Stephen Wolfram Livestreams

Business, Innovation & Managing Life Q&A (92 videos)

Biweekly ask-me-anything about business, innovation & managing life

Business, Innovation & Managing Life Q&A:
Business & Innovation Q&A for Young Entrepreneurs & Others (Apr. 28, 2021) »

1 hour 33 minutes

✕ close
How do you incentivize teams working on subcomponents of larger systems that don't directly impact P&L? Are you optimistic about the economic future in the medium and long term? Do you think computers will ever be able to become more efficient allocators than free markets? How would you go about mapping the EdTech industry? I know people building products, doing private equity deals and doing consulting, as well as teachers using products. Nobody knows what's out there! Do you think a UBI-based economy is coming soon? What are your thoughts on UBI? How would the bot even evaluate the value of the labor? Seems super complicated. Why was Bell Labs so successful? Do you think it can be copied? I've always wanted to know how to start an R&D lab with only ideas. For example, XPRIZE has a carbon capture prize. Looking at a whale's baleen, how feasible is it to have "baleen" filters on container ships that filter carbon from the oceans as the ship moves? When the ship docks, filters can be swapped out and the carbon can be collected and turned into building materials or "goop" for 3D printers. Just a quick thought. Based on your experience leading a largely remote organization, how do you track and reward the value that team members contribute? You should have smashed 80% of the awards to increase the value of the other 20%. How has your company evolved relative to your expectations when you started it? And how successful is it in achieving your goals, say out of 10? Any thoughts on team building/a group becoming a team? Have you had any failures after your PhD? If we compare the UK to the US, why does the latter seem much better than the former in terms of developing business ideas from academia to industry? Maybe it's time to reflect and present useful things to people that they're not using after years and years, and maybe not let them wait another 20 years. Your record keeping seems incredibly robust. Has that always been the case? What inspired its structure? View Less »
View More »
Business, Innovation & Managing Life Q&A:
Business & Innovation Q&A for Young Entrepreneurs & Others (Mar. 31, 2021) »

1 hour 24 minutes

✕ close
Tell us about your failures as an entrepreneur and what you learnt from them? What is your opinion about software patents? How many hours did you work in academia compared when you went to industry? How can young people, like my niece obsessed with Fusion Rockets, follow their dreams? How much should one be projected in the future, rather than staying focused on the present? Why was Steve Jobs so successful? Was he a good engineer or a good seller? Or a good designer? What is more important: focus or a good idea? How quickly did you get help with Biz Admin, accounting and such? How much of the operations of the biz are you able to automate with functions in WL, are there special functions for this unique purpose? What is your success/failure ratio for ideas/projects you've started, that haven't quite worked out? How much do you think that the title of your degree affects what projects you will be able to work on? Do you think the label traps you in one field or type of job? Hey Stephen, have you ever thought about talking on the Indie Hackers podcast? They showcase self-funded businesses. In what category am I? is 39 considered young, or am i in the "Others" category? Thousands of ideas I have, so thousands things to do, but how to prioritize? That I don't care about the money when doing something interesting and working on a project, is that a good idea? View Less »
View More »
Business, Innovation & Managing Life Q&A:
Business & Innovation Q&A for Young Entrepreneurs & Others (Mar. 17, 2021) »

1 hour 40 minutes

✕ close
How did Champaign become the base of operations of the company? Why haven't you lived in Champaign for "three decades"? Is it a doable thing to work at a university and run a startup at the same time? Hi Stephen, at pre-revenue stage, should a company aim for reaching revenue faster at the expense of cash or for saving cash in order to survive little longer at the expense of time/market opportunity? How do you deal with employees who may be very talented and productive, but may find it hard to fit in with the rest of the team? I wonder if it's even possible for large companies to be agile. How do you plan a roadmap for your company? Does it just happen naturally or is there some deep thought that goes into what you want to make happen? What's your experience with management paradigms like SCRUM and agile? Can you recommend a 'general strategy'? Would you please elaborate on the distributed nature of your company? Should there be a limit on the maximum number of people on a project or in a meeting? Is there a suitable time period which one must devote to reading about previous innovations/developments related to the theme of a project, before actually jumping onto the implementation? Is it possible or practical to avoid mid-managers while scaling up the company by creating sub-founders who work just like the founder at the founding stage of the company? What are the most tiresome things in your job as a CEO? How do you stay so intense and focused after all these years when you could've retired much much earlier? View Less »
View More »
Business, Innovation & Managing Life Q&A:
Business & Innovation Q&A for Young Entrepreneurs & Others (Mar. 3, 2021) »

