YouSaid · the spoken record

José Neves

lines on the record: 35
first: 2021-05-20
most recent: 2021-05-20
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“We don't know is a short answer, but I think it's the conversions of physical and digital retail in a much more personalized and elevated experience”
2021-05-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Farfetch Founder, José Neves on Zen Buddhism and Its Impact on Leadership Mentality, Why Head vs Heart is Not the Right Way To Think About Decision-Making & How To Work Through Self-Doubt and Identity as a CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'll pick David Rosenblatt. He's also a part of Twitter and IAC, and he's the CEO of First Leaps. Before that, he sold his company to Google. So not just his incredible acumen and experience, but also the fact that he's been an entrepreneur. He's been one of us. So that always brings a different angle into the room.”
2021-05-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Farfetch Founder, José Neves on Zen Buddhism and Its Impact on Leadership Mentality, Why Head vs Heart is Not the Right Way To Think About Decision-Making & How To Work Through Self-Doubt and Identity as a CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think it starts with cultural and values and making sure that we get alignment with that and we get alignment with the vision of what is a win-win and then it's really hard work after that.”
2021-05-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Farfetch Founder, José Neves on Zen Buddhism and Its Impact on Leadership Mentality, Why Head vs Heart is Not the Right Way To Think About Decision-Making & How To Work Through Self-Doubt and Identity as a CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Many is a token that you get from society to do something positive with it, whether it's in business or whether it's in your personal life. It's really a social token that you're given.”
2021-05-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Farfetch Founder, José Neves on Zen Buddhism and Its Impact on Leadership Mentality, Why Head vs Heart is Not the Right Way To Think About Decision-Making & How To Work Through Self-Doubt and Identity as a CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Favorite book is The Master and His Emissary, which is a book about the right brain and the left brain and how it shapes history and culture.”
2021-05-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Farfetch Founder, José Neves on Zen Buddhism and Its Impact on Leadership Mentality, Why Head vs Heart is Not the Right Way To Think About Decision-Making & How To Work Through Self-Doubt and Identity as a CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The spread is really hot. It's flying off the shelves both online and offline, and we have that visibility into that data. That allowed off-white to have 10 boutiques, 100 boutiques, 200 department stars, biggie tailors eventually stocking them, catches the eye of Louis Vuitton who says, wow, he's cut his teeth already, right? He's done X number of collections, he's entered the number of categories, he's proven himself, and now he can be the creative director of Louis Vuitton. Everyone benefited. Everyone benefited. The boutiques benefited. Virgil benefited. Louis Vuitton benefited. Farfetch benefited. It's a win-win. So for us, bringing all these people together, I got a huge kick out of this because it's really for the love of fashion, for the love of the entire industry. So for us, it's easy then. The point of departure is this view of an ecosystem where there's a win-win-win. There's always a win-win-win. I think that's what makes the conversations possible, and that's what makes these deals between what seemingly...”
2021-05-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Farfetch Founder, José Neves on Zen Buddhism and Its Impact on Leadership Mentality, Why Head vs Heart is Not the Right Way To Think About Decision-Making & How To Work Through Self-Doubt and Identity as a CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of culture, which is fashion to consumer, if you want, no one is an adversary of anyone, right? So I really see this as an ecosystem. For example, Louis Vuitton appointed Virgil Ablau as the men's creative director a few years ago to hear success. I think Virgil is revolutionizing the Louis Vuitton vision for men's. But guess what? That can only be possible because a boutique in Italy and Antonio and also David, who co-founders of NGG, met Virgil. By then he was working for Kiny West, believed in him, and said, this guy has a great vision. And you know what? We're going to support him. We're going to put some money behind him, find some factories to produce his clothes, and sell it in one single boutique in Milan. And from there, we Farfetch had that brand since day one, since season one. We saw the thousand dollars of white the first season, spring summer 2014. We were able to tell all the other boutiques, guys.”
