BILLIONAIRE
WISDOM
8 Insights From The
World’s Most Effective
Entrepreneurs

Exponential technology allows
us to scale up like never before.
Small groups can have huge impacts.
A team of passionate innovators
can alter the lives of a billion
people in an eyeblink.
To say that this kind of impact is
unfathomable is putting it mildly.

A quartet of entrepreneurs have
harnessed exponential technology to
build multibillion-dollar companies
that forever changed the world:
Elon
Musk
Richard
Branson
Jeff
Bezos
Larry
Page

Each of these
entrepreneurs
mastered a rarely
discussed skill
fundamental to
bold pursuits and
exponential
entrepreneurship:
THE ABILITY TO
THINK AT SCALE
Humans don’t grok
scale. Our brains
evolved to process a
simpler world, where
everything we
encountered was
local and linear. Yet
these four men have
pushed through the
limitations of linear
thinking, and
understanding their
strategies for thinking
at scale can help us
do the same.

Entrepreneurs have a high tolerance for
risk. But, having said that, one of the most
important phrases in my life is ‘protect the
downside.’ It should be one of the most
important phrases in any businessperson’s
life. So okay, we made a big, bold move
going into the airline business. But the
most important negotiation with Boeing
was that we had the right to give the plane
back after twelve months. That meant I
could put my toe in the water, I could see
whether people liked the airline.
But if it didn’t work out, it wasn’t
going to bring everything else
crashing down. I’d be able to
look my record company
bosses in the eye and we’d still
be friends because they’d still
have jobs. Protecting the
downside is critical. Make bold
moves but make sure to have a
way out if things go wrong.
SIRRICHARD
BRANSON
RISK
TAKING
& RISK
MITIGATION
LEARN THE VALUE
OF EACH STRATEGY

Failure comes part and
parcel with invention. It’s not
optional...We understand that
and believe in failing early and
iterating until we get it right.
When this process
works, it means our
failures are relatively
small in size (most
experiments can
start small), and
when we hit on
something that is
really working for
customers, we
double down on it
with hopes to turn it
into an even bigger
success.
JEFFBEZOS RAPIDLY
ITERATE AND
CEASELESSLY
EXPERIMENT
UNTIL YOU
GET IT RIGHT

BE DRIVEN
BY PASSION
& PURPOSE
I didn’t go into the rocket
business, the car business,
or the solar business
thinking this is a great
opportunity. I just thought,
in order to make a difference,
something needed to be
done. I wanted to have an
impact.
I wanted
to create
something
substantially
better than
what came
before.
ELON
MUSK

We always try to concentrate on the
long term...When we first looked at
YouTube, people said, ‘Oh, you guys
are never going to make money with
that, but you bought it for $1.4
billion. You’re totally
crazy.’ And, you know, we
were reasonably crazy, but
it was a good bet. We’ve
actually been doubling
revenue on YouTube every
year for four years. And if
you’re doubling things, no
matter where you start
from, it starts to add up
pretty quickly. Our
philosophy is that the
things that people use
often are really important
to them and we think that
over time, you can make
money from those things.
LARRYPAGE THINK
LONG-TERM

Unless you’re customer-centric you
might be able to create something
wonderful, but you’re not going to
survive. It’s about getting every little
detail right. It is running your airline
like you would an upscale restaurant—
the kind where the owner is there
every day. Virgin Atlantic started
out with one plane against British
Airways’ hundred planes. On paper,
we should not have survived. But
because we were
customer-centric, people
went out of their way to fly
us. We have survived for
thirty years, during which
almost every single airline
that we were competed
against—Pan Am, TWA, Air
Florida, People’s Express,
Laker Airways, British
Caledonian, and about
twenty others—went bust.
SIRRICHARD
BRANSON
EMPHASIZE
A CUSTOMER-
CENTRIC
APPROACH

Outcomes are usually not
deterministic, they’re
probabilistic. But we don’t
think that way. The popular
definition of insanity—doing
the same thing over
and over & expecting
a different result—
that’s only true in a
highly deterministic
situation. If you
have a probabilistic
situation, which most
situations are, then
if you do the same
thing twice, it can
be quite reasonable
to expect a different
result.
ELONMUSK
BROADEN
YOUR VIEW BY
THINKING IN
PROBABILITIES

BE A RATIONAL
OPTIMIST
I’m tremendously optimistic. I’m
certain that whatever challenges
we take on, we can solve with a
little bit of concerted effort and
some good technology. And
that’s an exciting place
to be. [It means] our
job is really to make the
world better. We need
more people working
on this. We need to
have more ambitious
goals. The world has
enough resources to
provide a good quality
of life for everyone.
We have enough raw
materials. We need to
get better organized
and move a lot faster.
LARRYPAGE

[People] will do things
because others are doing
them, because there is a
trend, because they see
everyone moving in one
direction and decide
that’s the best
direction to go.
Sometimes this is
correct, but
sometimes this will
take you right off a
cliff. Thinking in
[fundamental truths]
protects you from
these errors.
RELIANCE ON
FUNDAMENTAL
TRUTHS
ELONMUSK

B
O
L
D
Discover the
exponential
technologies
enabling people
who want to
GO BIG, CREATE
WEALTH, AND
IMPACT THE
WORLD.
ORDER BOLD
Discover the
exponential
technologies
enabling people
who want to
GO BIG, CREATE
WEALTH, AND
IMPACT THE
WORLD.