0
SPEAKER_00
Charter flights to Mars, indoor, aquaponic, sustainably farmed greens, and fish with the highest ecological and quality standards, channeling renewable forms of energy to replace those that cause harm.
0
SPEAKER_00
No, you haven t stepped forward in time to some futuristic utopia.
0
SPEAKER_00
It s all happening now.
0
SPEAKER_00
See, the events of the past year, and even just this week, can test anyone s faith.
0
SPEAKER_00
If you ve been struggling to see the good when it feels like there s so much bad happening all around us, this episode, in which Tony interviews visionary leaders who are finding solutions to large-scale global problems like hunger, might serve to restore your faith and even fuel your optimism for a shared future.
0
SPEAKER_00
As you ll hear, the best is yet to come.
0
SPEAKER_01
Welcome everybody to the Tony Robbins podcast.
0
SPEAKER_01
I m real excited for today because you re going to meet four extraordinary human beings that are world-changing technology experts, founders of companies, CEOs and founders that are putting together companies that aren t just ideas.
0
SPEAKER_01
They re right now moving forward and they re beginning to do things that literally can change the lives of billions of people.
0
SPEAKER_01
And there s no hyperbole or exaggeration in that.
0
SPEAKER_01
Most of you know, I m so passionate about anything can increase the quality of people s lives.
0
SPEAKER_01
I m obsessed with finding answers and solutions.
0
SPEAKER_01
I m also obsessed in finding entrepreneurs and companies that are about to change the world and being a part of that, trying to help in any way I can with them, investing in them, going on the ride with them.
0
SPEAKER_01
So together we can have this experience of just increasing that quality of life.
0
SPEAKER_01
So we re talking about breakthrough CEO founders here today, four of them in areas that really impact the quality of life on earth.
0
SPEAKER_01
Again, sounds like such hype, doesn t it?
0
SPEAKER_01
But it s really true.
0
SPEAKER_01
And, you know, in a world where we every day hear so much about the pandemic or about the economy or about whatever, you gotta understand that, you know, people get stuck of what s right in front of them.
0
SPEAKER_01
When things are going terribly, people think things are gonna go terrible forever.
0
SPEAKER_01
When things are going great, people think it s gonna be great forever.
0
SPEAKER_01
And life is not like that.
0
SPEAKER_01
Life is this process of circular history, but also the overall, like if you see a straight line, it s not in nature.
0
SPEAKER_01
A straight line is drawn by a man or a woman, by a human.
0
SPEAKER_01
In nature, things grow by going up and down a little bit, up and down.
0
SPEAKER_01
But if you re really successful, the overall arc is up.
0
SPEAKER_01
And we as a society have these different waves that affect us.
0
SPEAKER_01
There s economic waves.
0
SPEAKER_01
There is virus waves.
0
SPEAKER_01
But one of the most powerful waves in humanity today is technology.
0
SPEAKER_01
Technology is right, can change everything.
0
SPEAKER_01
What once was scarce becomes abundant.
0
SPEAKER_01
You know, my dear friend, Peter Diamandis, has a perfect little metaphor he uses.
0
SPEAKER_01
He goes, you know, there aren t enough apples until you got a ladder.
0
SPEAKER_01
And all of a sudden, there s an abundance of apples you couldn t reach before.
0
SPEAKER_01
Those simple technologies can literally change our lives, and they have.
0
SPEAKER_01
I mean, I remember looking back in 1996, 97, there was, at the time, extreme poverty.
0
SPEAKER_01
There was 1.7 billion people in extreme poverty living on less than $2 a day.
0
SPEAKER_01
Today, it s 227 million.
0
SPEAKER_01
So literally in this short period of time, we ve taken almost a billion and a half people plus out of poverty.
0
SPEAKER_01
It s still too many as far as I m concerned, but it s because of new tools and technologies that we can do this.
0
SPEAKER_01
So this is a session, strap yourself in to both learn about how to grow companies, but more importantly, learn about tools and technologies, how they come into reality and what s coming now that could change the quality of your life forever.
