fundamental truths are like building blocks. Once you’ve gathered them, you can use them to create an entirely new and innovative solution.



With the batteries, “you just need to think of clever ways to take those materials and combine them into the shape of a battery cell,” Musk said. “Then you can have batteries that are much, much cheaper than anyone realizes.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">A ‘powerful, powerful way of thinking’</h2>



Musk has referenced the value of first principles thinking several times. “I think it’s important to view knowledge as sort of semantic tree,” he wrote in a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2rgsan/i_am_elon_musk_ceocto_of_a_rocket_company_ama/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">2015 Reddit AMA</a>. “Make sure you understand the fundamental principles, i.e., the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves/details, or there is nothing for them to hang on to.”



In a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7Qh-vwpYH8" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">2014 commencement speech</a>&nbsp;at the University of Southern California, he offered a similar piece of advice: “Don’t just follow the trend. It’s good to think in terms of the physics approach — the first principles,” he said. “This is a good way to figure out if something really makes sense, or if it’s just what everybody else is doing.”



He added: “It’s very hard to do. You can’t think that way about everything. It takes a lot of effort, but if you’re trying to do something new, it’s the best way to think. It’s really a powerful, powerful way of thinking.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">First principles reasoning can make your life better</h2>



First principles thinking isn’t just for building rockets or electric vehicles. It can be used to fix problems in your daily life, whether it’s related to personal relationships, work, finances or anything else.



Too often, we make major life decisions based on outdated or false information. But in a rapidly changing world, historical truths and experience may not always work, which is why it’s sometimes necessary to take a step back and use the first principles approach to create a more customized and creative solution.



<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.linkedin.com_in_tpopomaronis_&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;d=DwMFaQ&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;c=LO_8KzsOlAGvgA6hdGI4v02U_XLiES0sR51Zca0yIy4&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;r=fnb6sKq7SKN8iiAQiVc8NQSbL93Ztb9TeGwNUoj2-0Y&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;m=P_Ys4FkTrXS6d3lDujeEcG0RASS_Te__ciXliHG8uo0&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;s=rHzz9dkDjfkID7To9v-Lu83SKuT7yQyc4bQT7r89G-o&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;e=" target="_blank">Tom Popomaronis</a> is a leadership researcher, commerce expert, cross-industry innovation leader and VP of Innovation at <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.massivealliance.com&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;d=DwMFaQ&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;c=LO_8KzsOlAGvgA6hdGI4v02U_XLiES0sR51Zca0yIy4&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;r=fnb6sKq7SKN8iiAQiVc8NQSbL93Ztb9TeGwNUoj2-0Y&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;m=P_Ys4FkTrXS6d3lDujeEcG0RASS_Te__ciXliHG8uo0&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;s=MAZG4XFe5vj2XGn8I5ATujLEG6mysjDhAM2R5QnyNpQ&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;e=" target="_blank">Massive Alliance</a>. His work has been featured in Forbes, Fast Company, Inc. and The Washington Post. In 2014, Tom was named one of the “40 Under 40” by the <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.bizjournals.com/baltimore/" target="_blank">Baltimore Business Journal</a>. Follow him on <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/tpopomaronis/" target="_blank">LinkedIn</a> and <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://twitter.com/tpopomaronis" target="_blank">Twitter</a>.



This article was first published on CNBC <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/28/billionaire-elon-musk-this-is-a-powerful-way-of-thinking-but-hard-to-do-how-it-works.html?forYou=true">https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/28/billionaire-elon-musk-this-is-a-powerful-way-of-thinking-but-hard-to-do-how-it-works.html?forYou=true</a> and is republished with its permission.

Elon Musk At SpaceX Headquarters

Billionaire Elon Musk calls this a ‘powerful, powerful way of thinking’—but is ‘hard to do.’ Here’s how it works

By <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/cat-clifford/">Catherine Clifford</a>



Legendary investor and billionaire <a class="" href="https://www.cnbc.com/warren-buffett/">Warren Buffett</a> has a tip for young people: Focus on learning how to write and speak clearly.



“The one easy way to become worth 50 percent more than you are now — at least — is to hone your communication skills — both written and verbal,” says Buffett in a video posted on LinkedIn on Monday.



The video was posted by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-hood-aa2912b0/" class="" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Michael Hood</a>, the co-founder of the Toronto based start-up&nbsp;<a href="https://www.getvoiceflow.com/" class="" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Voiceflow</a>, which enables users to design, build and launch skills for Amazon’s smart speaker, Alexa, without needing to know how to code.



“If you can’t communicate, it’s like winking at a girl in the dark — nothing happens. You can have all the brainpower in the world, but you have to be able to transmit it,” Buffett continues.



“And the transmission is communication,” says Buffett, who is <a class="" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/warren-buffett/#7a524f034639" target="_blank">currently worth more than $86 billion</a>, according to Forbes.



<iframe loading="lazy" src="https://www.linkedin.com/embed/feed/update/urn:li:ugcPost:6475070000129548288" height="451" width="504" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="" title="Embedded post"></iframe>



Billionaire entrepreneur&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/richard-branson/" class="">Richard Branson</a>&nbsp;agrees that being able to communicate effectively is critical to success.



“Today, if you want to succeed as an entrepreneur, you also have to be a storyteller,” the <a class="" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.virgin.com/richard-branson/why-entrepreneurs-are-storytellers" target="_blank">British businessman said in 2016 blog post</a>. “Of course, it is no use being a good storyteller if your product or idea is rubbish. But it is not enough to create a great product; you also have to work out how to let people know about it.”



Hood and Buffett were heading to the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.canadaswalkoffame.com/awards-show-gala/2018-inductees" class="" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Canadian Walk of Fame Inductee Gala</a>&nbsp;together on Saturday, Hood confirmed to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/make-it/" class="">CNBC Make It</a>. The young entrepreneur posted the video on Monday.



Hood, who is 22 years old, was Buffett’s escort for the day, “a once in a lifetime opportunity” for a young entrepreneur, Hood tells CNBC Make It. Hood was chosen via the start-up incubator he is part of, Next 36.



Hood asked Buffett in the video, “What is one tip? So you are talking to people that are 21, 22, just graduating school. What is one tip that you can give them?”



The advice is something Buffett has learned firsthand.



“I was terrified of public speaking when I was in high school and college,”&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7gXaPY524I" class="" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Buffett said in a BBC video</a>, published in 2009.



“I couldn’t do it. I mean I would throw up and everything.”



When he was younger, Buffett took a public speaking course at Dale Carnegie, the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.dalecarnegie.com/en/topics" class="" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">workplace training and professional skills</a>&nbsp;development organization founded by author Dale Carnegie.



“I actually have the diploma in the office. And I don’t have my diploma from college, I don’t have my diploma from graduate school, but I have got my Dale Carnegie diploma there because it changed my life,” Buffett says in the video.



And it is this decision to improve his own skills which Buffett now preaches. The octogenarian tells Hood, “Invest in yourself.”



This article was first published on CNBC <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/05/warren-buffett-how-to-increase-your-worth-by-50-percent.html">https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/05/warren-buffett-how-to-increase-your-worth-by-50-percent.html</a> and is republished with its permission.

gettyimages-73562040-594×594

Billionaire Warren Buffett: This is the ‘one easy way’ to increase your worth by ‘at least’ 50 percent

By <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/cat-clifford/">Catherine Clifford</a> 



<a class="" href="https://www.cnbc.com/elon-musk/">Elon Musk</a> is running electric vehicle company <a class="" href="https://www.cnbc.com/quotes/?symbol=TSLA">Tesla</a>, aerospace company SpaceX and tunneling venture The Boring Company.



He’s even been&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/13/elon-musk-talks-to-gayle-king-about-meeting-tesla-goals.html" class="">sleeping at the Tesla factory</a>&nbsp;to ensure ramped up production of his Model 3 electric car.



The CEO has a lot going on.



As it turns out, Musk has some ruthless productivity tricks, and he shared them&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/17/elon-musk-internal-email-6000-model-3s-per-week-by-june.html" class="">in a letter to Tesla employees</a>&nbsp;on Tuesday.



Here are Musk’s six tips:



1. Nix big meetings



“Excessive meetings are the blight of big companies and almost always get worse over time. Please get [out] of all large meetings, unless you’re certain they are providing value to the whole audience, in which case keep them very short.”



2. Ditch frequent meetings too



“Also get rid of frequent meetings, unless you are dealing with an extremely urgent matter. Meeting frequency should drop rapidly once the urgent matter is resolved.”



3. Leave a meeting if you’re not contributing



“Walk out of a meeting or drop off a call as soon as it is obvious you aren’t adding value. It is not rude to leave, it is rude to make someone stay and waste their time.”



4. Drop jargon



“Don’t use acronyms or nonsense words for objects, software or processes at Tesla. In general, anything that requires an explanation inhibits communication. We don’t want people to have to memorize a glossary just to function at Tesla.”



5. Communicate directly, irrespective of hierarchy



“Communication should travel via the shortest path necessary to get the job done, not through the ‘chain of command’. Any manager who attempts to enforce chain of command communication will soon find themselves working elsewhere. “A major source of issues is poor communication between depts. The way to solve this is allow free flow of information between all levels. If, in order to get something done between depts, an individual contributor has to talk to their manager, who talks to a director, who talks to a VP, who talks to another VP, who talks to a director, who talks to a manager, who talks to someone doing the actual work, then super dumb things will happen. It must be ok for people to talk directly and just make the right thing happen.”



6. Follow logic, not rules



“In general, always pick common sense as your guide. If following a ‘company rule’ is obviously ridiculous in a particular situation, such that it would make for a great Dilbert cartoon, then the rule should change.”



