How CityFibre Turned Industry Scepticism into Broadband Innovation.

Well, the land of no is more of what it's like to be on a journey as an entrepreneur. I've been fortunate enough to start five companies. All five of them have been successful. Three of them have been in Europe, one in Ireland, one in the Netherlands, and one in the UK. Each one was challenging the incumbents, the monopolies, if you want. And each one began with, no, you can't do that. Nobody has done that. Nobody can compete with these big state -owned enterprises that were then liberalized. And in each case, we built up very successful companies. In the case of City Fiber, the land of no began with buying some distressed fiber assets, and then putting those distressed fiber assets together, cobbling up series and series and series of financings. And of course, in every one of those series of financings, you heard no along the whole way. In City Fiber's case, we raised over 5 billion pounds in capital, and that sparked the UK's infrastructure race. So BT, Virgin, all the other alternates poured in almost 30 billion worth of infrastructure capital. So the land of no means never giving up. But it means a lot more than that. It means having a clear vision that you don't deviate from. It means putting your mission and how you're going to achieve that vision in place, and then grinding through all the obstacles along your path. So living in the land of no is what every entrepreneur needs to understand. That's what it's going to take to succeed, is learning how to take those no's and turn them into yes's.