0
SPEAKER_01
So let me introduce our panel for starters.
0
SPEAKER_01
First person here is my dear friend, Bill Gross.
0
SPEAKER_01
How are you, Bill?
0
SPEAKER_00
Great, thanks.
0
SPEAKER_00
Great to be here.
0
SPEAKER_01
If you don t know Bill, he s a legend.
0
SPEAKER_01
This is a guy that started his first solar company in high school.
0
SPEAKER_01
He founded a company called Ideal Labs, which started in 1996.
0
SPEAKER_01
It s the longest running technology incubator in history.
0
SPEAKER_01
150 companies have been started out of this one incubator, and 45 of those companies have been IPO d.
0
SPEAKER_01
I mean, Bill is the only entrepreneur alive that has started seven companies from scratch.
0
SPEAKER_01
and exited them over a billion dollars in revenue.
0
SPEAKER_01
There s nobody quite like him.
0
SPEAKER_01
It s a privilege to have you here, Bill.
0
SPEAKER_01
And what we re going to talk to Bill about is some of the new companies he has that are going to change the environment.
0
SPEAKER_01
Again, they re people promising things in the future.
0
SPEAKER_01
This is happening right now as we speak.
0
SPEAKER_01
If you re worried about global warming and you re worried about cutting back all of the resources of humanity as opposed to finding a better way to transform it, Bill has got answers that are going to blow you away and you re going to enjoy immensely.
0
SPEAKER_01
Next is a person close to my heart, because most of you know I care very deeply about hunger in this world.
0
SPEAKER_01
And we have a real problem.
0
SPEAKER_01
Some of you know that I ve started an XPRIZE.
0
SPEAKER_01
I put the first million up.
0
SPEAKER_01
It s a $15 million XPRIZE to feed the next billion people that are coming into humanity.
0
SPEAKER_01
We re growing very rapidly in our population still, and we re destroying the planet the way we raise food.
0
SPEAKER_01
This person, Jason Green, is the CEO and co-founder of a place called Upward Farms.
0
SPEAKER_01
Brooklynite, how you doing there, brother?
0
SPEAKER_01
Good to see you.
0
SPEAKER_01
I m great.
0
SPEAKER_01
I m great, Tony.
0
SPEAKER_01
How are you?
0
SPEAKER_01
Welcome to have you here.
0
SPEAKER_01
You know, your last name, like Green, you had to be a farmer, right?
0
SPEAKER_01
It s built into your unconscious.
0
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, that one my dad gave me.
0
SPEAKER_01
But what s really interesting, we ll come back to as we go into your story a little bit.
0
SPEAKER_01
He started out as a neuroscience researcher at Albert Einstein Medical School and he helped patients, he built VR, you know, virtual reality tools to help people loss the ability to walk again.
0
SPEAKER_01
And now he s building these vertical aquaponics sustainable farms for leafy greens and fish.
0
SPEAKER_01
It s, you know, most of you probably are aware that the cost of food worldwide, about half of it, roughly.
0
SPEAKER_01
Am I correct on this, Jason?
0
SPEAKER_01
Is it 40%, 50%?
0
SPEAKER_01
That s just transportation, getting the food to you.
0
SPEAKER_01
And he s showing us how we can grow that food where we live, in these big urban centers, in these cities.
0
SPEAKER_01
It s great to have you here, Jason.
0
SPEAKER_01
And then thirdly, we have here Mikhail Kokerich.
0
SPEAKER_01
And Mikhail is, here s a guy that started his first company at 19 years old.
0
SPEAKER_01
He s from Russia.
0
SPEAKER_01
He has this vision, you know, he built the first, you know,
0
SPEAKER_01
you know, private space company, you know, in Russia, sold that company at a very young age, decided he wanted to come to America, and he wants to power humanity into the solar system.
0
SPEAKER_01
He wants to make sure that when the inevitable happens and the sun takes us out,
0
SPEAKER_01
that humanity can continue to succeed.