The email, obtained by <a class="" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://electrek.co/2018/04/17/tesla-model-3-production-goal-6000-units-per-week/#disqus_thread" target="_blank">electric vehicle website Electrek</a> and <a class="" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://jalopnik.com/tesla-switching-to-24-7-shifts-to-push-for-6-000-model-1825335216" target="_blank">car news and opinion site Jalopnik</a>, also explained to employees that Tesla would be halting production for several days to upgrade equipment with the goal of <a class="" href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/17/elon-musk-internal-email-6000-model-3s-per-week-by-june.html">producing 6,000 Model 3 cars per week by the end of June</a>. Its authenticity was <a class="" href="https://www.cnbc.com/id/105138447">confirmed by CNBC</a>.



This article first appeared on CNBC <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/18/elon-musks-productivity-rules-according-to-tesla-email.html">https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/18/elon-musks-productivity-rules-according-to-tesla-email.html</a> and is republished with its permission.

Billionaire Elon Musk: I am not Warren Buffett’s biggest fan

Billionaire Elon Musk: I am not Warren Buffett’s biggest fan. gettyimages-1155740300-594×594

Billionaire Elon Musk’s 6 productivity rules, including walk out of meetings that waste your time

By <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/karen-gilchrist/">Karen Gilchrist</a>



Billionaire entrepreneur <a class="" href="https://www.cnbc.com/jack-ma/">Jack Ma</a> founded <a class="" href="https://www.cnbc.com/quotes/?symbol=BABA">Alibaba</a> — one of <a class="" href="https://www.cnbc.com/china/">China’s</a> most successful technology companies.



But even he would have a tough time securing a job there today, he said.



And it’s not just Alibaba. The e-commerce visionary said he and most of the other founders would struggle to pass the initial screening for many of the world’s most desirable companies.



“People like me, today, if I tried to apply (for a) job in Alibaba, it’s almost impossible,” Ma said at the Forbes Global CEO Conference in&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/singapore/" class="">Singapore</a>.



That’s because of a flaw in the international employment system, which places too much emphasis on academic results and unfairly pits out-of-box thinkers against traditional ones, he said.



“People judge you by your diploma,” said Ma. “They would think ’hey, we’re got a group of people from <a class="" href="https://www.cnbc.com/search/?query=Harvard%20University">Harvard</a>, we’ve got people from <a class="" href="https://www.cnbc.com/search/?query=Stanford%20University">Stanford</a>, and you are from nowhere.”



Ma — who struggled through school and was&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/09/lesson-alibabas-jack-ma-learned-after-being-rejected-for-a-job-at-kfc.html" class="">famously rejected from 30 jobs</a>&nbsp;before he started Alibaba in 1999 — said he’d encountered numerous highly capable people who were rebuffed from good jobs simply because they failed to perform academically.



“I’ve found a lot of entrepreneurs like me,” said Ma, noting two former colleagues, now founders of Alipay and Taobao, who failed to get into MBA courses because they did not pass the math exams.



Such academic checklists are becoming increasingly irrelevant in the fast-evolving digital age, he said.



“In the industrial (era), you had to remember faster, you have to remember more, you have to calculate faster. These are the things machines can now do much better than you,” said Ma.



“That is something I worry about. 20, 30 years on, our kids will never be able to survive because of the education we teach,” said Ma.



The 55-year-old, who&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/10/jack-ma-steps-down-as-alibaba-baba-chairman-history-of-the-company.html" class="">retired as Alibaba’s executive chairman</a>&nbsp;last month, said he now plans do philanthropic work in the education sector to better prepare the next generation for the shifting landscape by encouraging greater independent thinking.



“We (have to) teach our kids how to be innovative, constructive and creative so they can survive in the AI (artificial intelligence) period. I want to do more things about that,” said Ma, <a class="" href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/20/working-as-a-teacher-taught-alibabas-jack-ma-this-business-skill.html">a former English teacher.</a> 



This article first appeared on CNBC <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/21/why-jack-ma-says-hed-never-get-a-job-at-alibaba-today.html">https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/21/why-jack-ma-says-hed-never-get-a-job-at-alibaba-today.html</a> and is republished with its permission.

Why Billionaire Jack Ma says he’d never get a job at Alibaba today

#TheHashtag: Billionaire Mark Cuban’s lessons for entrepreneurs & SA vs. Japan at #RWC2019

<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://www.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/gettyimages-652617766-594x5941.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-347815" width="709" height="518"/><figcaption>AUSTIN, TX &#8211; MARCH 12: Businessman Mark Cuban speaks onstage at &#8216;Mark Cuban &amp; Tech Execs: Is Govt Disrupting Disruption?&#8217; during 2017 SXSW Conference and Festivals at Austin Convention Center on March 12, 2017 in Austin, Texas. (Photo by JEALEX Photo/Getty Images for SXSW)</figcaption></figure>



By <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/tom-huddleston-jr/">Tom Huddleston Jr.</a>



A little self-reliance can go a long way for&nbsp;<a class="" href="https://www.cnbc.com/make-it/entrepreneurs/">entrepreneurs</a>.



That’s according to tech billionaire Mark Cuban, who&nbsp;<a href="https://onairwithryan.iheart.com/featured/ryan-seacrest/content/2019-10-10-mark-cuban-slept-on-the-floor-prior-to-becoming-a-billionaire-listen/" class="">told</a>&nbsp;Ryan Seacrest the “biggest mistake” an entrepreneur can make when launching a new business.



“I think the biggest mistake people make is once they have an idea and the goal of starting a business, they think they have to raise money,” Cuban said on Thursday’s episode of Seacrest’s podcast “On Air.”



“And once you raise money, that’s not an accomplishment, that’s an obligation,” because&nbsp;“now, you’re reporting to whoever you raised money from.”



Cuban says entrepreneurs who rely on outside funding can become too beholden to the interests of their investors, who might have a different idea of how to grow the business.



“If you can start on your own … do it by [yourself] without having to go out and raise money,” Cuban tells Seacrest.



Business experts and entrepreneurs often argue the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.inc.com/craig-bloem/5-reasons-why-i-always-caution-entrepreneurs-not-to-self-fund-their-startups.html" class="">pros</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://about.crunchbase.com/blog/bootstrapping-business/" class="">cons</a>&nbsp;of raising outside money to start a business versus self-funding (aka “<a href="https://hbr.org/2016/03/why-every-startup-should-bootstrap" class="">bootstrapping</a>”), the latter of which can typically involve sinking the founders’ personal savings into a new venture and can result in slower growth if the business is reliant on slowly increasing revenue in order to expand.



While fundraising injects much-needed capital into a nascent startup, taking on outside investors can also bring pressure from those investors to grow the company faster than might be healthy in the long-run in order to create an immediate return on their investment.



In Cuban’s own case, the billionaire owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks started his first business after moving to Dallas with only $60 in his pocket in 1982. Called MicroSolutions, the company was a computer consulting business that he&nbsp;<a href="https://www.dallasnews.com/sports/mavericks/2018/07/07/flashback-36-years-ago-today-mark-cuban-arrived-in-dallas-flat-busted-broke-and-the-rest-is-history/" class="">launched with money</a>&nbsp;he and his roommates made throwing keg parties and charging guests $20 apiece for entry.



Cuban, who&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/05/how-mark-cuban-became-a-billionaire.html" class="">had recently been fired</a>&nbsp;from a computer software store at that time, marketed his new company to his former clients from his previous job and built it into a successful business that he would eventually sell to CompuServe for&nbsp;<a href="https://sportsday.dallasnews.com/dallas-mavericks/mavericksheadlines/2011/04/15/how-mark-cuban-went-from-beer-stained-floors-flat-broke-to-billions" class="">$6 million</a>&nbsp;in 1990.



So what’s Cuban’s advice?



“Try to find something that you can make, or that you can buy yourself, and sell to people around you and then ask for referrals and grow the business that way and you can turn it into something enormous,” he tells Seacrest.



This article first appeared on CNBC <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/11/mark-cuban-biggest-mistake-people-make-when-starting-a-business.html">https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/11/mark-cuban-biggest-mistake-people-make-when-starting-a-business.html</a> and is republished with its permission.

Billionaire Mark Cuban: This is the ‘biggest mistake’ people make when starting a business

<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/06/bill-gates-measures-his-quality-of-life-by-asking-himself-3-questions.html" class="">Bill Gates</a>&nbsp;takes risks that very few people in this world will.



He took a risk in 1975, when he dropped out of Harvard to build Microsoft. In 2008, he took a risk in&nbsp;<a href="https://www.gatesfoundation.org/who-we-are/general-information/history" class="">leaving Microsoft to work full-time&nbsp;</a>at The Bill &amp; Melinda Gates Foundation.



And in 2013, he took another gamble, when his foundation contributed to a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.gatesnotes.com/Health/Our-Plan-to-Eradicate-Polio" class="">$5.5 billion initiative</a>&nbsp;to tackle one of the most ambitious public-health goals ever set: eradicating polio.



Those big bets have paid off — polio still remains a problem in certain parts of the world, but significant improvements, such as the development of effective vaccinations, have been made since Gates got involved — which proves that taking big risks and achieving great success can go hand in hand.



But how does one determine which risks are worth taking, and which ones aren’t?



That’s a question the Microsoft co-founder explored in a recent&nbsp;<a href="https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.gatesnotes.com_About-2DBill-2DGates_A-2Dbet-2Don-2Dhumanity&amp;amp;d=DwMFaQ&amp;amp;c=LO_8KzsOlAGvgA6hdGI4v02U_XLiES0sR51Zca0yIy4&amp;amp;r=fnb6sKq7SKN8iiAQiVc8NQSbL93Ztb9TeGwNUoj2-0Y&amp;amp;m=aAhBNd8-lxFKI-iBj-f-xL-V9DkaRQmJJjFwWmVYjQ8&amp;amp;s=yr5av7X0mps5r8cax_JevdltRMUuNVxvHIfp3fiANMw&amp;amp;e=" class="">blog post</a>, in which he talks about Netflix’s new series,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.netflix.com/title/80184771" class="">“Inside Bill’s Brain: Decoding Bill Gates.”</a>&nbsp;A major theme in the documentary is Gates’ willingness to invest time and money into projects that have no guarantee of success.