2021-05-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Farfetch Founder, José Neves on Zen Buddhism and Its Impact on Leadership Mentality, Why Head vs Heart is Not the Right Way To Think About Decision-Making & How To Work Through Self-Doubt and Identity as a CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know really. I think it is the ethos of RFEG, right? We see ourselves as an enabler for an entire industry. So what we really, really want to do, what is the reason why we wake up, come to work every day, go through thick and thin to make this company a success. And the ultimate reason is we love this industry and we love revolutionary technology. We do it far the love of fashion and revolutionary technology. We don't want to be a retailer. We don't want to be a designer. We're not any of those things. We are an enabler for the creative community to engage with the public that loves this path of culture, which is fashion. So when you think of Farfetch as that, as a platform, right, as a platform that brings the creatives and the curators, the boutiques together with the brands, which are the creators under one roof as a beautiful ecosystem and makes that available to people that are deeply engaged with this path.”
2021-05-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Farfetch Founder, José Neves on Zen Buddhism and Its Impact on Leadership Mentality, Why Head vs Heart is Not the Right Way To Think About Decision-Making & How To Work Through Self-Doubt and Identity as a CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that's such an important role she has. She pulls the plug on all the bullshit. She says, no, no, no, no, you're not going to get away with that one. No, no, no. Come here. Okay, okay. She's right. Okay. Bless her.”
2021-05-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Farfetch Founder, José Neves on Zen Buddhism and Its Impact on Leadership Mentality, Why Head vs Heart is Not the Right Way To Think About Decision-Making & How To Work Through Self-Doubt and Identity as a CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I am very stubborn. It is one of my personality traits which annoys a lot of people around me, starting with my wife and my kids and my colleagues. I do have a blind spot because I never work for anyone, right? I started my business when I was 19, so I never worked for anyone. That gives me tons of blind spots. And being an entrepreneur and being hardened or battle scattered by ups and downs of being an entrepreneur, you know, it got a little better, but I'm still to learn how to be less stubborn. I think it is a shadow personality trait for sure. Totally admit it. I plead guilty.”
2021-05-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Farfetch Founder, José Neves on Zen Buddhism and Its Impact on Leadership Mentality, Why Head vs Heart is Not the Right Way To Think About Decision-Making & How To Work Through Self-Doubt and Identity as a CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Again, after a while, you get used to it. I have to say, I have an amazing, amazing team, right, left and center. My exact team, the senior leaders at Farf Edge, every single Farfetcher. This is the thing I'm most proud about is the culture, the mission-driven values-driven culture we've created with a strong sense of purpose, with strong sense of love for this amazing part of culture, which is fashion and revolutionary text.”
2021-05-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Farfetch Founder, José Neves on Zen Buddhism and Its Impact on Leadership Mentality, Why Head vs Heart is Not the Right Way To Think About Decision-Making & How To Work Through Self-Doubt and Identity as a CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Have self doubt all the time, every single hour, and it's great. And I look at it and say, wow, that's great, you know, like there's so many things that can go wrong, and I'm aware of it, and this is my mind protecting me. Great, thank you, mind. Now give me the other scenario. Well, okay, fine. Feel better now. Let's carry on.”
2021-05-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Farfetch Founder, José Neves on Zen Buddhism and Its Impact on Leadership Mentality, Why Head vs Heart is Not the Right Way To Think About Decision-Making & How To Work Through Self-Doubt and Identity as a CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You as long as you can have that detached view, again, that conscious view that okay, wow, I'm doubting myself here. And as long as you can clearly see it for what it is, it is a mental movie. It is a mental construct. It's your brain constructing what if all goes wrong. It's just a mental construct. That's all it is. It doesn't mean that it will go wrong, all right, or it's just a mental construct. And that gives you the other ability to say, if this is all a mental construct, let's do the opposite mental construct. What if it goes brilliantly? How does that look like? And you can actually tell your mind, okay, you gave me the negative scenario. Thank you very much. I really appreciate that. I love you. Now, mind, give me the positive scenario. Go. And mind will give you the positive scenario. You can. You know you can give yourself the positive scenario. And if you look at both scenarios and say both are mental movies, which one do I want to live by? I'd rather live with a positive one than with a negative one, right? Because then it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. I'm going to be miserable all the time. So I think self-doubt is great.”