0
SPEAKER_01
And the first steps is to maximize what we re doing right now in this space race that s happening between some of the big boys out there, like Virgin and Blue Origin and so forth.
0
SPEAKER_01
And he s got some tools that are just incredible, like the ability to propel these spaceship and satellites with water.
0
SPEAKER_01
And it s three times cheaper, it s safer, it s more efficient.
0
SPEAKER_01
And as we re going to discover, there s water on the moon, there s water on Mars, there s water on asteroids.
0
SPEAKER_01
I mean, this is a way to provide the fuel to literally propel us throughout the solar system and beyond.
0
SPEAKER_01
Brilliant, man.
0
SPEAKER_01
Great to have you, Mikhail.
0
SPEAKER_01
Thank you for being here.
0
SPEAKER_01
Thank you.
0
SPEAKER_01
And then finally, my dear friend and my partner, and that s Dakin Sloss.
0
SPEAKER_01
Dakin is the founder and he s the general partner of Prime Movers Lab.
0
SPEAKER_01
They invest in breakthrough scientific startups, and they re really obsessed with finding what they call prime movers, which is
0
SPEAKER_01
people that are inventors of technology that can transform billions of people s lives and they invest in the seed stage in those early stages in reinventing energy and transportation and infrastructure and human augmentation and computing and they pick a small number of companies they focus on so they can over deliver and give maximum impact and so you all know I m partners with him so I m
0
SPEAKER_01
I got in partnership with him because I was so blown away by the impact that he s had on the companies that he s there.
0
SPEAKER_01
A lot of, you know, VC type firms, they give you some money and they set you up and push you a little bit, but how much care do they really give?
0
SPEAKER_01
How much can they make a difference in the company?
0
SPEAKER_01
And Dakin, you and your wife, Gabby have really, you know, with this all started with you and I, cause you were a platinum partner in a lion and we started getting deep conversations about what you re doing.
0
SPEAKER_01
I was completely blown away.
0
SPEAKER_01
So I want to thank you for being here and I want to start with you.
0
SPEAKER_01
How are you doing brother?
0
SPEAKER_02
I m doing great.
0
SPEAKER_02
It s such an honor to be on with you and with these three amazing human beings.
0
SPEAKER_02
We re in a business where it s really about the CEOs and the incredible leaders that are making a huge difference in the world.
0
SPEAKER_02
I m honored every day to get to work with Mikhail and Bill and Jason, and hopefully have a small part to play in the much bigger challenges we face as a civilization.
0
SPEAKER_01
Well, let s get right to it.
0
SPEAKER_01
There s a common thread.
0
SPEAKER_01
The reason we brought all four of you together on here, and especially the three that are running these individual companies, is that you re all CEO founders that have a unique level of technological expertise that you bring to the table.
0
SPEAKER_01
You re not just the CEO.
0
SPEAKER_01
And you have visions that are extraordinary.
0
SPEAKER_01
It s not just, how do I build a business and sell a bunch of widgets?
0
SPEAKER_01
It s how do I change the world?
0
SPEAKER_01
Lots of people say that.
0
SPEAKER_01
But you are all in stages in your company where it s no longer a vision.
0
SPEAKER_01
You re starting to maximize and make that happen.
0
SPEAKER_01
So I d like to start by asking each of you one at a time, can you tell me just a brief aspect of how the story of your company, how it came about, and what s unique about your company?
0
SPEAKER_01
What are you really trying to build today through this company?
0
SPEAKER_01
And I think we ll start with you, Bill, because just to remind everybody, Bill s a guy that s built 150 companies, right?
0
SPEAKER_01
These are companies across every area you could imagine, different industries.
0
SPEAKER_01
And Bill, you ve seen so much of these last 24 years since you started, you know, your IdeaLabs format.
0
SPEAKER_01
Tell me, you know, there are three companies.
0
SPEAKER_01
We ll talk about some in the depth.
