The Edinburgh event was organised by the Scottish Business Network, who brought McAfee to audiences across Scotland, hoping to spread his entrepreneurial ethos. 

His history in the tech and business sphere is long and impressive. The venture capitalist has founded eight companies that have been taken public — such as Aemetis, and Pacific Ethanol — all of which have created a combined market value of over $5 billion (£4.1bn). He has also funded more than 25 early-stage companies, six of which went public.

His speech began with a simple mantra, which he believed was the difference between people who wished and those who achieved: “Persist to pursue your purpose, to improve the world.”

Building on this, he relayed that the single most important quality he had in every business venture he embarked on was his persistence. From running a dairy farm at the age of 18, all the way to creating a multinational renewable energy company, McAfee insisted that a relentless persistence to pursue your goal is the key to success. 

“In your career, you will be measured not by the goal you intend to pursue, not even how fast you pursue it,” he said. “You’ll be measured by: when the tough things happen to you, did you persist?”

However, McAfee said that that persistence needs to be grounded in a sense of purpose — and, further, that purpose should be grounded in the possibility to improve the world. 

“The pursuit is what we’re doing as we’re focusing, against her purpose that actually justifies us investing that time,” said McAfee “I would ask you some small way to see this as an opening to a window of opportunity to say ‘what is that purpose that’s so interesting, that I’m going to pursue it for a longer time?’ And then persist.”

When asked if he were to start a business in Scotland, what sector it would be in, McAfee said artificial intelligence. “Scotland is populated with tremendous pools of capital that are small,” said McAfee. 

From this, he went on to explain that partnering with organisations like the Scottish Business Network can give you access to a network of a number of different funding opportunities from very successful angel networks. “Scottish Business Network and its connectivity of Networks help open doors,” said Russell Dalgleish, chairman of the Scottish Business Network.

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According to him, Scotland is uniquely positioned for the AI sector. “We’ve been doing AI for 60 years,” said Dalgleish. According to him, this is the longest concentration of AI progress in Europe. 

McAfee then said that the people who make Silicon Valley successful “are sitting right here, certainly all the intellect.”

What we need, according to McAfee, to develop those entrepreneurs domestically in Scotland — whether they’ve got an idea for an AI-oriented company or something wholly different — is to shift the perception of starting a company from either succeeding or failing, and instead to succeeding or learning. 

“Failure is an opportunity to start again, more intelligently,” he said.