After 25 years working with founders, investors and people who have built extraordinary things, one thing has become clear. The numbers tell you surprisingly little about the person sitting opposite you. What does tell you something? Whether they are interesting. Whether their word means something when keeping it becomes inconvenient. And whether they are still the same person when the waiter comes to the table as they were thirty seconds earlier. A reflection on how the definition of success changes when you have been in enough rooms.
Alison Goodwin: “I’m Not Sure We’re Measuring Success Particularly Well”
After 25 years working with founders, investors and people who have built extraordinary things, one thing has become clear. The numbers tell you surprisingly little about the person sitting opposite you. What does tell you something? Whether they are interesting. Whether their word means something when keeping it becomes inconvenient. And whether they are still the same person when the waiter comes to the table as they were thirty seconds earlier. A reflection on how the definition of success changes when you have been in enough rooms.
70% of Wealthy Families Lose Everything by the Second Generation. Here Is Why.
$124 trillion is transferring between generations by 2048. In the UK alone, £5.5 trillion is changing hands. And yet a 20-year research project on 3,200 families found that 70% of wealthy families lose their wealth by the second generation – and 90% by the third. The reason is almost never technical. It is not about investment selection or tax planning. It is about the conversations most families are actively avoiding. Here is what the ones beating those odds are doing differently.