0
SPEAKER_01
I know you want to talk about Heliogen, but if I may, there s three companies that you have evolved that all have to do with changing the environment, right?
0
SPEAKER_01
And the environment there is, you know, one of the challenges we have
1
SPEAKER_01
most of you know, is that today, you know, solar and wind are actually cheaper than petroleum for the first time in history, but there isn t a storage capacity.
1
SPEAKER_01
So, I m wondering if you might talk a little about the storage company, and then secondly, about Heliogen and what it s providing, and then thirdly, just a little bit about carbon capture.
1
SPEAKER_01
I know maybe just an overview of how you came to be in this position and what it is you re trying to accomplish.
1
SPEAKER_00
Well, thank you, Tony.
1
SPEAKER_00
I really feel that what you said earlier, is maybe the most important thing on earth right now which is help the planet in every way possible.
1
SPEAKER_00
You talked about lifting people out of poverty lifting a billion people out of poverty.
1
SPEAKER_00
I think that the number one thing that can lift people out of poverty is low-cost energy.
1
SPEAKER_00
Low-cost energy is what has made civilization possible.
1
SPEAKER_00
The challenge has been we ve been getting our low-cost energy by burning things.
1
SPEAKER_00
If we can get our low-cost energy in a renewable way, then we can really have unlimited amounts of it and not cause any harm.
1
SPEAKER_00
I got very passionate about all the side benefits that would happen if I could focus my mechanical engineering talent on the energy problem.
1
SPEAKER_00
I m thinking about it from a standpoint of just making the world better, not even worrying about the benefits on climate change, or you don t even have to believe in climate change to believe in just giving people a better life.
1
SPEAKER_00
Energy can give that to people.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I feel like if you look across all the United Nations development goals to give people freedom and security and education, all the things, energy is behind every one of them.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I feel like there s a lot of leverage there.
1
SPEAKER_00
So that got me excited about making low cost solar energy.
1
SPEAKER_00
That could be around the clock low cost materials that can be made from the sun so cheap better concrete better steel better aluminum that can be made with concentrated sunshine.
1
SPEAKER_00
And then as you said energy storage because we can now make energy for the first time ever cheaper than fossil fuels.
1
SPEAKER_00
but it only comes when the sun is shining and when the wind is blowing.
1
SPEAKER_00
If we can hold on to that energy to what we need it, like after the sun goes down, or to have it on demand, making cheap energy storage turns out to be very, very hard.
1
SPEAKER_00
Batteries are very, very challenging to make them cheap enough.
1
SPEAKER_00
On a bulk scale, batteries are now cheap enough to be used in cars.
1
SPEAKER_00
Well, first, they were cheap enough to be used in our devices.
1
SPEAKER_00
That was easy.
1
SPEAKER_00
10 cars, that was next challenging, but to make batteries cheap enough to power the entire grid, that s really hard.
1
SPEAKER_00
I started looking at other ideas, other ways to store energy and we came up with this gravity method that is Energy Vault.
1
SPEAKER_01
And if you might mention just, we ll go in depth later on, but Energy Vault, explain to them how simple it is and how it came up the concept, you and the team, the idea of the most effective way of getting energy in the past, at least the least destructive has been, as I understand it, when you re using hydropower.
1
SPEAKER_01
Tell them what a simple idea it is and let them know how big it s grown, like the size borders you re getting now for the simple solution that can allow us to have energy 24 seven from the sun.
1
SPEAKER_00
Well, most of the energy in the world today is used as it s made, meaning 99% of every electron made by every generator in the world gets used as it s made, and only 1% is stored.
1
SPEAKER_00
But that 1% is currently stored by pumping water up a hill.
1
SPEAKER_00
Basically, you look around the earth for a mountain where there s a reservoir on the top and a reservoir on the bottom.
1
SPEAKER_00
You fill the thing with water on the bottom.
1
SPEAKER_00
When you have excess energy, like when the generators are producing power that people don t need, you pump water up the mountain to the top and you sit in that reservoir.
