Why these principles?

• Do something new

  This is fundamentally what drives our team, it is part of our DNA. Additionally, doing something new is not only exciting, but it is the only way we feel we could advance the MS cause.

• Collaborate with the best people you possibly can

  The quality of our team is what allowed us not only to achieve what we have achieved, but to also gain credibility and support in a very short period of time. Our 2010 mission or instance seemed to many an impossibly high ambition. It was extremely challenging to organize and carry out, and became a success only due to the strength of our team. We will continue to take on challenges, which are made even more difficult by the limited resources typical of non-profit charities. But we believe we will continue to succeed only by attracting to the team exceptional people, that are not only smart but bring specific expertise crucial to the organization.

• Be guided by beauty

  This will perhaps raise many eyebrows. But we are not afraid of being non-conformists. And perhaps few can reconcile why Mr. Simons, a mathematician, also has beauty as one of his guiding principles. To us, as to Mr. Simons, beauty can be found everywhere, and aesthetics is important. Those of us coming from engineering or finance backgrounds were seeking, and sometimes finding, beauty in a mathematical formula, engineering design, or financial spreadsheet. In fact, our team's attraction to aesthetics is one of the things that brought us together, as friends before, and as a team later. Many of us come from creative fields, such as advertising and fashion, where the pursuit of beauty is paramount, while the rest have been guided by the less traditional incarnations of beauty in other fields. We wanted to do something beautiful, and believe with our 2010 mission we have achieved that. And we will continue to pursue beauty in all its incarnations.

• Don't give up

  Without this, we would not be here. We cannot remember how many called our idea, and implicitly us crazy. How many times we were told it can't be done. And often, even we were close to believing it may not be possible. But "it can't be done" is not part of our vocabulary. If it were, we would not be able to do something new or have remarkable impact. If something is easy, others would have probably done it already.

• Hope for some good luck

  No matter how smart you are, or how well you planned, there are so many things crucial to success that are out of your control. And the more challenging what you are trying to achieve is, the more you depend on external factors. How these things turn out is luck. Or bad luck. Those among us familiar with the complexities of Wall Street investment decision understand how important luck is. Which probably explains why the saying "better lucky than smart" is so popular on Wall Street. In planning the 2010 Fly for MS mission we were extremely aware how many things could go wrong in a bold journey with events in 30 countries. The plane could broke down many times. Weather could have grounded us. Our financial support might not have materialized. And so on. We tried to plan as well as we could. But upon our return we realized that we had been extremely lucky also. We hope that will continue to be the case.

• Aim for the highest possible Return On Investment for our supporters and donors

  Because we rely on support, financial and otherwise, from those that believe in us we feel that we need to find ways to achieve the highest possible return on their investment. For the cost of two full page adds in a top magazine our 2010 mission managed to reach millions of people in 103 countries, a fantastic "bang for the buck". As several of us come from investment backgrounds, we are wired to think this way, and ROI will continue to be an important metric for us.

• Collaborate with, and complement, traditional MS organizations

  We do not want to reinvent the wheel. What we want to do should be complementary to the efforts of MS organizations and advocates. Furthermore, collaborating, and leveraging each other's strengths is the only way to make 1 + 1 = 3.