The Most Powerful Force You’re Not Yet Using

Ambition drives founders, but it is rarely examined properly. This session explores how ambition shapes decisions, sacrifices and success, and what becomes possible when that force is consciously directed. 

This is a conversation with Hugo Brooks, serial entrepreneur and author of Ambition: Redefining Success for a Restless Age. 

Hugo makes the case that ambition, the desire to make tomorrow better than today, is the most powerful and least understood force in most founders’ lives. Unexamined, it drives you forward on autopilot. Consciously directed, it becomes one of the most dynamic assets you can own. 

This is a conversation about the force underneath the business, not just the business itself. It will explore what ambition really is, how it shapes founder behaviour, and why understanding it can be as important as any tactic, framework or growth strategy. 

Who should attend

This session is for founders and entrepreneurs at any stage who have achieved something significant and are asking what comes next. 

It will be especially relevant for those who sense that the drive that got them here may now be taking them somewhere they have not consciously chosen. 

Why it’s relevant

Most founder content focuses on tactics, funding and scale. This conversation goes one layer deeper, to the force that drives every decision, every sacrifice and every ambition. 

Many successful founders spend years being driven by ambition without ever stopping to examine what it is pointing towards. That can create progress, but it can also lead to drift, restlessness or success that does not feel as meaningful as expected. 

This session is relevant because it asks a question many founders have not been asked directly: what is your ambition really serving? 

What you’ll take away

You will leave with a genuinely different way of thinking about what drives you as a founder, and why examining that force matters more than any single business framework. 

The session will help you reflect on the role ambition plays in your decisions, identity and future direction. 

You will also gain insight into what becomes possible when ambition is consciously directed rather than simply pursued.