“Watching the series got me thinking about what the word ‘risk’ really means,” Gates wrote in his post. “Whether we invest $100,000 or $100 million, the decision is always calculated. I spend a lot of time thinking, analyzing data and talking to experts to judge whether we can really help make a difference.”



But Gates says no matter how much analysis one does, it’s important to be comfortable with uncertainty. “We are tackling problems where progress is measured not just in years, but often decades — where your end goal doesn’t change, but your path to get there might have to.”



Gates’ trick to being comfortable with uncertainty, he explained, is to continue learning and be open to new strategies that can bring him closer to his goals. “That approach has guided every big bet I’ve made in my career from Microsoft to today, including polio.”



A willingness to take risks is important, but Gates emphasized another key point: a good bet is based on proper models, not a hunch. In the decision to take on polio, Gates said he had a model in mind, and that model was the history of smallpox: the only human disease ever successfully wiped out.



Ultimately, Gates said his approach to taking risks is “very similar to what Warren Buffett does when he makes an investment on on a bet, that it will be worth 10 times as much down the road.”



“Warren spends a lot of time looking for a company that has great long-term prospects. Then he makes a big investment and holds it for many years,” Gates explained. “He’s famous for staying the course through market gyrations and economic cycles.”



Like Buffett, Gates also picks his projects carefully, looking for ones that will make a difference and create better lives for generations to come. Analyzing whether achieving a certain goal can really help make a difference is what Gates loves most about his job: “I’m never happier than when I’m diving deep into the details of a problem.”



Of course, deciding what risks to take is never easy. “I also feel pressure to make every dollar and every day count,” he wrote. “I say no to a lot more opportunities than I say yes to.”



<a class="" href="https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.linkedin.com_in_tpopomaronis_&amp;amp;d=DwMFaQ&amp;amp;c=LO_8KzsOlAGvgA6hdGI4v02U_XLiES0sR51Zca0yIy4&amp;amp;r=fnb6sKq7SKN8iiAQiVc8NQSbL93Ztb9TeGwNUoj2-0Y&amp;amp;m=P_Ys4FkTrXS6d3lDujeEcG0RASS_Te__ciXliHG8uo0&amp;amp;s=rHzz9dkDjfkID7To9v-Lu83SKuT7yQyc4bQT7r89G-o&amp;amp;e=">Tom Popomaronis</a>&nbsp;is a commerce expert, cross-industry innovation leader and Vice President of Innovation at&nbsp;<a class="" href="https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.massivealliance.com&amp;amp;d=DwMFaQ&amp;amp;c=LO_8KzsOlAGvgA6hdGI4v02U_XLiES0sR51Zca0yIy4&amp;amp;r=fnb6sKq7SKN8iiAQiVc8NQSbL93Ztb9TeGwNUoj2-0Y&amp;amp;m=P_Ys4FkTrXS6d3lDujeEcG0RASS_Te__ciXliHG8uo0&amp;amp;s=MAZG4XFe5vj2XGn8I5ATujLEG6mysjDhAM2R5QnyNpQ&amp;amp;e=">Massive Alliance</a>. His work has been featured in Forbes, Fast Company and The Washington Post. In 2014, he was named one of the “40 Under 40” by the Baltimore Business Journal.



This article first appeared on CNBC <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/28/bill-gates-brilliant-method-for-taking-risks-is-like-how-warren-buffett-invests.html">https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/28/bill-gates-brilliant-method-for-taking-risks-is-like-how-warren-buffett-invests.html</a>&nbsp;and is republished with its permission.

Bill Gates has a brilliant method for making decisions—and he says it’s ‘similar to Warren Buffett’s’

By Taylor Locke 



Everyone has the same amount of time in a day as people like <a class="" href="https://www.cnbc.com/elon-musk/">Elon Musk</a>, who is CEO of not just Tesla, but also SpaceX, The Boring Company and Neuralink, and <a class="" href="https://www.cnbc.com/jack-dorsey/">Jack Dorsey</a>, who is CEO of both Twitter and Square.



So how do such busy billionaire founders like Musk and Dorsey manage their days? Here are Musk’s, Dorsey’s and other successful business leaders’ tips on maximizing productivity.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Jack Dorsey has meetings from a Google Doc</h2>



Research has shown that&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/13/jeff-bezos-mark-cuban-and-elon-musk-all-avoid-meetings.html" class="">most managers believe meetings kill productivity</a>: 65% of senior managers say meetings keep them from completing their own work, according to a survey from&nbsp;<a href="https://hbr.org/2017/07/stop-the-meeting-madness" class="">Harvard Business School and Boston University</a>, and 71% of 182 managers surveyed said they find meetings to be unproductive and inefficient.



When it comes to meetings, Jack Dorsey has a non-traditional approach that he believes speeds up the critical thinking process, as&nbsp;<a href="https://resume.io/productivity-lessons-from-successful-founders" class="">Resume.io points out</a>.



“Most of my meetings are now Google doc-based, starting with 10-minutes of reading and commenting directly in the doc,” Dorsey tweeted in 2018. “This practice makes time for everyone to get on same page, allows us to work from many locations, and gets to truth/critical thinking faster.”



<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">Most of my meetings are now Google doc-based, starting with 10-minutes of reading and commenting directly in the doc. This practice makes time for everyone to get on same page, allows us to work from many locations, and gets to truth/critical thinking faster. Good thread 👇🏼 <a href="https://t.co/YRsxT3kMAZ">https://t.co/YRsxT3kMAZ</a>&mdash; jack 🌍🌏🌎 (@jack) <a href="https://twitter.com/jack/status/987163806781472768?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 20, 2018</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>



The social media exec referenced a Twitter thread by Steven Sinofsky, the former Windows Division President at Microsoft, to support his Google Doc method. Sinofsky explained the potential up-side to writing during meetings as opposed to traditional ones.



“Writing is more inclusive,” Sinofsky said. “It is easier to contribute, doesn’t reward bullies and bulls&#8212;ers, and allows for contemplation.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Elon Musk eliminates excessive meetings</h2>



Elon Musk starts his day with his most critical work and schedules the rest of his day based on priority.



“Focus on signal over noise,”&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7Qh-vwpYH8&amp;amp;feature=youtu.be&amp;amp;t=3m30s" class="">Musk said at the University of Southern California Commencement Speech</a>&nbsp;in 2014. “Don’t waste your time on stuff that doesn’t actually make things better.”



One of the ways he does this is by eliminating as many meetings as he can.



“Excessive meetings are the blight of big companies and almost always get worse over time,”&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/18/elon-musks-productivity-rules-according-to-tesla-email.html" class="">the CEO shared in a letter to employees</a>&nbsp;regarding productivity in 2018<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/18/elon-musks-productivity-rules-according-to-tesla-email.html" class="">.</a>&nbsp;“Get rid frequent meetings, unless you are dealing with an extremely urgent matter.”



If you must have a meeting, Musk says “be certain [you are] providing value to the whole audience.” Musk also advises his employees to “walk out or drop off a call as soon as it is obvious you aren’t adding value.”



It’s not rude to leave meetings that are not providing any value, he says.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Jeff Bezos makes quick decisions</h2>



It’s important to make “high-quality, high-velocity” decisions, according to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. That’s because “speed matters in business,” he said&nbsp;<a href="https://blog.aboutamazon.com/company-news/2016-letter-to-shareholders" class="">in his 2016 letter to shareholders</a>.



“Most decisions should probably be made with somewhere around 70 percent of the information you wish you had. If you wait for 90 percent, in most cases, you’re probably being slow.”



In fact, whether you make the right decision can actually be less important than making one quickly, according to Bezos.



“Many decisions are reversible, two-way doors— for those, so what if you’re wrong?”



You need to be good at quickly correcting bad decisions, he said, but “if you’re good at course correcting, being wrong may be less costly than you think, whereas being slow is going to be expensive for sure.”



Amazon “is determined to keep our decision-making velocity high” not only because it’s important, said Bezos, but also because a “high-velocity decision making environment is more fun too.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Steve Jobs knew when to say ‘no’</h2>



<a href="https://resume.io/productivity-lessons-from-successful-founders" class="">As Resume.io points out</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/steve-jobs/" class="">Steve Jobs</a>&nbsp;believed a key to productivity is knowing<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/02/steve-jobs-heres-what-most-people-get-wrong-about-focus.html" class="">&nbsp;when to say “no</a>.”



“Focusing is about saying ‘no,’” the late Apple co-founder said during the company’s 1997 Worldwide Developers Conference.



“Focus means saying ‘no’ to the hundred other good ideas,”so you have decide what it makes sense to spend time and energy on, and what doesn’t, Jobs said.



In fact, billionaire&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/31/3-things-two-men-learned-from-their-650000-lunch-with-warren-buffett.html" class="">Warren Buffett shares Jobs’ mindset</a>, once saying “the difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say ‘no’ to almost everything.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Bill Gates sharpens his focus through meditation</h2>



Many successful people from Dorsey to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/16/bridgewater-associates-ray-dalio-meditation-is-key-to-my-success.html" class="">hedge fund</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/16/bridgewater-associates-ray-dalio-meditation-is-key-to-my-success.html" class="">billionaire Ray Dalio</a>&nbsp;make meditation part of their daily routine.



It is also one of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/bill-gates/" class="">Bill Gates</a>’ favorite productivity habits. “It’s a great tool for improving my focus,”&nbsp;<a href="https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/The-Headspace-Guide-to-Meditation-and-Mindfulness?WT.mc_id=12_03_2018_10_EOYBooks2018Headspace_BG-media_&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;WT.tsrc=BGmedia" class="">he said in his Gates Notes blog</a>&nbsp;in 2018.



“Meditation is simply exercise for the mind, similar to the way we exercise our muscles when we play sports,” he said.