1 hour 28 minutes

✕ close
Can you give us some insights into how you scaled up Wolfram, and what important issues/questions you had to tackle or what significant lessons you learned? Are there cultural biases that you have had to overcome for breaking any prior limits in the possibilities of your activities? How did you find your first employees? Did you have to go to a lot of places to find them? Partner vs employee is a really interesting distinction to discuss - employees complete tasks, partners identify tasks worth investing in? How do you deal with individuals who are strongly convicted that they are knowledgeable on a matter but actually have no idea what they are talking about? Jim Cramer talked on Lex about political games Steve Jobs and his people played, a kind of high level thing. What does that really mean? In the beginning, how many of your decisions about the company were gut instinct/market research/customer feedback/something else? Is it possible to earn money doing free software? What is "Open Source" good for from your perspective? How do you assess people to figure out their niche? View Less »
View More »
Business, Innovation & Managing Life Q&A:
Business & Innovation Q&A for Young Entrepreneurs & Others (Feb. 17, 2021) »

1 hour 21 minutes

✕ close
Why did you choose to partner up with Ethereum and Cardano? What do you think of Cryptocurrencies in general? Have you ever meet Stephen Wozniak? How do Wolfram Research determine the prices of its products? Any tips for pricing products? Cryptocurrency is living a top of the demand that ransomeware generates. What are the biggest obstacles to using smart contracts in day-to-day transactions? Who taught you first about how to run a software company? Did your family taught you this, or some professor from your university? What they taught you? Who was the first person to buy your software? Who taught you first about how to run a software company? Did your family taught you this, or some professor from your university? What they taught you? Who was the first person to buy your software? Is it more difficult to start a new company and make it big or to enter a big company and climb the hierarchy? If I may ask, how important do you think advanced education (i.e. a PhD) is in starting a company? Do you think it is necessary if you're interested in a high-tech industry (quantum computers, synthetic biology, etc.)? Did you write your first piece of software in assembly language on a 386? How do you organize your ideas, projects, notes, etc.? Pen & paper, or electronic-based?? When is it the right time to put the books down, bite the bullet and start a company around your idea? It always seems like we don't know enough to start. How much knowledge/ understanding of economics and finance is needed to start a company, in particular in tech/ science? Couldn't they fork off an experimental company, to try the experimental billion dollar making way, without risking much of the millions of income? ​How did you find the best partners for your company? Did you find it among your friends from university View Less »
View More »
Business, Innovation & Managing Life Q&A:
Business & Innovation Q&A for Young Entrepreneurs & Others (Feb. 3, 2021) »

1 hour 35 minutes

✕ close
What's your hottake on the gamestop saga? What's the most innovative prototype you've been shown that you're surprised didn't make it to market [or failed]...and do you know why? What business concerns does the R&D process entail? What is the process of inventing your own algorithm from scratch? How many algorithms in Mathematica were just created in house by wolfram research? Hi Dr. Wolfram, why does wealth inequality exist and is it necessary for a society to work well? Also will all this matter if we become immortal? Do you think your brain worked better when you were 20 or when you were 50? Jason Fried always talks about getting good at the individual skill of making money. Can you tell us what you've learned about the skill of making money over the years? What advice can you provide an entrepreneur who has lost their high tech business of 15 years due to bankruptcy. How can one overcome the emotional baggage of such a loss. Hi Stephen! You are obviously a man who has created a way to dive into a specific subject with great depth. How do you recommend that people keep their focus when it's easy to be distracted? I rarely finishes my projects. pls help me. Business sounds boring. I just want to do innovation and research. I think maybe business could be a consequence of a new innovative idea and successful project or something. Of course I could be a business person in the real world, since my projects/innovations are hobby and personal based. Is the fact that a lot of companies are pre-revenue (and some large companies don't even have a viable revenue stream) indicate a tech bubble? How did you deal with issues regarding scaling your systems as Wolfram grew? What's your take on the emerging space industry? Would you encourage/advise enterprises in that field? How to make someone fund for any company at ideation level? I have heard silicon valley investor's opinion that the best businesses begin operations in areas in which they are the only ones or part of a few, but with an horizon of big growth. Do you think math is in this horizon of growth, or is commited to a limit that paces the rate of growth in math and numerical analysis tools and solutions? You wrote on computational contracts some time ago. Is that on hold due to the physics project? View Less »
View More »