2021-05-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Farfetch Founder, José Neves on Zen Buddhism and Its Impact on Leadership Mentality, Why Head vs Heart is Not the Right Way To Think About Decision-Making & How To Work Through Self-Doubt and Identity as a CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think self doubt is healthy. So, what would be a human being without self-doubt? Talking in more psychological terms, you know, the ego needs to inflate for us to do something. If you take a baby, the baby needs to believe that she can run. She's just walking barely, but she needs to believe that she can, that's the ego inflation, right? So her own mental picture of herself envisions her running around. Then she needs to have that because otherwise she won't try. Of course, she will fall. And that will be a painful experience. But this is so normal. So it is so normal that we do something and it works out. And then we say, wow, I can really do this. Maybe I can go a little faster. That you can call it ego inflation, which is totally fine. Otherwise, you don't get out of the same place. You're stuck in life. And of course, you will stretch yourselves to a certain limit and then you will fail and then you will come back again. And this is how you grow, right? You grow through this cycle. So self-stout is very healthy as long as it doesn't cripple.”
2021-05-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Farfetch Founder, José Neves on Zen Buddhism and Its Impact on Leadership Mentality, Why Head vs Heart is Not the Right Way To Think About Decision-Making & How To Work Through Self-Doubt and Identity as a CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is really important for our businesses, not just for the founders and the CEOs and the exec teams, but for the entire culture of the firm is really important. We have another value that is be revolutionary at Farfetch, and that talks to that risk, to that constant reinvention of the business model and of ourselves”
2021-05-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Farfetch Founder, José Neves on Zen Buddhism and Its Impact on Leadership Mentality, Why Head vs Heart is Not the Right Way To Think About Decision-Making & How To Work Through Self-Doubt and Identity as a CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Average, a little bit more normal, and it will start to ascertain risks in a more understandable way, in more of an average way. But I think you always keep that. And it is very important to keep that. It's very important to keep that in the culture of the business because businesses that don't take risks, they will die, it's just a matter of time. And in the tax base, they will die very, very quickly because technology is changing at such a fast pace that you need to change. Any change is a risk you're taking, may work, may not work. you need to leave behind things that are cash cows that are the car of your business, not leave behind, but venture into other lines of business that are outside your comfort zone. So you need to keep having this risk appetite, actually, instead of risk aversion. Most people are risk averse. I think entrepreneurs are risk curious. So they like to play with the probabilities of success and failure and they get a geek out of this game.”
2021-05-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Farfetch Founder, José Neves on Zen Buddhism and Its Impact on Leadership Mentality, Why Head vs Heart is Not the Right Way To Think About Decision-Making & How To Work Through Self-Doubt and Identity as a CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A fascinating question because entrepreneurs have completely different risk calculator to other people, right? We will never start a business if we have the average person perception of risk. Because, I mean, if you look at startups, the majority does not survive, and it's a very small minority that is a home run or whatever one called like a huge success. And you're taking a huge personal risk. You're investing your passion, your energy, your ego, your security, your sense of security, your sense of certainty of outcome. You're putting all of that in the line, right, when you start a business. So we do have already a calculator that is messed up in the circuitry. The circuitry of our risk calculator is just wired in a different way. Then I think as you mature as an entrepreneur, you know, you start to be a little bit more nuanced. You start to be a little bit older. I'm 37 now. Your risk calculator, calibration starts to be a little bit more.”