The Microsoft co-founder, who meditates “two or three times a week, for about 10 minutes each time,” said that meditation teaches him “how to pay attention to the thoughts in my head, and [gain] a little bit of distance from them,” improving his concentration.



Gates <a class="" href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/03/bill-gates-names-the-5-best-books-he-read-in-2018.html">suggests the book</a> “The Headspace Guide to Meditation and Mindfulness” by former Buddhist monk Andy Puddicombe, for anyone who’d like to get started meditating. 



This article first appeared on CNBC <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/11/productivity-tips-from-elon-musk-jeff-bezos-steve-jobs-and-more.html">https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/11/productivity-tips-from-elon-musk-jeff-bezos-steve-jobs-and-more.html</a> and is republished with its permission.

Productivity tips from billionaires Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs and more

By <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/21/bill-gates-13-best-ted-talks-you-need-to-watch.html">Tom Popomaronis</a>



<a class="" href="https://www.ted.com/talks">TED Talks</a> are one of the best online resources for anyone who loves learning. I try to dedicate some time every week to watching a few of them. But there are so many good ones that it’s impossible to choose.



Luckily, I recently came across a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.facebook.com/BillGates/photos/a.10150331291841961/10152060779241961/?type=1&amp;amp;theater" class="">2014</a>&nbsp;playlist of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ted.com/playlists/35/bill_gates_my_13_favorite_tal" class="">Bill Gates’ favorite TED talks</a>. Naturally, I had to watch them all.



The Microsoft co-founder whittled down his favorites to 13 essentials. There’s a broad range of topics to digest in the videos. Some of them, like ones about <a class="" href="https://www.gatesfoundation.org/what-we-do/global-development/polio">polio eradication</a> and <a class="" href="https://www.gatesfoundation.org/What-We-Do/US-Program/K-12-Education">fixing the education system</a>, are specific to Gates’ own interests.



But there’s one common thread throughout the videos: They’re all about how we can positively shape both ourselves and the world.Even if you aren’t interested in algorithms and robotics, there’s something for everyone here — and you’ll definitely finish the videos feeling smarter, wiser and more hopeful.



Here’s the complete list of Gates’ favorite TED talks, and what you can learn from each one:



1.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen?referrer=playlist-bill_gates_my_13_favorite_tal#t-76874" class="">“The Best Stats You’ve Ever Seen,”</a>&nbsp;by Hans Rosling



Putting a bunch of data together in a coherent and captivating way is a challenge. But Rosling, a physician and epidemiologist who died in 2017, was brilliant in his creative use of visual aids.



In this talk, which has been viewed more than 14 million times, the stats guru dispels common myths about the so-called “developing world” by zeroing in on global trends in health and economics.



The most fascinating part of the talk is Rosling’s stunning presentation technique — using interactive bubble charts, compelling data and an energetic speaking style, which has been likened to the “drama and urgency of a sportscaster.”



Even if global health economics isn’t your thing, “The Best Stats You’ve Ever Seen” will give you insight into how the use of stats, visualization and lively body language can shift perspectives.



2.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_specter_the_danger_of_science_denial?referrer=playlist-bill_gates_my_13_favorite_tal" class="">“The Danger of Science Denial,”</a>&nbsp;by Michael Specter



Specter, a staff writer for The New Yorker and author of “Denialism,” explores why the world has increasingly begun to fear scientific advances, instead of embracing them.



“I don’t need to say this, but vaccines are essential,” he says in the talk. “You take them away, and disease comes back, horrible diseases. That’s happening. We have measles in this country now. And it’s getting worse.”



Specter does a great job using several examples — vaccine claims related to autism, “Frankenfood” bans, the herbal cure craze — to illustrate the public’s fear and denial of science and reason. His talk encouraged me, and hopefully many others, to reflect on the consequences of ignoring scientific consensus.



Another great takeaway: There’s nothing more powerful than the scientific method, which involves trying stuff out, seeing if it works and changing it when it doesn’t. As Specter says, “It’s one of the great accomplishments of humanity.”



3.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/david_christian_big_history?referrer=playlist-bill_gates_my_13_favorite_tal" class="">“The History of Our World in 18 Minutes,”</a>&nbsp;by David Christian



Christian, a historian who is specifically a scholar of Russian history, starts the talk by winding back to the beginning of time: 13.7 billion years ago.



“Around us, there’s nothing,” he says. “There’s not even time or space. Imagine the darkest, emptiest thing you can and cube it a gazillion times — and that’s where we are. And then suddenly, bang! A universe appears, an entire universe.”



If you’ve ever wanted to learn the complete history of the universe, from the Big Bang to the internet, in a less amount of time than a “Simpsons” episode, here’s your chance. Or, maybe you don’t care to learn about history at all. If that’s the case, watch it anyway.



I was at first skeptical about how long my attention span could last watching this video, but after a full 18 minutes, Specter made me realize that in order to understand the challenges and opportunities in front of us, we must first learn about the journey that got us here.



4.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2012/04/15/melinda-gates-fights-to-put-birth-control-on-the-global-agenda-and-save-childrens-lives/#429919652f16" class="">“Let’s Put Birth Control Back on the Agenda,”</a>&nbsp;by Melinda Gates



Since the moment it was introduced, contraception has been a controversial topic. But Melinda Gates, co-chair of the Bill &amp; Melinda Gates Foundation, believes many of the world’s social change issues depend on ensuring that women are able to control their rate of having kids.



In the talk, Gates tells the story of a young business woman she met in Nairobi, who made and sold backpacks out of her home. When asked why she chose to have only three children, the woman said, “I wouldn’t be able to run my business if I had another child.”



Her income afforded her just enough to provide an education to all three of her children. “This is the same mental calculus that hundreds of millions of men and women have gone through,” Gates explains. “They’re able to give their children more opportunities by exercising control over when they have them.”



The list of priorities for countries both rich and poor is a massive one, but this talk makes a compelling argument about how essential something like access to birth control is.



5.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/bruce_aylward_how_we_ll_stop_polio?referrer=playlist-bill_gates_my_13_favorite_tal" class="">“How We’ll Stop Polio for Good,”</a>&nbsp;by Bruce Aylward



It’s not surprising to find this one on Gates’ list of favorites. Like Gates, Aylward, a Canadian physician and epidemiologist, is fighting to make a polio-free world.



Polio is almost completely eradicated, but as Aylward says in his talk, “Almost&nbsp;isn’t good enough with a disease this terrifying.” The disease, which affects mainly children, can cause paralysis, sometimes within a matter of hours, and death.



Aylward’s plan to continue the “scientific miracle” that ended polio in most parts of the world — and finally stop it for good — will inspire you to get the word out and encourage governments to keep their generosity up in helping to eradicate this horrible disease.



6.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/atul_gawande_how_do_we_heal_medicine?referrer=playlist-bill_gates_my_13_favorite_tal" class="">“How Do We Heal Medicine?”</a>&nbsp;by Atul Gawande



Doctors are capable of extraordinary things, and we depend on them to keep us healthy. But Gawande, a doctor and writer, argues that in order to do their job effectively, they must take a step back and look at new ways to do medicine.



Doctors used to know everything (at least in their area of expertise) and do everything themselves; those days are over, says Gawande. Physicians need to work together, and a new system for that may be as simple as a checklist, or a new way of coaching one another.



And his point isn’t exclusive to physicians; it applies to all of us, no matter what field we’re in. As Gawande says, “We’ve come to a place where we have no choice but to recognize, as individualistic as we want to be, complexity requires group success. We all need to be pit crews now.”



7.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violence/transcript?referrer=playlist-bill_gates_my_13_favorite_tal#t-1337790" class="">“The Surprising Decline in Violence,”</a>&nbsp;by Steven Pinker



Pinker, a professor of cognitive science, makes a bold claim in this talk: We are far less likely to die violently than members of any previous generation.



“Until 10,000 years ago, all humans lived as hunter-gatherers, without permanent settlements or government,” he says.



Pinker uses visuals to show the corresponding statistic from the U.S. and Europe in the 20th century, and includes all the deaths of both World Wars. “If the death rate in tribal warfare had prevailed during the 20th century,” he says, “there would have been 2 billion deaths rather than 100 million.”



While I don’t doubt his data, the statistics are hard to believe. Has violence really declined? If the answer is yes, then could this decline be reversed? And if the answer to&nbsp;that&nbsp;is yes, how can we prevent it? These are all important questions we must ask.



8.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/nathan_myhrvold_could_this_laser_zap_malaria?referrer=playlist-bill_gates_my_13_favorite_tal" class="">“Could This Laser Zap Malaria?”</a>&nbsp;by Nathan Myhrvold



This was a fun and insightful one that I ended up watching twice. Myhrvold, who used to work at Microsoft, rolls out a live demonstration of a mosquito-zapping gizmo he and his team created.



It basically involves a “photonic fence” that uses lasers to track and obliterate disease-carrying mosquitoes. Of course, this talk was given nearly a decade ago, so it’s unclear how far Myhrvold’s invention got or where it is now.



His enthusiasm and obvious brilliance, however, are not only entertaining, but are also a simple reminder of how boldness and creativity can contribute to our efforts in tackling problems, big or small.



9.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/salman_khan_let_s_use_video_to_reinvent_education?referrer=playlist-bill_gates_my_13_favorite_tal" class="">“Let’s Use Video to Reinvent Education,”</a>&nbsp;by Salman Khan



If you’re not familiar with the Khan Academy, it’s a non-profit organization that provides a series of educational videos, in subjects like math, arts and humanity, and science.



Khan, a former hedge-fund analyst with degrees from MIT and Harvard, talks about how and why he created the Khan Academy. He also explains why interactive exercises through video are a key ingredient to humanizing the education system.



Not only can this help those in parts of the world with limited access to education, but it can also benefit the “adult learner, who’s embarrassed to go back and learn stuff they should have known before going back to college,” says Khan.



