PREFACE

What if you could sit down to dinner with some of the world’s most accomplished entrepreneurs and have a great conversation with them?

That simple notion is the genesis of the book in your hands. Within a short period of time in 2009, I had the pleasure of interviewing onstage both Howard Schultz of Starbucks at Ernst & Young’s annual Strategic Growth Forum in Palm Springs, California, and Reed Hastings of Netflix before magazine editors and publishers in New York. After an hour or so of deep conversation, I walked off those stages so thoroughly jazzed by those experiences that I ultimately decided to start my own company. But I also wondered how I could recreate those inspiring and motivational experiences for others.

Imagine having the chance to listen and learn from a Steve Jobs, a John Mackey, or a Fred Smith on the most important things they’ve learned from their experiences in creating Apple, Whole Foods Market, and Federal Express. Imagine being able to engage in a meaningful conversation with Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank on how they came up with the idea of The Home Depot and got it off the ground. Or having the benefit of the self-reflection of a Howard Schultz, who, like Jobs and Michael Dell before him, had to come back to the company he originally created to reinvent it and himself?

Of course, it was not possible to deliver any one of these rock star entrepreneurs to your dinner table—no matter who was doing the cooking or what you were serving. The next best thing? I could be your ambassador. I could attempt to interview twenty-five of the world’s greatest living entrepreneurs, people who have truly changed the way we live and think, the way we work and play, the way we now see the world itself. That’s exactly what I attempted to do.

How were these twenty-five extraordinary people chosen? Largely on the basis of their impact. How original was their idea? How influential had it become? Did it transform our personal lives in any significant way? Did it alter our professional lives to allow us to become more productive, more thoughtful, and better able to accomplish things to make our own mark in this world? Admittedly, the answers to these questions are entirely subjective. So, too, are the choices of the entrepreneurs in this book. All of them are world changers whose products and services have found their way—big and small—into our lives.

We may now call home to speak to our children on a phone that became the dream of a famous Silicon Valley entrepreneur. We may eat healthier foods because of the realized dream of a man who believed that natural and organic foods were better for you long before most people knew what organic food was. We may fly more cheaply in the skies because of a person who thought the existing airline architecture was poorly built by a bunch of corporate stiffs who forgot they had customers to satisfy.

No less important are the organizations these entrepreneurs have crafted. Unlike many of the places where people work, these are not companies that insulate decision makers from realities. These are not organizations headed by leaders who surround themselves with people who never contradict them. And these are not companies without a clear and overriding purpose that reaches far beyond the bottom line. As important as the products and services these entrepreneurs have brought to market are, they also have deserved reputations for creating places of work that encourage creativity, innovation, and meaning.

Some cynics might accuse me of a little hero worship. No matter. All my life, the people who create great organizations and great products have fascinated me. Over the course of my own career as a journalist, author, and editor, I have been fortunate to interview thousands of people, including some of the most celebrated entrepreneurs and executives of our time. I’ve been lucky enough to have Steve Jobs personally demonstrate the very first iPhone weeks before the product first came to market. I’ve been flattered to have had General Electric CEO Jack Welch, an intrapreneur if ever there was one, ask me to work closely with him on his memoir—a collaboration that resulted in my spending more than a thousand hours with him. And now I am extremely grateful for the time many of these entrepreneurs have made to let me into their formidable minds and biggest adventures.

I want this book to be both a meditation on entrepreneurship and an inspiration for those who want to create something meaningful on their own. It was not always possible to arrange an interview. Most of the entrepreneurs featured in this book are incredibly busy people, often consumed with their business and booked over a year in advance. Yet many rearranged their schedules to allow me the opportunity to engage them. Whether it was through a personal interview or a deep dive into everything ever written and uttered by one of these great entrepreneurs, the goal was to bring that person’s experience and wisdom to these pages for the benefit of others—to inspire, to motivate, to learn, to achieve.