The most successful founder in history - Part 1

Are you a manager, an artist or an entrepreneur? Determining your business identity is key to finding fulfillment in your work – and in your life. For Bill Gross, it was also the key to making billions and becoming one of the most sought-after serial entrepreneurs on the planet.

In this podcast, you’re going to hear the top three things Bill has learned as a serial entrepreneur that will help you embrace innovation, get your timing right and inspire your staff to work harder.

Who is Bill Gross?

Bill Gross is an entrepreneur who has started and exited from seven companies valued at more than $1 BILLION each. He is truly one of the greatest entrepreneurs of all time – yet he came from humble beginnings.

Bill’s first job was selling candy at the bus stop in junior high. At age 15 he started selling solar devices through the mail, advertising in the back of Popular Science magazine. Then he started making speakers, paying his way through college. When he graduated, he used his remaining profits to buy a $5,000 PC and wrote a software that was acquired by Lotus for $10 million.

This pattern of success isn’t luck. Bill looks for opportunities that are BIG and broken and then brainstorms technology solutions to fix them. Twenty-five years ago, he started Idealab – a company that Tony Robbins is involved with today.

During its more than two decades, Idealab has incubated over 150 companies, created more than 10,000 jobs and had more than 45 successful IPOs and acquisitions. Bill Gross and his management teams have started and exited from seven companies valued at $1 billion each, and their latest venture, Energy Vault, just secured $110 million Series B funding from the Softbank Vision Fund to further its aim to eliminate our dependence on fossil fuels. Energy Vault also won Fast Company’s 2019 World-Changing Ideas Awards in Energy.

Bill creates a new company idea every single day – and what’s even better is that he’s making an incredible impact on the world.

Lessons learned by Bill Gross

Every successful person in the world has experienced failure – often on a massive scale. Bill is no different. Five out of 12 Idealab startups failed in the first year because they didn’t get enough investment, and in total 60 have failed. Bill isn’t shy about sharing his failures, as he’s always found a way to turn his setbacks into successes and learn valuable lessons along the way.

In that first year, he learned the power of story. He says, “We couldn’t come up with a story that was strong enough to help them raise additional money.” Other big lessons he’s learned include the need to find contrarian ideas that you know to be true but that no one believes yet – and the realization that being too early with an idea is even worse than being too late with it.