Gates, who moderates the talk, calls Khan’s efforts “amazing,” and an example of how technology can help create a more educated world.



10.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/blaise_aguera_y_arcas_demos_photosynth?referrer=playlist-bill_gates_my_13_favorite_tal" class="">“How PhotoSynth Can Connect the World’s Images,”</a>&nbsp;by Blaise Agüera y Arcas



Engineer Agüera y Arcas gives a luminous demo of a PhotoSynth, a software originated from Microsoft Live Labs and the University of Washington.



PhotoSynth uses still photos culled from the Web to build breathtaking dreamscapes, and then lets users navigate them. (While Microsoft shut down the software in 2017, its features returned later that year within the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-brings-back-photosynth-in-its-pix-app-for-ios/" class="">Microsoft Pix app for iOS</a>.)



We’ve come a long way in using technology to connect the world’s images, but the real inspiration here is about all the things we can do with the social environment. “This is now taking data from everybody — from the entire collective memory, visually, of what the Earth looks like — and linking all of that together,” says Agüera y Arcas.



11.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/david_blaine_how_i_held_my_breath_for_17_min/transcript?referrer=playlist-bill_gates_my_13_favorite_tal" class="">“How I Held My Breath for 17 Minutes,”</a>&nbsp;by David Blaine



“As a magician, I try to create images that make people stop and think,” Blaine says in the beginning of his talk. “I also try to challenge myself to do things that doctors say are not possible.”



One of those challenges: holding his breath for 17 minutes. I won’t give too much away (you’ll have to watch the video), but it involves meeting with a neurosurgeon, researching pearl divers and some major oxygen deprivation.



“I push through the pain to be the best that I can be,” Blaine says, as he gets a little emotional. “And that’s what magic is to me.”



Whether you’re a magician or not, he reminds us that with practice, training and lots of experimenting, you can do things that seem impossible.



12.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/susan_cain_the_power_of_introverts?referrer=playlist-bill_gates_my_13_favorite_tal" class="">“The Power of Introverts,”</a>&nbsp;by Susan Cain



In a world that prizes extroverts, looking inward is a virtue, not a problem, argues Cain, author of the best-selling book, “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking.”



Some of the most influential people in history were introverts, she says, including Eleanor Roosevelt, Rosa Parks and Gandhi.



“Introversion,” Cain explains, “is different from being shy. Shyness is about fear of social judgment. Introversion is more about how you respond to stimulation, including social stimulation.”



Extroverts crave large amounts of stimulation, whereas introverts feel at their “most capable” when they’re in quieter, more low-key environments. But the problem is that places like our schools and workplaces are designed mostly for extroverts.



Cain offers a number of suggestions for how we can create a better balance between the two types. It’s essential, she says, especially if we want to maximize&nbsp;all&nbsp;of our talents.



13.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/vijay_kumar_robots_that_fly_and_cooperate?referrer=playlist-bill_gates_my_13_favorite_tal" class="">“Robots That Fly &#8230; and Cooperate,”</a>&nbsp;by Vijay Kumar



Kumar, dean of the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Engineering and Applied Science, gives an interesting lecture about something he and his team built: flying quadrotors, or small, agile robots that swarm, sense each other and form ad hoc teams. They can be used for construction, surveying disasters and far more.



He demonstrates the several features of the robot, which is built like a cross, with four rotors — each on an end of the cross pointed straight up. “You can send them inside buildings as first responders to look for intruders, maybe look for biochemical leaks [or they] can be used for construction and for transporting cargo,” Kumar says.



They can even be sent to collapsed buildings to assess the damage of disasters, he continues, or to map nuclear radiation levels after a nuclear accident. Even today, with all the advancements in the robotics industry, it’s amazing to watch and think about how far we’ve come.



<a class="" href="https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.linkedin.com_in_tpopomaronis_&amp;d=DwMFaQ&amp;c=LO_8KzsOlAGvgA6hdGI4v02U_XLiES0sR51Zca0yIy4&amp;r=fnb6sKq7SKN8iiAQiVc8NQSbL93Ztb9TeGwNUoj2-0Y&amp;m=P_Ys4FkTrXS6d3lDujeEcG0RASS_Te__ciXliHG8uo0&amp;s=rHzz9dkDjfkID7To9v-Lu83SKuT7yQyc4bQT7r89G-o&amp;e=">Tom Popomaronis</a> is a commerce expert, cross-industry innovation leader and Vice President of Innovation at <a class="" href="https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.massivealliance.com&amp;d=DwMFaQ&amp;c=LO_8KzsOlAGvgA6hdGI4v02U_XLiES0sR51Zca0yIy4&amp;r=fnb6sKq7SKN8iiAQiVc8NQSbL93Ztb9TeGwNUoj2-0Y&amp;m=P_Ys4FkTrXS6d3lDujeEcG0RASS_Te__ciXliHG8uo0&amp;s=MAZG4XFe5vj2XGn8I5ATujLEG6mysjDhAM2R5QnyNpQ&amp;e=">Massive Alliance</a>. His work has been featured in Forbes, Fast Company and The Washington Post. In 2014, he was named one of the “40 Under 40” by the Baltimore Business Journal.



This article first appeared on CNBC <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/21/bill-gates-13-best-ted-talks-you-need-to-watch.html">https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/21/bill-gates-13-best-ted-talks-you-need-to-watch.html</a> and is republished with its permission.

These are Bill Gates’ 13 favorite TED talks—and they’ll make you feel smarter, wiser and more hopeful

By <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/rafael-badziag/">Rafael Badziag</a> 



There are billions of people in the world, and only a tiny fraction of them are <a class="" href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/24/warren-buffett-and-bill-gates-agree-giving-up-this-one-thing-will-make-you-more-successful.html">billionaires</a>.



What distinguishes the billionaire’s thought process from everyone else’s? What are their secrets to achieving outrageous success? What are their belief systems? What gives them the energy to pursue ambitious goals?



To find the answers, I spent six years conducting face-to-face interviews with 21&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/26/money-mistakes-millionaires-like-warren-buffett-bill-gates-google-eric-schmidt-never-make.html" class="">self-made billionaires</a>, anddocumented the principles that led them to great success in the book,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Billion-Dollar-Secret-Principles-Billionaire-ebook/dp/B07SB6HQFF/?tag=billionair046-20" class="">“The Billion Dollar Secret.”</a>



But throughout my journey, I learned something that I found deeply insightful: Just like the rest of us,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/21/self-made-billionaires-the-6-habits-of-massive-wealth-and-success.html" class="">billionaires</a>&nbsp;have regrets.



Based on my conversations, here are some of the most common ones:



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">1. Not jumping on great opportunities</h2>



With great risks comes great rewards. But you’ll have a hard time reaping the rewards if you don’t take action fast. Many of the billionaires I spoke to learned this lesson the hard way.



Tim Draper, a venture capitalist and billionaire, is one of them. When asked what advice he had for people who would like to be as successful as he is, he answered: “Choose a goal and go after it.”



But even Draper has failed to act. He told me a story about when he first became interested in investing in Facebook. At the time, Sean Parker, who was president of the company, first said the company was valued at $20 million. But Draper got into a bidding war over the company that eventually went to a $115 million valuation.



Draper ended up backing out. That’s a regret, he said, because Facebook grew in value many times over.



His firm was also outbid when attempting to invest in Yahoo. “I should have just gone ahead and written the check with a note and let them convert it into whatever,” he said, of making the first offer on Yahoo. “When you spot a great opportunity, don’t hesitate.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">2. Not living in the present</h2>



Chip Wilson, founder of the athletic clothing company Lululemon, has a great mantra: Live in the present. But it took him a few years to get there.



When building his first sports apparel company, Westbeach Snowboard Ltd., Wilson said he found himself struggling until he made a life-changing realization.



“I was living my life in the past, in angst about things that I’d done in the past, or I was living my life in the future,” he said, adding that he was never fully appreciative of the people he was with or the things he accomplished in that moment.



“It seemed to me I was always in survival mode. I was always thinking, ‘What am I going to do in the future?’ I recognized that I spent probably 40 years of my life&nbsp;not&nbsp;saying, ‘Oh, isn’t life great?’”



As soon as Wilson changed his mindset, he started telling himself: “I live a&nbsp;great&nbsp;life.” And that helped him move forward by thinking about how he could become a better person and create a difference in the world.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">3. Not starting soon enough</h2>



Despite their success, many billionaires regret not pursuing their goals earlier in life.



Peter Hargreaves is the founder of Hargreaves Lansdown, the largest financial services company in the UK. When asked what he would do differently if he could start his business all over again, he answered: “Well, I’d probably start sooner.”



I received a similar answer from Naveen Jain, who started his first company, InfoSpace, when he was in his late 30s. “I wish I had done it when I was in my 20s,” he said. “I would have 20 years more experience to be doing things.”



Why is that important? “Because you learn a lot more by doing it yourself than by learning from someone else,” he explained. “So if I had done it for 20 years, maybe my first company wouldn’t have been successful, and a second company wouldn’t have been successful&#8230;but a third company&nbsp;would&nbsp;have been.”



As&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/ron-sim/#7345f0f849ae" class="">Ron Sim</a>, the Singaporean billionaire who built OSIM International, a maker of high-end massage chairs, told me: “There is never a right moment to start a business or have a child. But if you don’t do it, nothing will happen. So don’t wait for the right moment. The sooner you do it, the better.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">4. Not being bolder</h2>



Billionaires are also humans. They weren’t born the greatest risk-takers, defying all fears. I asked Jack Cowin, who founded Competitive Foods Australia (which operates Burger King’s Australian franchise as Hungry Jack’s), about what he would have done differently if he could go back to being 21.



“I’d be bolder. I’d take more risks,” he said. “The fear of failure makes you more conscious. The fear of debt makes you more conscious. So I would have more confidence in myself that I could find my way through the maze.”



