Tag Archives: entrepreneur

TED: Davos for Optimists

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Hello, my name is Jonathan Rubinsztein and I am a TEDdict. A TEDaholic. A TED junkie. But I suspect I will never be cured, and don’t want to be.

TEDLike any dependence, I crave the high I receive from TED conferences. As I sit on the plane to Rio for my 6th conference in as many years, I mind drifts back to my first. Unlike many addictions, the high I receive from each hit is as good as that first one.  Also, unlike most dependencies, the elation I derive from the profound insight, inspiration and – most importantly – ideas is worth every penny I spend… I have no regrets.

For those who have never been to a TED conference, I hope to share with you some of the experience. Most of you would be familiar with the TED videos on you Tube – there have been more than a billion views – and almost everyone who has must have been touched in some meaningful way by a TED idea. For me, for instance, this video by simon simek profoundly changed the way I view my own business. And yes, that is an important point. I am a managing director of a multi-million dollar IT consultancy employing hundreds of people across Asia and I have no problem prioritising 5 days in Brazil for this conference. The value I can contribute back to my business as a result will be immeasurable in terms of return on investment.

Imagine a fully packed schedule from early in the morning to late at night with 22 minute presentations crammed into the every space of the day. Music, performance, conversation, food and incredible conversations that constantly pushing and stretching the status quo and challenging your world view. The presenters and audience are both as fascinating as each other and you’re immersed in this pool of amazing, talented, interesting, people having dinner, lunch and breakfast with you; interacting, discussing the previous presentation or insane event. After five days of such creative binging I usually come back exhausted and yet exhilarated; with enough intellectual and emotional fuel to last me  months. It takes even longer to fully digest or integrate the insights and ideas

Why not just watch it on You Tube? Because the real benefit of the experience is as much about the audience as the speakers. While the calibre of speakers  extends to such luminaries as as Bill Clinton, Jane Goodall, Malcolm Gladwell,Al Gore, Gordon Brown, Richard Dawkins, Bill Gates, Bono, Mike Rowe, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and many Nobel Prize winners – they also make up the audience!. It is the discussions after the presentations that are as valuable as the presentations themselves. To only watch the presentations on You Tube is as deficient as watching a concert on mute. For instance, one of my more lasting memories is a thoroughly scintillating business discussion with Jeff Bezos in LA that helped to revolutionise my business. I cannot think of another event that could afford me that kind of access to brilliance.

I have often heard TED described as Davos for optimists, and although the tagline is “ideas worth spreading” this is often much more than ideas and it really is about the people who are changing the world for the better. Throughout the coming week I will try to download some of that experience here. I hope you can join me and maybe even become fellow addicts yourselves!

We need a better climate for entrepreneurs in Australia

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Last week I had an article published in the Rust Report about Australia’s attitude to innovation, risk and entrepreneurism:

Rust Report: Why are we taxing risk instead of rewarding it?

investorI urged the Federal Government to relax some of the tax rules around share options to encourage more investment and risk. The argument for this has been made most strongly by Business Spectator journalist Paul Wallbank in this article earlier this year: “Is Australia Open for Start-up Business“. I spoke to Paul on Twitter about the topic and he referenced a blog post he had also written about investment capital investment, entitled “Counting the Cost of Investors.” In it he wrote: “For founders, the tricky balance in raising enough money to achieve their objectives while not giving away a controlling interest.

He makes an excellent point about another general malaise in Australian Innovation – short-termism among the investment community. I agree with Future Fund Chairman David Gonski who told an Australian Securities and Investment Commission dinner last year that “Sadly, in Australia, we live in a world of Short Termism”. This is where we also differ from the far preferable climate in The Bay Area and Silicon Valley where companies are able to take a much longer view around building their product, proposition and customer base before being required to return gains. They also have far greater controls over their destiny – it is my undertanding that investors there prefer to advise more than control.

We need to give our entrepreneurs more room to move for them to succeed and without that room it is far harder to achieve what is already a difficult challenge.

As a post-script, this is an interesting article by Marc Andreessen about how the investment culture of Silicon Valley versus elsewhere in the US: Beware Non-Silicon Valley Investors.