Business, Innovation & Managing Life Q&A:
Business, Innovation and Managing Life (September 15, 2021) »
1 hour 42 minutes
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How do you start a mega corporation?
How do you retain the best people over the years?
I heard that CEOs actually have no impact in large companies.
How do you have a successful software company in this day with only three good machine learning engineers left? I'm just saying I've heard Wolfram Research really needs to hire more machine learning experts. How do you do that when good machine learning people don't work for less than 150k?
How many people could someone lead?
After starting a business, how do you know when you should secure an attorney? It's such a large expense, but it seems like an unavoidable necessity.
Any plans to take a trip into space?
How much more should the CEO make than the median salary?
I am 17 right now. Do you think the USA is better than the UK for business and innovation? Second question: Do you think it's a good idea to start building companies in your 20s, or is it a better idea to first build (theoretical) experience and go for it later on? As in, what do you think of people in their early 20s building machine learning/AI startups?
Do you have any heuristics for deciding when to stop or dramatically alter a long-term and expensive research project?
It is tempting to be very quantitative about measuring the output of your various projects and teams in Wolfram and trying to optimize. Could this also leave people feeling like robots?
Have you ever made any of your employees sign employee contracts with non-compete agreements?
Are there any focused research teams at Wolfram, like full-time researchers on AI/machine learning?
Are there any plans to open offices in Germany?
You were very successful at a young age. How can one be confident toward older or more experienced people?
What quality should we look for in people to determine if working with them will improve us?
Do you have ideas for intermediate-scale projects/companies (maybe 25 or fewer people) that you aren't working on because they aren't compatible with Wolfram's size?
What is your favorite chocolate?
What was your reaction to getting the MacArthur grant? Was it exciting? What did you do with the money? (Was there money attached to it back then?)
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