Today I was invited by a local college to speak with students about entrepreneurship. The thing that stayed with me is that these young people have real dreams, but even at this age they are already scared to go off track. I told them the World Mobile story. We started in Zanzibar with a few hundred users and one simple idea: people should own the network they pay for. Operators told us it couldn't be done. Regulators told us it couldn't be done. Plenty of investors told us it couldn't be done. Today that idea has connected more than 3 million previously unconnected adults and 300,000 children across three continents. The "you can't" has never stopped, and the last few weeks have been louder than ever. After the bridge attack, people rushed to write us off. Numbers have been twisted, history has been rewritten, and things have been said about me and this company that are simply not true. Some of it has come from people who once stood beside us. So here is what I told the students, and it's what I'm telling our community. Your life will be full of people telling you what you can and can't do: loved ones, friends, business partners, investors and complete strangers. Some will even lie about you. Listen to criticism that makes you better. Ignore the people who only want you to stop or want you to fail. There will be times when it looks like you're failing. That is a moment in time, not the end of the story. Stick to your guns. Bring the drive, the determination and the grit, and make sure the idea underneath it all is logical and sound. What matters isn't where you are today. What matters is where you end up. World Mobile isn't stopping, and neither should those students. We are building, and I want them building too. Every one of them will hear "you can't" more times than they can count. We hear it every day. The answer is the same for all of us: keep going and smash through everything in your way.