2021-05-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Farfetch Founder, José Neves on Zen Buddhism and Its Impact on Leadership Mentality, Why Head vs Heart is Not the Right Way To Think About Decision-Making & How To Work Through Self-Doubt and Identity as a CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He has some very pinent and shocking stories of patients that time and time again researchers have written about these patients that lose the balance between emotions and reason. And in a social context, you just can't operate. What does that mean? It means that the answer, do you make decisions with your brain? Are you make decisions with your heart is the incorrect question because it just shows that you don't know how your mind works and how your heart works. Your heart is part of your nervous system. By the way, your gut is part of your nervous system. billions of nerve cells and your entire body is part of your nervous system for example producing hormones in glands around your body that affect how the brain”
2021-05-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Farfetch Founder, José Neves on Zen Buddhism and Its Impact on Leadership Mentality, Why Head vs Heart is Not the Right Way To Think About Decision-Making & How To Work Through Self-Doubt and Identity as a CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Documentaries are movies. And what he has proven, and this book was in 1994, it changed my life when I read it, that he's since then published the last one I really recommend the listeners is the strange author of things published. And what he demonstrated is that you cannot make good decisions without involving your emotions. For example, people who have a stroke in the right hemisphere of the brain, they keep the left hemisphere, left hemisphere, is responsible for language, logical thinking, modeling, a lot of that stuff. The right-hand side is more the here and now, the emotions, the emotional map of what's going on. So when you are impaved in your right hemisphere, your left hemisphere can answer a NIQ test perfectly well. You can do perfectly well at maths problems, but you don't function in society. And you make mistake after mistake after mistake, and you drive yourself to ruin.”
2021-05-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Farfetch Founder, José Neves on Zen Buddhism and Its Impact on Leadership Mentality, Why Head vs Heart is Not the Right Way To Think About Decision-Making & How To Work Through Self-Doubt and Identity as a CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so one of my favorite neuroscientists, I love neuroscience, I'm passionate about how the mind works. I would say it's a hobby, but it's not a hobby because it's so central in my life that it comes even before anything else. Because if I don't understand how my mind works, how can I make sense of the world anyway in any circumstance? But I'm very much into neuroscience. And this guy, he happens to be Portuguese. He has a H index of 99. He's a hugely published scientist. And he published his first seminal book, which was the error of Descartes. And Descartes, philosopher, French philosopher, famously said, I think therefore I am. And he thought that there was a clear division between rational thinking, logical thinking, and emotions. And he thought that emotions got in the middle. And this is such a big mistake. And we're taught this when children either implicit or explicitly were taught by our parents. We're taught by our teachers in school. We're taught by...”
2021-05-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Farfetch Founder, José Neves on Zen Buddhism and Its Impact on Leadership Mentality, Why Head vs Heart is Not the Right Way To Think About Decision-Making & How To Work Through Self-Doubt and Identity as a CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There will be other situations that push my buttons, and in those situations I will freak out and I will lose it. And it's okay. It's just part of being human. And then you go back and say, wow, I really lost it. Great. You know, like, okay, there's still so much to learn. Carry on. Give me more.”
2021-05-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Farfetch Founder, José Neves on Zen Buddhism and Its Impact on Leadership Mentality, Why Head vs Heart is Not the Right Way To Think About Decision-Making & How To Work Through Self-Doubt and Identity as a CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so, if there's panic around the stock, no one buying it, and some people want him to sell it at whatever cost, that's what happens, right? So I don't think it's financial security at all because you can be in the safest position and create a mental movie. And that mental movie will throw you into a panic situation, right? And we all experience that. Sometimes we're in a perfectly safe environment, but people are afraid of planes. I don't know. And you're in a perfectly safe environment statistically proven to be the safest mode of transportation. Everything's fine, but certainly there's a Thunderbolt or maybe turbulence. And that's it. And you're out of control. And your mind completely spiraling, creating mental movies of all the things you kind of leave behind and how horrible this stuff is going to be. Why did I borrow this bloody plane? So it's nothing to do with external factors. It has to really to do with internal factors. And I'm just a human being. So I'm as prone of being caught. It's just that, for example, in some situations, I'm not caught anymore, but I'm caught in others.”