However, it’s important to balance boldness with caution, he added. Otherwise, you’ll go broke. “If you make a mistake, you make a misjudgment. It’s easy to do.”



In the restaurant business, “you’re never that far away from the danger of someone dying from food poisoning or from someone making a mistake regarding procedures,” he explained. “Everything requires constant diligence. It’s a risk that you live with all the time, so you’ve really got to manage it properly.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">5. Not changing fast enough</h2>



Frank Hasenfratz, founder of automobile parts manufacturer Linamar, says, “Every day, you’ve got to change. If you don’t change, you die.”



Hasenfratz is well aware of the changing world and of the need to adapt to changing conditions.



To illustrate his point, Hasenfratz said he once checked a Chamber of Commerce document from 1964, when he started his own business. At the time, the documented listed about 100 manufacturing plants. But now, he said, almost all of them are gone.



“I’ve been here for 60 years,” he said. “And if you’re not a little bit apprehensive, if you don’t think, ‘I’ve got to do better tomorrow, I’ve got to get a different product or a more advanced product’ — if you don’t do that, you won’t be here for long.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Mistakes and failures are necessary</h2>



Despite the many regrets that these billionaires have shared with me, what surprised me was how little they actually dwell on the things they didn’t do. In fact, almost all of them expressed that mistakes and failures are inevitable.



Cowin’s attitude is, “If you haven’t had a few failures, you haven’t tried enough. You’ve been lazy.”



So the lesson here is to avoid looking back at your actions in a disapproving way. Instead, focus on what you can do now to improve the future.



When it comes to regrets, Cowin said his basic make-up and attitude is a positive one. “If I was 21 again, there wouldn’t be too many things I’d do differently,” he told me.&nbsp;“Sometimes I might’ve gone harder on this or on that. But I think it’s important not to obsesses over the things that didn’t work.”



<a class="" href="http://thebilliondollarsecret.com/">Rafael Badziag</a> is an author and expert in the psychology of entrepreneurship. He has interviewed more than 21 self-made billionaires from all over the world to learn about their secrets to success. His new book, <a class="" href="https://www.amazon.com/Billion-Dollar-Secret-Principles-Billionaire-ebook/dp/B07SB6HQFF/?tag=billionair046-20">“The Billion Dollar Secret,”</a> is an Amazon best-seller. Rafael has been featured on NBC, CBS, USA Today and The Wall Street Journal.



This article first appeared on CNBC <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/04/5-biggest-life-regrets-of-self-made-billionaires.html">https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/04/5-biggest-life-regrets-of-self-made-billionaires.html</a> and is republished with its permission.

Here are the 5 most common biggest regrets by 21 self-made billionaires

By <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/tom-huddleston-jr/">Tom Huddleston Jr.</a>



Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are two of the most high-profile tech titans of the past century, and they also had a famously <a class="" href="https://fortune.com/2011/10/24/when-steve-met-bill-it-was-a-kind-of-weird-seduction-visit/">fierce rivalry</a> that evolved into a friendship based on <a class="" href="https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/05/steve-jobs-untimely-death-taught-bill-gates-this-important-lesson.html">mutual respect</a> until Jobs passed away in 2011.



Gates, the billionaire co-founder of Microsoft and the world’s second-wealthiest person, has&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/07/bill-gates-says-jobs-was-a-wizard-in-getting-staff-to-keep-apple-alive.html" class="">praised</a>&nbsp;the Apple co-founder in the past for Jobs’ leadership qualities and his uncanny ability to motivate his employees. But, there is one specific trait of Jobs’ that Gates is still particularly envious of, Gates says in a new interview with&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-mind-of-bill-gates-revealed-on-netflix-11568107801" class="">The Wall Street Journal</a>.



The former Microsoft CEO talks about how he’s had to work hard to become a better public speaker throughout his career and admits that public speaking was one area where Jobs easily had him beat, according to the interview, published on Tuesday to promote&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/30/how-bill-gates-brain-works-netflix-documentary.html" class="">the new Netflix documentary</a>&nbsp;on Gates’ life and career that premieres on Sept. 20.



“Steve Jobs was always more of a natural at that,” Gates tells WSJ about Jobs’ public speaking abilities, which Gates says allowed Jobs to sell people on any product, even a subpar one. “He could talk about what, in the case of NeXT Computer [his follow-up after being ousted from Apple], was not that good of a machine, yet mesmerize people to death if they happened to be in the auditorium.”



Gates goes on to say that he wishes he could emulate his former friend and rival in that regard, especially with respect to raising awareness for various&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/13/philanthropy-50-how-much-bezos-gates-zuckerberg-charities-gave-away.html" class="">philanthropic causes</a>&nbsp;that Gates and his wife,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/25/melinda-gates-reveals-how-she-negotiated-equality-in-her-marriage.html" class="">Melinda</a>, champion through their non-profit foundation.



“I wish I could be as magical because I have causes that are in some ways more impactful and I need to make sure they don’t get ignored,” Gates says in the interview, referring to the work the Bill &amp; Melinda Gates Foundation does to address global issues, from disease prevention research to fighting poverty.



Gates notes that “some things, like eradicating polio, are inherently inspiring,” but he still believes that Jobs’ ability to sell any product or idea would come in handy, even though Gates has worked to improve his public speaking over the years. (At least one billionaire CEO, Zoom founder Eric Yuan,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/18/zoom-ipo-bill-gates-speech-inspired-founder-to-move-to-us.html" class="">credits a Bill Gates</a>&nbsp;public speaking engagement from the 1990s for inspiring him to start an internet business.)



“I myself am not a preacher,” he says. “I’ve learned a little bit about public speaking, and how to articulate how to solve these problems over time. I’ve gotten OK on that in a certain sense.”



For what it’s worth, the Bill &amp; Melinda Gates Foundation is one of the world’s largest private philanthropic foundations, with an endowment of more than&nbsp;<a href="https://www.gatesfoundation.org/who-we-are/general-information/foundation-factsheet" class="">$50 billion</a>. And, Gates and fellow billionaire Warren Buffett, have also convinced hundreds of wealthy people to donate billions of dollars of their wealth to charity as part of their&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/31/14-billionaires-signed-bill-gates-and-warren-buffetts-giving-pledge.html" class="">Giving Pledge campaign</a>.



This isn’t the first time that Gates has praised Jobs’ ability to get people on board with his particular vision. Jobs had a way of “casting spells” to motivate his employees,&nbsp;<a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/july-7-2019-how-to-lead-a-fareed-zakaria-gps-special/id377785090?i=1000443856975" class="">Gates told CNN</a>&nbsp;in a July interview.



“I was like a minor wizard because he would be casting spells, and I would see people mesmerized, but because I’m a minor wizard, the spells don’t work on me,” Gates said.



This article first appeared on CNBC <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/12/steve-jobs-trait-bill-gates-envied-the-most.html">https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/12/steve-jobs-trait-bill-gates-envied-the-most.html</a> and is republished with its permission.

Bill Gates says this is the Steve Jobs trait he envied the most

By <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/kathleen-elkins/">Kathleen Elkins</a>



Berkshire Hathaway chairman and CEO Warren Buffett believes in working with people you respect.



“Try to work for whomever you admire most,” the investing legend told author Gillian Zoe Segal in an interview for her 2015 book,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1419715704/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;camp=1789&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;creative=9325&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;creativeASIN=1419715704&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;linkCode=as2&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;tag=getti043-20&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;linkId=X6UNEWPT2UNOA7CQ%20%5Ct%20_blank" class="">“Getting There: A Book of Mentors.”</a>&nbsp;“It won’t necessarily be the job that you’ll have 10 years later, but you’ll have the opportunity to pick up so much as you go along.”



It’s advice that served him well: When he was starting his career, well before he made his billions, Buffett took a job with his mentor and hero, Benjamin Graham, without even asking about the salary. “I found that out at the end of the month when I got my paycheck,” he told Segal.



The decision paid off, career-wise. Buffett, who was one of Graham’s students at Columbia Business School, says that his former professor largely <a class="" href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/10/billionaire-warren-buffett-tribute-to-investor-teaches-how-to-live-a-successful-and-happy-life.html">shaped his career and investment philosophy</a>.



While&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/25/most-employees-dont-negotiate-their-salary.html" class="">salary is an important factor&nbsp;</a>when thinking about your career, “You don’t want to take a job just for the money,” said Buffett, “and you should never work for people who make your stomach churn or who keep you up at night.”



Buffett’s longtime business partner,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/charlie-munger/" class="">Charlie Munger</a>, who has also made a name for himself as one of today’s most successful investors, offers similar career advice. “Don’t work for anyone you don’t respect and admire,”&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/16/warren-buffetts-partner-charlie-munger-has-3-rules-for-a-career.html" class="">he has said</a>.&nbsp;“Work only with people you enjoy.”



The two billionaires agree that this advice is most effective if you’ve chosen a career path that interests you. “I have never succeeded very much in anything in which I was not very interested,” Munger said. “If you can’t somehow find yourself very interested in something, I don’t think you’ll succeed very much, even if you’re fairly smart.”



Passion pays off, Buffett told Segal: “You want to be excited when you get out of bed in the morning. I tap dance to work every day.”



This article first appeared on CNBC <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/04/warren-buffetts-top-career-advice.html">https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/04/warren-buffetts-top-career-advice.html</a> and is republished with its permission.

Before Warren Buffett made his fortune, he took a job without asking what the salary was—here’s why

By <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/arjun-kharpal/">Arjun Kharpal </a>



2019 is a big year for&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/quotes/?symbol=BABA" class="">Alibaba</a>. The Chinese e-commerce giant is celebrating its twentieth anniversary and its high-profile founder Jack Ma,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/10/alibaba-jack-ma-succession-plan-daniel-zhang-to-take-over-as-chairman.html" class="">is stepping down as chairman on Tuesday</a>.



Since its founding in 1999, Alibaba has gone from being a traditional e-commerce company to a conglomerate that has businesses from logistics to food delivery and cloud computing. It is now a company valued over $460 billion.



