I left school, and I went to work in a computer company. I was in my late teens.
Misery is the company of lawsuits.
Every penny paid to a PFI company is money withdrawn from those waiting for an operation, money removed from the training of clinicians, and money denied for life-saving treatments.
First of all, at any company, the investment in research and development in the products is the lifeblood, so that is a critical element of anyone's future going forward.
The reason the social-networking phenomenon is something that I invested in early and massively - I led the Series A financing for Friendster; I founded a company called Socialnet in 1997; I founded LinkedIn; and I was part of the first round of financing in Facebook - it sounds trivial, but people matter.
Years and years ago, I did a game based on 'Hitchhiker's Guide' with a company called Infocom, which was a great company. They were doing witty, intelligent, literate games based on text.
I got several litmus tests for songs, but usually the people at the publishing company... they're straight-shooters.
I have always enjoyed the company of women and have formed deep and long-lasting friendships with many of them.
My own view is that every company requires a long-term view.
I'm a lucky person because the company keeps growing, and that means my team keeps growing.
I talked to the record company about what I had in mind. They said they wanted something lush. I figured the best thing to do was let them hear what I had in mind.
I was 8 years old when I started listening to Lynyrd Skynyrd and Bad Company and Led Zeppelin.
In the Machine Age, the company itself became a machine - a machine for making money.
It wasn't until the Apple Macintosh that people understood what true hardware-software integration was about. It took one company to line it up: low-cost hardware, cool graphics, third-party products built on top of it, in an all-in-one attractive package that was accessible to consumer marketing.
I'm doing a play at Trafalgar Studios with The Jamie Lloyd Company - 'The Maids' by Jean Genet with Uzo Aduba and Laura Charmichael, directed by Jamie Lloyd. It's one of my favourite plays by one of my favourite playwrights.
42% of our management team are women. So we've reset the goal to 50% by 2017. Because that's when Westpac becomes 200 years old as an institution - the oldest bank, and indeed the oldest company in Australia. So that's a lovely point to reflect on.
Entrepreneurs say in an economic boom it's actually hard to build a company because everybody's too excited and there is too much money funding too many marginal companies.
Just as a company needs a strategy to capture market share, a company needs a strategy to encourage actions that reflect their core values.
I founded a launch company called International Microspace when I graduated medical school in 1989. We were trying to build a microsatellite launcher.
When I was young, many people worked for a company with a pension plan that covered them for as long as they lived. If they didn't have a pension plan, they could count on Social Security and Medicare.
