Thursday, January 29, 2015

Bill Gates reveals his biggest regret in life

He has more money than anyone in the world, yet even Bill Gates suffers from regrets like ordinary people.
The former Microsoft founder who has a personal fortune of $79 billion has admitted his biggest regret in life is not ever learning a second language.
During Reddit’s Ask Me Anything online chat session, the billionaire confessed to feeling “pretty stupid” for not being able to match the language skills of others, including Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg’s ability to speak fluent Mandarin.
“I feel pretty stupid that I don’t know any foreign languages,” Mr Gates wrote.

4 Movies Every Entrepreneur Should Watch

As I look back on my entrepreneurial life, I find it interesting to think about the information that has influenced my entrepreneurial framework. I’ve found that much of my knowledge about entrepreneurship has been formed by books that I have read over the years. However, upon some reflection, it occurs to me that certain films have also made a significant impression on me, directly impacting and shaping my business philosophy.
The following four films fall into this category, and I believe that all entrepreneurs can find something of value to take from them:

3 unique trends shaping Nigeria’s startup ecosystem

In April last year, it was announced that Nigeria’s economy had overtaken South Africa’s, making it the biggest on the continent. This coincided with some notable happenings in the tech space. For one, arguably one of the largest pan-African startup initiatives, Demo Africa 2014, was hosted in Lagos for the first time. Microsoft Ventures also announced that it’s expanding its mission to facilitate startups to include the West African country last month. Not to mention the massive rounds of investments that went to Nigeria tech companies — only seconded by South Africa.
To learn more about what makes this environment so special, Ventureburn recently chatted to the Nigerian accelerator 440′s founders about what trends are shaping the startup ecosystem.

How a Nigerian Internet Start-up Grew Revenue from $250 to $1 Million in 3 Years

In 2008 Abasiama Idaresit returned to Nigeria, after studying for a degree in Information Systems & Management at the London School of Economics. He had one thing in mind: to see how the Internet could help transform the business landscape in Nigeria. That, in fact, was the focus of his dissertation -- the impact of technology on small businesses.
"I've always loved the Internet; wanted to see it change a lot of things in Africa -- marketing, operations..." he tells me, at his office in Lagos.
He started peddling his dreams. Without success. "For the first eight months I didn't make a dime," he recalls. "People literally chased me out of their offices."