For the company's 30-year-old CEO, Tarek Mansour, getting there hasn't meant following the wisdom of business school professors or management gurus—it's been ignoring advice altogether. "The worst advice that most people get is that you should go and seek out a bunch of advice. And when it comes to his own business approach, Mansour said he's largely learned by doing—opting to even ignore management books or podcasts. "Both of us, we're probably very sort of entrepreneurially illiterate," Mansour said, referring to himself and his cofounder, Lopes Lara. Earlier this summer, the Financial Times reported that the company was exploring a new funding round that could value it at $40 billion.