2021-05-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Farfetch Founder, José Neves on Zen Buddhism and Its Impact on Leadership Mentality, Why Head vs Heart is Not the Right Way To Think About Decision-Making & How To Work Through Self-Doubt and Identity as a CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Attachment, let's call it serenity, or peace, because detachment can sound aloof, can sound like I'm alienating myself, I don't care as the world out there. It's nothing like that. On the contrary, you're doing everything that needs to be done. You're doing everything. You're picking up the phone, you're jumping on video and calls, you're doing everything. You're not doing it with a sense of panic. You're doing it with a sense of serenity, of like, what is it within our power that we can do? I think that doesn't depend at all on external events. So it has nothing to do with financial security. There are examples of stocks that did not recover and there was no guarantee that ours was going to recover because it was quite a lot. I mean, the volumes, to give you an idea, were 10 times more or less the average volume. I think it was around 10% of the company was dumped on Friday and probably another 10% on Monday, something like that. So there was a huge concentrated position and that could have led to minus 50%, minus 60%. I mean, that has happened before.”
2021-05-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Farfetch Founder, José Neves on Zen Buddhism and Its Impact on Leadership Mentality, Why Head vs Heart is Not the Right Way To Think About Decision-Making & How To Work Through Self-Doubt and Identity as a CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The only way you can deal with all these things in an adequate and healthy manner. Last Friday, our stock was involved in one of the hedge fund blow-ups, Archigos Capital, Blew Up, and I woke up. I normally don't look at the stock price. I only look at the stock price by 11 and the stock was down 20%. So what is happening? No one knew what was happening. And I said, okay, let's see if there's any news. There must be some news. No news. Okay, maybe the Nasdaq is now. No, Nasdaq is not out. It's not the tech. Okay, fine.”
2021-05-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Farfetch Founder, José Neves on Zen Buddhism and Its Impact on Leadership Mentality, Why Head vs Heart is Not the Right Way To Think About Decision-Making & How To Work Through Self-Doubt and Identity as a CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“After a while we get the hang of it, and it doesn't mean you won't have any problems in your life. On the contrary, you probably will bring more things to surface in your life that you need to deal with. And it doesn't mean that you don't suffer. It doesn't mean that you don't go through emotional ups and downs. It just means that you enjoy them a little bit more. And that for me is really helpful. It has really helped me in my life, be it personal life, be it professional life. And it's exciting because you never know what's going to be next. That's the other thing. You cannot conceptualize it and grasp at it and create a mental picture of it. And this is it. And that is the state and this is how you feel in that state. There's no such thing like that, right? It's completely unknown. So you're leaping into the unknown every single second. And that's exciting keeps life fresh, exciting, keeps energy flowing. It's just refreshing.”
2021-05-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Farfetch Founder, José Neves on Zen Buddhism and Its Impact on Leadership Mentality, Why Head vs Heart is Not the Right Way To Think About Decision-Making & How To Work Through Self-Doubt and Identity as a CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That really pushes the veteran, like we say, pushes your buttons, you just lose it. But the moment you recognize, oh, I lost it. I was completely unconscious of what I was doing. I was just in reaction mode and I was just automatic pilot and I don't know what I said and what I said or did what I did. That moment just shows you that a part of you was present and was realizing that you were not present unless you live completely immersed in your own mind and you never do this exercise ever and then you can go the entire lifetime without even noticing that you haven't noticed anything. But otherwise it's perfectly okay to go in and out, right? And all of us can do this. It's interesting because the fact that we can ask ourselves, am I fully present now and have an honest answer and say, well, no, I'm not fully present now. That means a part of us is fully present now. Do you know what I mean? So it is very natural. It's very human. It's very simple and it's just a practice. It's just something that you practice every day.”