Here are some of key moments in Alibaba’s history.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">April 1999: The journey begins</h2>



Alibaba was established by a group of 18 founders led by<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/jack-ma/" class="">Jack Ma</a>.&nbsp;The group worked out of Ma’s apartment in the Chinese city of Hangzhou, where Alibaba is now headquartered.



Its first website was Alibaba.com, an English-language wholesale marketplace. That same year, Alibaba launched a domestic wholesale market place.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">January 2000: SoftBank invests</h2>



Alibaba got a $20 million investment from a group of investors led by SoftBank.



“We didn’t talk about revenues, we didn’t even talk about a business model,” said Ma about SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal at the time. “We just talked about a shared vision. Both of us make quick decisions.”



That investment helped Alibaba to grow.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">May 2003: Taobao is born</h2>



Taobao is an online shopping platformin China run by Alibaba, where third-party sellers can push their products.



In Alibaba’s 2015 fiscal year, Taobao’s gross merchandise volume reached1.59 trillion yuan ($223.9 billion). That has grown to 3.11 trillion yuan in the 2019 fiscal year.



Revenue from Taobao is a crucial part of Alibaba’s core commerce business.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">December 2004: Alipay launch</h2>



Alipay is one of China’s two big payments platforms, along with rival WeChat Pay which is owned by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/quotes/?symbol=700-HK" class="">Tencent</a>. It’s a system based on QR codes, a kind of bar code, that’s found at merchants’ payment counters. Buyers in stores can scan the code to make payments. But Alipay can also be used in online stores.



However, Alipay has proved to be a controversial asset throughout Alibaba’s history, causing the company and its founder Ma, to clash with key shareholders Yahoo and SoftBank.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">August 2005: Yahoo becomes biggest shareholder</h2>



Yahoo poured $1 billion into Alibaba for a 40% stake in the company, making it the e-commerce firm’s largest shareholder.



As part of the deal, Alibaba took control of Yahoo’s China business.



“Together, we will create one of the largest Internet companies in China, and our combined assets will make us the only company that has a leading position in all the key sectors that are driving explosive Internet growth in China such as search, commerce and communications,” Terry Semel, Yahoo’s CEO at the time said in a press release.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">November 2007: Hong Kong IPO</h2>



Before Alibaba’s debut in the U.S. in 2014, it carried out an initial public offering (IPO) in Hong Kong in 2007.



The public listing raised $13.1 billion Hong Kong dollars in gross proceeds. On its opening day, Alibaba shares surged from the offer price of $13.50 Hong Kong dollars to as high as $39.50 Hong Kong dollars.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">April 2008: The birth of Tmall</h2>



Alibaba launched a product called Taobao Mall which was spun off years later and became Tmall. Along with Taobao, Tmall is now one of Alibaba’s most important e-commerce properties in terms of revenue.



Tmall has positioned itself as a place where foreign brands can set up an online store and sell to Chinese consumers.



Luxury fashion brands, electronics makers and even&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/quotes/?symbol=SBUX" class="">Starbucks</a>&nbsp;are on Tmall.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">September 2009: Cloud business launched</h2>



Alibaba launched its cloud business in 2009 and it is now one of the biggest in China.



Cloud computing is the second-largest revenue source for the company, and its fastest-growing businesses.



Alibaba CEO Daniel Zhang&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/09/alibaba-ceo-says-cloud-computing-will-be-its-main-business-in-future.html" class="">told CNBC</a>&nbsp;last year that cloud will be the firm’s “main business” in the future.



“Cloud computing is our long-term strategy. We strongly believe that every business in the future will be powered by cloud,” he said.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">November 2009: Singles Day extravaganza</h2>



Singles Day — also known as the Double 11 festival — is China’s largest shopping event of the year. It was pioneered by current Alibaba CEO Zhang.



Retailers offer huge discounts on that day, and it’s turned into a multibillion dollar festival.



Alibaba saw gross merchandising value — the value of goods sold via its platforms —&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/09/alibaba-singles-day-how-the-giant-shopping-event-began.html" class="">hit $7.8 million in the 2009 edition</a>&nbsp;of Singles Day. That figure stood at&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/09/cnbc-transcript-daniel-zhang-group-ceo-alibaba.html" class="">$30.8 billion for the 2018 event</a>, according to the exchange rate at the time.



“I never expected that we could actually transform this day into a commercial day &#8230; for the whole society,” Zhang told CNBC in an interview last year.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">May 2011: Alipay controversy</h2>



Alibaba sold control of Alipay to a group controlled by Jack Ma. At the time, the company said it was because of new rules issued by the country’s central bank — the People’s Bank of China. The regulations for third-party online payment required them to get specific licenses.



However Yahoo, Alibaba’s biggest shareholder at the time, said the sale of Alipay happened without its knowledge, a statement that the Chinese e-commerce giant denied.



The episode raised concerns about Alibaba’s governance structure.



Yahoo, SoftBank and Alibaba eventually came to a deal that same year: Alibaba would be paid at least $2 billion but no more than $6 billion if Alipay went public; Alipay was also required to pay licensing fees and continue serving Taobao.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">June 2012: Hong Kong delisting</h2>



Just five years after its debut on the Hong Kong stock exchange, Alibaba took the company private through a de-listing.



The company paid $2.45 billion to buy the 27% of Alibaba.com held by the public. This equated to $13.50 Hong Kong dollars a share, the same offering price for the IPO back in 2007.



“Taking Alibaba.com private will allow our company to make long-term decisions that are in the best interest of our customers and that are also free from the pressures that come from having a publicly listed company,” Ma said in comments at the time.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">September 2012: Alibaba’s Yahoo buyback</h2>



Alibaba bought back half of Yahoo’s 40% stake for $7.6 billion. Yahoo received approximately $6.3 billion in cash and $800 million in preference shares in Alibaba.



This was a big return for Yahoo after its initial $1 billion investment in 2005.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">September 2014: New York IPO</h2>



Alibaba went public on the New York Stock exchange in what was the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2014/09/22/alibaba-the-biggest-ever-ipo-after-more-shares-sold.html" class="">biggest IPO in history</a>.



The e-commerce giant raised around $25 billion in its New York IPO. It’s now one of Asia’s largest technology firms by valuation.



Alibaba’s stock is up over 150% from its&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2014/09/18/alibaba-prices-shares-at-68-a-share-dj.html" class="">$68 per share listing price</a>.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">October 2014: Ant Financial is created</h2>



After the controversial spin-off of Alipay, Ant Financial was created to encompass not just the payment system but other financial services.



The creation of this affiliate company signaled Alibaba’s intentions to push into financial technology or fintech.



Ant Financial,now China’s largest fintech firm,&nbsp;is&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/29/chinas-ant-financial-raises-10-billion-at-150-billion-valuation.html" class="">reportedly valued at around $150 billion</a>.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">August 2015: $4.6 billion Suning deal</h2>



Alibaba invested 28.3 billion yuan, which was around $4.56 billion, into Chinese bricks-and-mortar electronics retailer Suning. This followed an investment the year before into department store chain, Intime.



It signaled Alibaba’s intent to push on with its so-called “new retail” strategy where it looks to merge its online business with offline stores. The aim is to bring together payments, e-commerce, food delivery and other parts of its business into one big ecosystem.



It’s a strategy that the company continues to push on with today.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">April 2016: International push</h2>



Since it’s founding 20 years ago, Alibaba’s focus has very much been on its domestic market: helping foreign and local brands sell to Chinese consumers.



But in April 2016, the company&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2016/04/12/alibaba-group-invests-1-billion-dollars-in-lazada-group-and-eyes-southeast-asia.html" class="">took a controlling stake in Singapore-based Lazada</a>, an e-commerce company that serves several markets in Southeast Asia.



That marked Alibaba’s first major international push in the e-commerce space.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">February 2018: Alibaba buys Ant stake</h2>



Alibaba bought a 33% stake in Ant Financial. It was able to do so because of a clause in a contract between the two companies from 2014 when Ant was created.



There have been reports that Ant Financial is gearing up for an IPO, though the company has not made any official announcements.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">September 2019: Jack Ma steps down as chairman</h2>



<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/10/alibaba-jack-ma-succession-plan-daniel-zhang-to-take-over-as-chairman.html" class="">In September 2018</a>, Alibaba said Jack Ma will step down as chairman of the board one year later — on September 10, 2019.



Current CEO Zhang takes Ma’s place as chairman.



Ma intends to stay on the Alibaba board of directors until the 2020 annual shareholders meeting. 



This article first appeared on CNBC <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/10/jack-ma-steps-down-as-alibaba-baba-chairman-history-of-the-company.html">https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/10/jack-ma-steps-down-as-alibaba-baba-chairman-history-of-the-company.html</a> and is republished with its permission.

Billionaire Jack Ma steps down as Alibaba’s chairman. Here are key moments in the company’s history

By <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/taylor-locke/">Taylor Locke</a> 



<a class="" href="https://www.cnbc.com/bill-gates/">Bill Gates</a>’ biggest fear is that his brain will “stop working.” That’s what Gates says in the upcoming three-part Netflix documentary“Inside Bill’s Brain: Decoding Bill Gates.”



With the documentary, which drops Sept. 20, director and executive producer Davis Guggenheim aims to find out what goes on inside the mind of the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/bill-gates/#57df5cba689f" class="">second richest man in the world</a>. But some things about how Gates’ brain works can be gleaned from the series short&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCv29JKmHNY" class="">trailer</a>, released Thursday.



Gates is a&nbsp;″multiprocessor” says his wife Melinda Gates in the trailer. “He will be reading something else but then processing at the same time. It’s chaos!” Melinda says.



Gates&nbsp;″thrives on complexity,” Melinda says. “He makes aframework in his mind, then he starts slotting in the information. If something doesn’t line up, he gets really frustrated.”



