CSQ

Ross McCall has spent the better part of a decade inside FIFA, starting in 2018 as head of brand strategy and business intelligence just before the Russia World Cup. In that role, he helped build the data infrastructure that reshaped FIFA’s commercial rights framework, work that fed directly into how the organization prices partnerships, evaluates sponsor performance, and proves ROI to brands writing nine-figure checks.

There are countries you visit to play golf. Then there are countries where golf simply becomes part of a much larger experience. Italy belongs firmly in the second category. Unlike Scotland, where nearly every road seems to lead to another legendary links course, or Ireland, where golf often takes center stage, Italy offers something different.

The ERP market has a well-documented problem: implementations that drag on for months, bloated systems that require armies of consultants, and software that forces businesses to work the way the software was designed, not the way the business actually operates. Intuit Enterprise Suite was built to streamline this implementation.

Early in my career, I thought opportunity was something you accumulated. If it appeared, you moved toward it. If it looked credible, you said yes. The logic was straightforward: more opportunities meant more momentum, and momentum felt like progress. For a while, it was.

Real estate loves to seduce you. Glossy renderings, bustling lobbies, and stories of “irreplaceable locations” create the feeling that a property must be valuable. But strip away the theater and every building is simply a business that collects rent. There are really only two questions that matter: 1. How much cash does it produce? 2. How long can it keep producing it? Answer those honestly—better than the person selling it to you—and you can do very well.

Starting a business is one of the boldest moves a professional can make. But too many founders get tripped up before they even open their doors, bogged down by paperwork, legal requirements, and the hidden costs of getting a business properly structured. Inc. Authority has spent years solving exactly that problem, and today it stands as the No. 1 reviewed company in the incorporation space, backed by over 11,000 five-star Google reviews and more than 44,000 five-star Trustpilot reviews.

Every day, millions of Americans pull off the interstate to grab a coffee, fill their tank with gas and drive away without a second thought. Building a place they trust enough to do that so seamlessly is the entire game. And almost no one is talking about it. My business partner, Val Amiel, and I co-founded LV Petroleum, starting with zero employees.

In March 2020, volatility markets stopped behaving the way they were supposed to. At the time, I was running the VIX book at JP Morgan. One of the core relationships we monitored — the spread between the VIX complex and S&P options — moved to previously unheard-of levels. What normally traded within a tight range blew out to extremes that most models flagged as unsustainable. There were funds that tried to fade it based on that logic.

For most of my career, intelligence was the quality businesses competed hardest to acquire. Firms chased the smartest graduates, assembled teams of specialists, and accumulated proprietary knowledge wherever they could find it. Information itself was a competitive advantage, and the organizations that knew more — about markets, about counterparties, about risk — tended to win. Artificial intelligence is changing that equation.

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