2021-05-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Farfetch Founder, José Neves on Zen Buddhism and Its Impact on Leadership Mentality, Why Head vs Heart is Not the Right Way To Think About Decision-Making & How To Work Through Self-Doubt and Identity as a CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is meditation, the essence of meditation is awareness of the present moment, and that's why you can meditate in your peloton, for example. I know you're a peloton aficionado. As long as you are fully aware of the present moment, that means you are bodily sensations, even the visceral sensations, it means your emotions and feelings. It means your thoughts, whether they're involuntary or voluntary. And as long as you're fully aware and even aware that you are aware, you are in meditation. So if you ask a Zen master how many hours you meditate a day, you'll say all the time 24. I'm far from being a Zen master, very, very far, far full disclosure. But it is that contemplative practice, really. And once you get the hang of it, you can do it all the time. You can absolutely do it all the time. And of course, you will lose track of it and you will get completely entangled in your thoughts and on your emotions and when you have a situation in your life.”
2021-05-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Farfetch Founder, José Neves on Zen Buddhism and Its Impact on Leadership Mentality, Why Head vs Heart is Not the Right Way To Think About Decision-Making & How To Work Through Self-Doubt and Identity as a CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“First of all, for me, having a philosophy is important because you need one. And even if you think you don't have one, you do have one. Maybe you're not conscious of it. Maybe you inherit it from your parents or you inherit it from your society, culture, the role society has given you and you never questioned it. But you are using it as human beings. We cannot operate. Our minds are models of reality and our actions are based on those models of reality. And therefore, you're either conscious that you're creating a model of reality and conscious of what that model is. And it is classic. It is changing all the time. Are you not? So for me, that's why this is not just a hobby. It is essential to my life. It's really to try to be conscious of what my mind is doing, how it is processing reality. And that is a very Zen thing, you know. It's really about being here and now and being aware of what is arising and”
2021-05-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Farfetch Founder, José Neves on Zen Buddhism and Its Impact on Leadership Mentality, Why Head vs Heart is Not the Right Way To Think About Decision-Making & How To Work Through Self-Doubt and Identity as a CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Back on your feet again and get back in the try it again. And I think that's very important. I did mashall ads, Japanese marshal ads as a teenager, and I master always say it's more important to know how to fall than to know how to attack, to know how to fall and get up is the most important thing. And that's true in life as well and in businesses.”
2021-05-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Farfetch Founder, José Neves on Zen Buddhism and Its Impact on Leadership Mentality, Why Head vs Heart is Not the Right Way To Think About Decision-Making & How To Work Through Self-Doubt and Identity as a CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think it's a learning. I think being a CEO is one of the most humbling exercises in life. I'm not saying that every single job is a chance that life gives us to teach us some humility, but I think being a CEO, a founder, is a very lonely position, especially if you have no other founders. I never had a co-founder. I was always the only CEO and founder of my businesses. You have to decide impossible things because if they were not impossible, others would have decided before, right? As the saying goes. And you have to decide with limited data and with a mix of gut feel and experience and intuition and right brain, left brain. And then you have to live with that decision. So when things don't go well, it is very sobering and it brings you straight down to the ground, if not below the ground sometimes. After a while, you just get used to it and you start to see it's part of the journey. It's part of being hit, falling on the floor.”
