It was like switching out the engines mid-flight. I remember the day we turned on this free service, had we probably gone on for about six more months, I think we might have died as a company. That was a defining moment and that was as late as 2013. I think every great company has at least three near-death experiences.

I don’t know. That’s a terrible answer I realise, and everyone wants a nice straight forward answer. I think everyone, all scientists, have these kind of wacky ideas along the way, and some of them work and some of them don’t work. And this was one that, you know, came and was successful and went forward, and again it sounds obvious to say we were lucky – but we were lucky, you know, there’s way more ideas fail than ever succeed, and this was one that, you know, we were very excited about at the beginning, we thought it had a very low probability of success, but it took off, and it took off like gangbusters. That was wonderful to see.

Right, it’s true, it’s true. We didn’t think of ourselves as that, you know everybody … There’s an element of craft in the work, you know, we’re putting one foot in front of the other. Trying to get more experiments to work than fail but in hindsight, yes, there’s some truth in that.

It was a brilliant idea: You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish.  I have no responsibility to be like they expect me to be.

I think it’s more modeling. I never bring in my children and say, “Listen, these are the values you should follow in life.” I think it’s a modeling by my wife and me. I think we give them a good life. They saw how we go through life: a difficult time, a hard time, good time. I am very happy. I think they are good kids. If I have hope, it’s because I look at my children.

Unfortunately, I don’t. My wife now reads fiction. I don’t have the time to read fiction. My wife reads the fiction and summarizes it to me, but I wish at one point I’ll have time again to read fiction. It is a luxury I cannot afford right now.

My father was a lawyer. My mother was a homemaker. My father was president of the Egyptian Bar Association. He was involved very much during the Nasser era — which was one of the most repressive eras in Egyptian history — in fighting for democracy, fighting for human rights, and I think that to a lot of extent shaped my view as to what I wanted to do in the future. I wanted to have a world where people are free to express their views, to have freedom of worship, to have freedom from want, and I saw poverty in Egypt when I grew up. To me, freedom, in the larger sense — to be able to speak, to worship, free from want, free from fear — I think it was a key as to what I thought I would like to do when I grow up.

In all this we can only move forward, if we work in a multilateral setting; and that also is another dimension of this – that is recognises the importance of multilateralism. As the citation says, “broadest international co-operation”. We can only win together or lose together, Marika. I think that’s something I have been saying for quite a while and you probably will hear me say more of that, as we go forward.

Well, many. I think Steinbeck, for example, was one of my favorites, Somerset Maugham, Hemingway. Quite a few.

One of my mentors, Tom Frank, a professor of law at NYU, he was really instrumental in making me understand that we need to look at the global picture, and we always need to not take anything for granted, but go very much through a process of critical thinking before we formulate our views. So he was, I think, instrumental in shaping my views as to how to pursue my career in the future.