I design my start-up ventures around my own personal beliefs and values.

Women challenge the status quo because we are never it.

My personal cause and platform, if you like, is women's rights and women's issues.

My background is advertising: I moved to New York from London in 1998 to start up the U.S. office of ad agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty.

Too many people, including the ad industry, believe the future is something that happens and just rolls them over in it's wake.

When we launched If WeRanTheWorld, I said to my team, I want us to innovate in every aspect of how we design and operate this as a business venture, as much as the web platform itself - because I want us to design our own startup around the working lives that we would all like to live. Women and men alike.

The single biggest lesson I learned was when a hire isn't working out fire them fast. My biggest mistakes, and where I've seen the worst results, were when I gave someone too many chances, or let a situation drift on for too long because I couldn't bring myself to terminate it.