1
SPEAKER_00
When you want to get it back, you let the water flow back down, turn a turbine the other direction, make electricity, and you get 90% of it back or 80% of it back because of friction losses.
1
SPEAKER_00
Well, the problem is that s relatively effective, but all those mountains are used up.
1
SPEAKER_00
Everywhere where there s a reservoir up there and a reservoir down there, someone s bought that and turned it into what s called pumped hydro, pumped hydro power, where you pump it up and then get it back.
1
SPEAKER_01
Basically, you re using a dam like they do in Vegas, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
That s basically what we re talking about.
1
SPEAKER_00
Exactly.
1
SPEAKER_00
So the only way to get a new location for pumped hydro is to build a dam in a valley, but then you destroy that area because now you ve stopped the river from flowing to get your mountain of water.
1
SPEAKER_00
So we were trying to figure out a way, how could you simulate that but without destroying any land and without needing a mountain?
1
SPEAKER_00
So we were trying to look for ways.
1
SPEAKER_00
Well, what about if we built our own mountain?
1
SPEAKER_00
Like, what about if we made a big mound of dirt?
1
SPEAKER_00
Or what about if we made a big column of cement and filled it with water and pumped the water up inside the column and had it come down to a pool?
1
SPEAKER_00
And what about if we made a build?
1
SPEAKER_00
We tried all these ideas, but they were all too expensive.
1
SPEAKER_00
And that s the reason why no one s done it.
1
SPEAKER_00
They were too expensive.
1
SPEAKER_00
But then the idea occurred to us.
1
SPEAKER_00
of making blocks and stacking them.
1
SPEAKER_00
So effectively, we build a mountain every day by stacking up the blocks and unstacking them.
1
SPEAKER_00
We d have a crane lift them up automatically.
1
SPEAKER_00
Since it s going to be running continuously, you can t have a crane operator there, so you have to write software to make it all work autonomously.
1
SPEAKER_00
We had to use cameras to locate the blocks, clever stacking sequence.
1
SPEAKER_00
But effectively, by stacking a bunch of 35-ton blocks, they re big blocks, 35-ton blocks, they re 1 meter by 2 meters by 4 meters tall.
1
SPEAKER_00
can build a 25-story building each day with extra energy and then unbuild it each night when you need the power back and it s actually cheaper than pumped hydro and you can put it anywhere because you don t need a mountain because effectively we re making a mountain every day.
1
SPEAKER_01
For people to understand, imagine a crane where you re using solar power and that energy that you have available in the day, the crane lifts these giant blocks and then at night you
1
SPEAKER_01
It releases them and that churns the turbo just like you would if you actually had, you know, an entire dam and you have that electricity available to you and the efficiency is cheaper than any other source you ve got.
1
SPEAKER_01
And what kind of response have you gotten from the marketplace?
1
SPEAKER_00
It was incredible.
1
SPEAKER_00
First, people said we were nuts.
1
SPEAKER_00
In other words, it was a crazy idea.
1
SPEAKER_00
A lot of good ideas start out like that.
1
SPEAKER_00
A breakthrough is a crazy idea up until it crosses over.
1
SPEAKER_00
That is actually a great line for Peter Diamandis.
1
SPEAKER_00
What you want to find is something in technology that can solve a big problem, but that does seem a little bit crazy until you prove the science of it.
1
SPEAKER_00
We built the first prototype to show that it worked.
1
SPEAKER_00
We built a full-scale version to show that that really worked and deliver the economics and efficiency.
1
SPEAKER_00
and each unit stores 35 megawatt hours, which is like enough for a whole city.
1
SPEAKER_00
Each one of those units cost about $8 million, and we got orders for 1,200 of them, so $10 billion of demand for that system in no time.
1
SPEAKER_00
It really is amazing how much global demand there is for energy storage.
1
SPEAKER_01
You can do this in the desert.
1
SPEAKER_01
You can do this anywhere.
1
SPEAKER_01
That s the beauty of this.
1
SPEAKER_01
The power of it is the elegance, how simple it is, how efficient it is.
