I attend Internet conferences all the time, and they literally make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

Moving to L.A. when I was 11 was when my entrepreneurialism started because it's the land of the American dream.

Once you start a business, you have to grow it and grow with it - starting a business is not just for Christmas.

If you're a teenager in Palo Alto launching an app, you know from the outset how you plan to finance your business.

In order to stay relevant, you have to stay open to new trends and keep educating yourself. You have to keep evolving.

100% of Net-a-porter customers have a man in their lives in some capacity, and 59% are married or living with a partner.

People always say to me, 'You've really strived to redefine retail.' But the reality is, I wanted to redefine magazines.

For Net-A-Porter and its customers, luxury means exceptional service, 24-7 - wherever they are, whenever they have time.

I don't have a mentor in the strict definition. I take as much advice and inspiration as I can from the people I am close to.

Net-a-porter is an environment where a woman can really indulge, browsing through more than 160 brands in our fashion playground.

Net-a-Porter offers catwalk fashion and trend-driven shopping, but for Mr Porter, while fashion is still important, style is key.

A tendency to focus on art over business has meant that too many designers have failed to make the most of their critical acclaim.

I realised at a certain point that if I was going to have the kind of life that I fantasised about, I needed to get my act together.

When I was a teenager, a psychic told me, 'Your biggest challenge will be life-work balance.' That's certainly turned out to be true!

Touching clothes is just shopping foreplay, but it's changing. After all, you don't need to try a Mercedes to know that you'd like one.

When I'm working, I have a hard time switching off, and when I'm not working, I have a hard time thinking of ever wanting to work again.

Always go into meetings or negotiations with a positive attitude. Tell yourself you're going to make this the best deal for all parties.

Never forget that you only have one opportunity to make a first impression - with investors, with customers, with PR, and with marketing.

I graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, with an English literature degree and travelled for a year before going to work.

I think the fashion industry was slightly put off by people they didn't know. They were presented with things like 20-gatefold color brochures.

You can no longer just have a magazine that shows you this glossy impervious image of women - in the studio, artificial, wearing a push-up bra.

What seems like a crazy idea today eventually grows. It's a 'with hindsight' thing. One day, someone will turn around and say, 'That was genius.'

Success begins at that magical moment when you declare to yourself, your friends, and the universe that you believe you can do something different.

British fashion is a serious business. The British fashion industry is worth £21bn to the U.K. economy and employs 819,000 people across the country.

Every year I go to the Google Zeitgeist conference, which is invite-only, and I'm one of about 20 women and five fashion people out of the 400 there.

Having the positive belief that it will all be O.K. just means that you hustle and make it work because failure is not even an option in your own mind.

As much as I love to shop online, I also love walking the streets on a beautiful day and seeing what finds I can discover in a small shop or vintage store.

Brands will increasingly handle their own e-commerce and rely less and less on local distribution partners. Why should they give away their profit margins?

I have donated money to campaigns. And I have been known to take to the street in protest. But I am more committed to my immediate politics than general politics.

As a woman, I feel it's important to support causes that are important to my core customer, who is also a woman, as well as causes that resonate with me personally.

The United Kingdom has traditionally been a very small market, and even though you had such a creative group of designers, they represented a risk to department stores.

I'm supporting the School for Creative Startups because the project's ambition - to boost innovation and the culture of entrepreneurship - is something I feel strongly about.

Ambition is important. Of course you can't get anywhere without talent, but there are a lot of talented people. To succeed, you have to be the most ambitious talented person.

You can get a slouchy woman's tunic at different price points. But if you want a great pair of trousers or a dress with delicate pleating, you're going to have to spend a little more.

I think fashion is actually very good training for being in the tech world, because it's all about moving on to the next thing, looking for the next thing, not getting stuck in the past.

I think I'm a better mother because of work, because I'm happy. If I wasn't working, I would just be waiting for the kids to come home every day, and living vicariously through their lives.

Pre-Internet, maybe it took six months for a fashion message to get across to a customer base. Fashion messages are now being sent out overnight, simultaneously, to every market in the world.

I cry at anything remotely touching - smile at me warmly and I'm off... television also does it, everything from 'X-Factor' to cereal commercials. I cry when I am tired. I also cry when I laugh.

It's interesting to see how some of the womenswear designers that we have long worked with at Net-A-Porter are developing menswear collections - Christopher Kane, Jonathan Saunders and Richard Nicoll.

In 13 years of doing my day job, I've learned a few things about motivating people. It's about setting a vision and, as long as everyone knows why they're doing what they're doing, you achieve that vision.

I always thought I looked kind of like Keith Richards, and sometimes I think I look like Michael Jackson in his mug shot. But as I think Keith Richards is pretty great-looking, I'm embracing that part of me.

The British Fashion Awards gives us the chance to commend not only the winners but celebrate all of the individuals that contribute to the incredible achievements that make London the best fashion destination in the world.

When I started Net-a-Porter, I knew nothing. And I was pregnant. Starting a new venture and being pregnant for the first time are pretty similar in many ways. If you knew what was going to happen to you, you wouldn't venture down that road.

I think there will be an increasing convergence between content and commerce, that it will be about following consumers instead of making consumers come to you, and I am especially excited about the various platforms that will allow more and more access to customers.

I believe that all brands will become storytellers, editors and publishers, all stores will become magazines, and all media companies will become stores. There will be too many of all of them. The strongest ones, the ones who offer the best customer experience, will survive.

The power of your thoughts can influence how events turn out. I'm a positive person - when bad things happen, I can see the silver lining. As a result I think I am very lucky, even though I probably have as much bad luck as anyone else, and that translates into seeing opportunity.

Part of creating the future is to follow this consumer. Women are working; we've moved the store to the desk. Now though, she's is in the back of a cab with her iPhone or her iPad, she's tweeting an outfit that her friend is wearing and desperately trying to find out where she got her shoes online.

Dear London, British fashion is a serious business. The British fashion industry is worth £21bn to the U.K. economy and employs 819,000 people across the country. With your help, we would like to see these numbers rise for the good of our industry, our talented designers, and our reputation worldwide.

I envision a day when a businesswoman will be having lunch, and then her phone will ring. When she opens it up, she will see an image of the latest Marc Jacobs coat that just arrived in stock. With a click of a button, she can purchase it and then find it waiting for her when she gets back to her office.

To be a designer today is to be an entrepreneur. Whether you're a two-man operation in Shoreditch or a 3,000-person, vertically integrated brand, you need to have the wherewithal to run your business through investment, considering everything from start-up funds to your exit plan or what it takes to go public.

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