How to Make a Few Billion Dollars

My advice to prospective CEOs is to participate in the intentional design of incentive plans, and not delegate them as strictly an HR or talent management task.

“How did you make all that money? What are the actual steps to get to billions of dollars?” Dick felt strongly that success in business is mainly about compensating your people—namely, designing a profit-sharing formula that marries their personal interests with those of the company.

Losing an A player is a cardinal sin.

An empty seat is less damaging than a poor fit.

The way to get the best people on your team is by discarding any pre-imagined picture in your head of what the ideal candidate looks or sounds like.

One effective way to spot new trends is to ask your customers what their dream tech would look like, assuming anything is feasible and cost isn’t a factor. That removes any psychological blocks. I want to know what my customers would go ga-ga over, no matter how fantastical it sounds.

there’s a lot of money to be made by identifying industries that might benefit strongly from AI over the next 20 years;

When I’m on the hunt for a new venture, there’s now an AI dimension to my lens. The questions I compile include the following: How will this industry be disrupted by advances in AI? How soon could that happen? What are the risks and opportunities in that disruption?

We’re the recipients of these benefits, but in terms of our impact on the universe, humans are waning and computers are waxing—that’s the single biggest trend I see. Any business that ignores this trend is likely to get smacked in the face.