2021-05-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Farfetch Founder, José Neves on Zen Buddhism and Its Impact on Leadership Mentality, Why Head vs Heart is Not the Right Way To Think About Decision-Making & How To Work Through Self-Doubt and Identity as a CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Measure, and it was more of, I think I can do this kind of useful arrogance, and that's it. But it was quite successful. We had a huge following globally. These were the days of the Spice Girls and the Chemical Brothers and Prodigy and all the cyberpunk kind of aesthetic. And therefore, Swear, which was very rebellious and very cyberpunk, well, it says it all, really caught the imagination of folks at the time. And we ended up having franchises, so swear shops. Everywhere we had a swear shop in Moscow in front of the Kremlin, in Nicolskaya Street. We had one in Hong Kong. We had one in Cape Town at the point. So we had quite an incredible success in the four or five years that followed that launch. So it was luck. Of course, fashion changed very drastically. And that's where I learned that it's a difficult business because it's a cyclical business in terms of trends. So when the platforms”
2021-05-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Farfetch Founder, José Neves on Zen Buddhism and Its Impact on Leadership Mentality, Why Head vs Heart is Not the Right Way To Think About Decision-Making & How To Work Through Self-Doubt and Identity as a CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I actually started swear in 1995 and I moved to London in 1996 to open the swear flagship store in Covent Gadden, to call it the flagship star is a bit grandiose because it was literally 250 square feet. It was a hole in the wall. The tiniest star of Neil Street in Covent. But for me, it was like a big step moving to the big city. I was born in a tiny city in Porto in Portugal and moving to a global metropolis and developing my brand there. You know, it was a bit naive of me because I was only 22 at the time. You know, I had no education in shoe design, as you probably can tell from my early designs. And all I had learned was being in factories and watching the patent curters and I actually trained as a patent cutter. I found someone to teach me. But, you know, it wasn't a very prepared step in my life.”
2021-05-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Farfetch Founder, José Neves on Zen Buddhism and Its Impact on Leadership Mentality, Why Head vs Heart is Not the Right Way To Think About Decision-Making & How To Work Through Self-Doubt and Identity as a CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, first of all, it just shows how old we are. I'm one of the oldest people going around in the far fetched corridors. We don't go around in our corridors these days because of COVID, but we're going to go back one of these days. Yeah, I think it's a shared passion for the same thing. Cipriano has always been a revolutionary in spirit and he loves new problems like any good coder. But he really loves creating products and things that really change the way people operate and do things and express their creativity. In our case, in the case of our industry, the creative industry. And that's really all we care about, right? And that's what kept us going all these years. And then mutual respect, obviously, and friendship. There's always the value of mutual trust, respect, and we just love working with each other. We love each other to pits.”
2021-05-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Farfetch Founder, José Neves on Zen Buddhism and Its Impact on Leadership Mentality, Why Head vs Heart is Not the Right Way To Think About Decision-Making & How To Work Through Self-Doubt and Identity as a CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That change the way the world works somehow for the better, and a passion for fashion. And so to me, it feels like a continuum. And the Farfetch idea actually looks very, very simple to me. And it has always looked very simple. You know, this industry needs a platform. Someone has to build one and we're going to have a go at it. It's what came to our minds in that winter of 2007.”
2021-05-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Farfetch Founder, José Neves on Zen Buddhism and Its Impact on Leadership Mentality, Why Head vs Heart is Not the Right Way To Think About Decision-Making & How To Work Through Self-Doubt and Identity as a CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Always say that the journey is now 27 years and counting because I've always been an entrepreneur since the age of 19. I started as a software developer, then I started my company with my current CTO, actually Cipriano, who's been working with me for 27 years, blessing. And then we started developing software for the fashion industry that made me fall in love with fashion. I became a shoe designer. I never stopped being a coder and the software business carried on. And it was these two experiences that ultimately led to the concept behind Farfetch and this idea of a community of curators and creators united in one single easy to shop platform. But to me, it's like a continuum, right? It doesn't feel like I did one thing and then I stopped and then I did another thing and then I eventually I decided to do Firefetch. It just feels as I'm still doing what I always wanted to do, which I always had a passion for what I call revolutionary technologies.”
2021-05-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Farfetch Founder, José Neves on Zen Buddhism and Its Impact on Leadership Mentality, Why Head vs Heart is Not the Right Way To Think About Decision-Making & How To Work Through Self-Doubt and Identity as a CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source