“It’s scary,” says Melinda.“But when Bill stills himself, he can pull ideas together that other people can’t see.”



The idea of having a “framework” is something Gates has&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/21/how-bill-gates-remembers-what-he-reads.html" class="">talked about himself</a>.



When explaining how he remembers what he reads, Gates told&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xwh88cI_d8" class="">Quartz</a>:“If you read enough, there’s a similarity between things that make it easy, because this thing is like this other thing. If you have a broad framework, then you have a place to put everything.”



“At first it is very daunting,” Gates told Quartz, “but then as you get the kind of scope, then all these pieces fit in.



“It’s fun to say, okay, this is where this belongs and does this contradict something I knew before? And I better look that up, I better figure it out.”



According to the documentary trailer, Gates looks at problems from usual angles, which allows him to innovate, and “he’s at his best when the deck is stacked against him” — skills that come in handy as he tries to tackle some of the world’s most difficult problems like disease and poverty.



In addition to giving a small glimpse into Gates’ thinking, the trailer for the documentary also gives away some fun facts: Gates’ favorite food is a hamburger, he doesn’t eat breakfast and dogs are his favorite animal.



<iframe loading="lazy" width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/HBEDE1yLopw?start=1" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>



This article first appeared on CNBC <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/30/how-bill-gates-brain-works-netflix-documentary.html">https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/30/how-bill-gates-brain-works-netflix-documentary.html</a> and is republished with its permission.

This is how Bill Gates’ brain works

By <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/kathleen-elkins/">Kathleen Elkins</a>



Berkshire Hathaway CEO and self-made billionaire Warren Buffett turned 89 on Friday, August 30. He’s also celebrating his 13th wedding anniversary with his wife, Astrid.



In honor of the Oracle of Omaha’s big day,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/make-it/" class="">CNBC Make It</a>&nbsp;rounded up seven of his best pieces of life advice.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Marry the right person</h2>



Buffett made his fortune through smart investing, but if you ask him about the most important decision he ever made, it would have nothing to do with money. The biggest decision of your life,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/14/warren-buffett-says-the-most-important-decision-is-who-you-marry.html" class="">Buffett says</a>, is who you choose to marry.



“You want to associate with people who are the kind of person you’d like to be. You’ll move in that direction,” he said during&nbsp;<a href="https://www.gatesnotes.com/About-Bill-Gates/A-Conversation-with-Warren-Buffett" class="">a 2017 conversation with Bill Gates</a>. “And the most important person by far in that respect is your spouse. I can’t overemphasize how important that is.”



It’s advice he’s been giving for years. As he said at the <a class="" href="https://buffett.cnbc.com/2009-berkshire-hathaway-annual-meeting/">2009 Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting</a>: “Marry the right person. I’m serious about that. It will make more difference in your life. It will change your aspirations, all kinds of things.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Invest in yourself</h2>



“By far the best investment you can make is in yourself,” Buffett&nbsp;<a href="https://news.yahoo.com/warren-buffett-shares-keys-success-134329028.html" class="">told Yahoo Finance editor-in-chief Andy Serwer</a>&nbsp;earlier this year.



First, “<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/05/warren-buffett-how-to-increase-your-worth-by-50-percent.html" class="">learn to communicate better</a>&nbsp;both in writing and in person. ” Honing that skill can increase your value by at least 50%, he said in a Facebook video posted in 2018.



Next, take care of your body and mind — especially when you’re young. “If I gave you a car, and it’d be the only car you get the rest of your life, you would take care of it like you can’t believe. Any scratch, you’d fix that moment, you’d read the owner’s manual, you’d keep a garage and do all these things,” he said. “You get exactly one mind and one body in this world, and you can’t start taking care of it when you’re 50. By that time, you’ll rust it out if you haven’t done anything.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Associate yourself with ‘high-grade people’</h2>



Who you associate with matters, Buffett told author Gillian Zoe Segal in an interview for her 2015 book,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1419715704/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;amp;amp;camp=1789&amp;amp;amp;amp;creative=9325&amp;amp;amp;amp;creativeASIN=1419715704&amp;amp;amp;amp;linkCode=as2&amp;amp;amp;amp;tag=getti043-20&amp;amp;amp;amp;linkId=X6UNEWPT2UNOA7CQ%20%5Ct%20_blank" class="">“Getting There: A Book of Mentors.”</a>&nbsp; “One of the best things you can do in life is to surround yourself with people who are better than you are,” he said.



If you’re around what he calls “high-grade people,” you’ll start acting more like them. Conversely, “If you hang around with people who behave worse than you, pretty soon you’ll start being pulled in that direction. That’s just the way it seems to work.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Work for people you respect</h2>



“Try to work for whomever you admire most,” Buffett told Segal. “It won’t necessarily be the job that you’ll have 10 years later, but you’ll have the opportunity to pick up so much as you go along.”



While&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/25/most-employees-dont-negotiate-their-salary.html" class="">salary is&nbsp;an important factor&nbsp;</a>when thinking about your career, “You don’t want to take a job just for the money,” said Buffett.



He once accepted a job with his mentor and hero, Benjamin Graham, without even asking about the salary. “I found that out at the end of the month when I got my paycheck,” he said.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Ignore the noise</h2>



Investing can get emotional, and it doesn’t help that you can see how you’re doing throughout the day by checking a stock ticker or turning on the news.



But no one can be certain which way the financial markets are going to move. The best strategy, even when the market seems to be tanking, is to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/08/heres-what-warren-buffett-says-to-do-when-the-market-tanks.html" class="">keep a level head and stay the course</a>, Buffett says.



“I don’t pay any attention to what economists say, frankly,”&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/18/warren-buffett-explains-why-he-never-listens-to-economists.html" class="">he said in 2016</a>. “If you look at the whole history of [economists], they don’t make a lot of money buying and selling stocks, but people who buy and sell stocks listen to them. I have a little trouble with that.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Success isn’t measured by money</h2>



Buffett is consistently one of the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/billionaires/#4d68b6251c71" class="">richest people in the world</a>, but he doesn’t use wealth as a measure of success. For him, it all boils down to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/31/how-warren-buffetts-measure-of-success-shaped-2018-for-bill-gates.html" class="">if the people you’re closest to love you</a>.



“Being given unconditional love is the greatest benefit you can ever get,”&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ivey.uwo.ca/cmsmedia/2809438/buffett-2008.pdf" class="">Buffett told MBA students in a 2008 talk</a>.



“The incredible thing about love is that you can’t get rid of it. If you try to give it away, you end up with twice as much, but if you try to hold onto it, it disappears. It is an extraordinary situation, where the people who just absolutely push it out, get it back tenfold.”



This article first appeared on CNBC <a href="https://www.cnbcafrica.com/news/special-report/2019/08/29/billionaire-elon-musk-computers-will-surpass-us-in-every-single-way/">https://www.cnbcafrica.com/news/special-report/2019/08/29/billionaire-elon-musk-computers-will-surpass-us-in-every-single-way/</a> and is republished with its permission.

billionaires

I’m an incurable optimist! We will adapt to survive COVID-19 says African billionaire Wiese

The African billionaire who wants COVID-19 to bounce off business

Billionaire Elon Musk calls this a ‘powerful, powerful way of thinking’—but is ‘hard to do.’ Here’s how it works

Billionaire Warren Buffett: This is the ‘one easy way’ to increase your worth by ‘at least’ 50 percent

Billionaire Elon Musk’s 6 productivity rules, including walk out of meetings that waste your time

Why Billionaire Jack Ma says he’d never get a job at Alibaba today

#TheHashtag: Billionaire Mark Cuban’s lessons for entrepreneurs & SA vs. Japan at #RWC2019

Billionaire Mark Cuban: This is the ‘biggest mistake’ people make when starting a business

Bill Gates has a brilliant method for making decisions—and he says it’s ‘similar to Warren Buffett’s’

Productivity tips from billionaires Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs and more

These are Bill Gates’ 13 favorite TED talks—and they’ll make you feel smarter, wiser and more hopeful

Here are the 5 most common biggest regrets by 21 self-made billionaires

Bill Gates says this is the Steve Jobs trait he envied the most

Before Warren Buffett made his fortune, he took a job without asking what the salary was—here’s why

Billionaire Jack Ma steps down as Alibaba’s chairman. Here are key moments in the company’s history

This is how Bill Gates’ brain works

Billionaire Warren Buffett just turned 89—here are 6 pieces of wisdom from the investing legend

News Tips

Advertise With Us

billionaires

I’m an incurable optimist! We will adapt to survive COVID-19 says African billionaire Wiese

The African billionaire who wants COVID-19 to bounce off business

Billionaire Elon Musk calls this a ‘powerful, powerful way of thinking’—but is ‘hard to do.’ Here’s how it works

Billionaire Warren Buffett: This is the ‘one easy way’ to increase your worth by ‘at least’ 50 percent

Billionaire Elon Musk’s 6 productivity rules, including walk out of meetings that waste your time

Why Billionaire Jack Ma says he’d never get a job at Alibaba today

#TheHashtag: Billionaire Mark Cuban’s lessons for entrepreneurs & SA vs. Japan at #RWC2019

Billionaire Mark Cuban: This is the ‘biggest mistake’ people make when starting a business

Bill Gates has a brilliant method for making decisions—and he says it’s ‘similar to Warren Buffett’s’

Productivity tips from billionaires Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs and more

These are Bill Gates’ 13 favorite TED talks—and they’ll make you feel smarter, wiser and more hopeful

Here are the 5 most common biggest regrets by 21 self-made billionaires

Bill Gates says this is the Steve Jobs trait he envied the most

Before Warren Buffett made his fortune, he took a job without asking what the salary was—here’s why

Billionaire Jack Ma steps down as Alibaba’s chairman. Here are key moments in the company’s history

This is how Bill Gates’ brain works

Billionaire Warren Buffett just turned 89—here are 6 pieces of wisdom from the investing legend

News Tips

Advertise With Us

Newsletters