1
SPEAKER_01
And it just, when we talk in more depth, I want to talk about how you guys come up with these types of answers so they don t just happen overnight.
1
SPEAKER_01
You keep iterating, iterating, iterating.
1
SPEAKER_01
That s been your history, Bill.
1
SPEAKER_00
You said there s no straight line.
1
SPEAKER_00
That s exactly true.
1
SPEAKER_00
We had a very zigzag path to get to this.
1
SPEAKER_00
We tried a lot of things that didn t work, but we learned from each one of them and course-corrected a little bit.
1
SPEAKER_00
A little bit like, I think, a good analogy to what you were describing is, I think to be a good entrepreneur, you have to be like a heat-seeking missile that is continuously adjusting as you see.
1
SPEAKER_00
There s some target out there which is elusive, and you re going to learn new things to course-correct along the way.
1
SPEAKER_00
That s what we tried to do with this idea, and it really worked.
1
SPEAKER_01
Well, Billy, you ve already got seven companies.
1
SPEAKER_01
You re a very humble man.
1
SPEAKER_01
You re one of the most humble guys I know.
1
SPEAKER_01
I have such a love for you because you re so driven to serve.
1
SPEAKER_01
It s not about you.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I think that s why you build such great teams.
1
SPEAKER_01
Everybody wants to work with you.
1
SPEAKER_01
But this looks like it ll be your eighth company.
1
SPEAKER_01
It s got $10 billion in orders already.
1
SPEAKER_01
And tell us about, you know, we ll talk a little more depth when we go there.
1
SPEAKER_01
I m tempted to just keep going deep with you because there s so many pieces here.
1
SPEAKER_01
But tell us a little bit about your solar company that takes
1
SPEAKER_01
the energy of the sun and produces enough heat to drive industrial energy and why that s so important and how that affects our future?
1
SPEAKER_00
Well, right now, a lot of our use of energy is for electricity, but a way bigger use of our energy is for heat, for making all of our built world, like 20% of our global emissions, 20% of our global energy is just to make cement and steel and aluminum and all of the
1
SPEAKER_00
Basically, energy is embedded in everything around us, because that was what was used to make it.
1
SPEAKER_00
And that can t be replaced easily with electricity, because that requires high temperature, high furnace industrial processes.
1
SPEAKER_01
And so traditionally that would be coal?
1
SPEAKER_01
What else would be the use of normal?
1
SPEAKER_00
It would be coal and gas.
1
SPEAKER_00
And like even for cement, they burn old tires, they burn trash, they burn the worst dirtiest stuff to make cement.
1
SPEAKER_00
So basically cement comes out all pure and clean.
1
SPEAKER_00
We have a very pretty building, but the stuff that went into making the cement was awful and releasing terrible emissions.
1
SPEAKER_00
So we wanted to come up with a way to allow us to make those materials using the sun as well.
1
SPEAKER_00
So using a system of thousands of mirrors, imagine a field with thousands of mirrors, almost arranged, almost like petals of flowers spread out over the land.
1
SPEAKER_00
So like farming, the mirrors are spread out.
1
SPEAKER_00
But they re all computer controlled.
1
SPEAKER_00
So they reflect the sunlight to a single spot.
1
SPEAKER_00
At that single spot, we can achieve very, very high temperatures.
1
SPEAKER_00
Actually, we ve achieved a third the temperature of the surface of the sun, 1,500 degrees centigrade, right from all those beams reflecting to one spot.
1
SPEAKER_00
Now with that, you can make cement, but you can make it without burning anything.
1
SPEAKER_00
You can make it completely green from the sun.
1
SPEAKER_00
So we want to try and take the same technology at Heliogen and apply it to many industrial processes to make all these building materials in a much
2
SPEAKER_00
your way.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s beautiful.
2
SPEAKER_01
And Bill Gates is, I know, an investor in that.
2
SPEAKER_01
And the last one I want to ask you about, and again, we ll go deeper later, but with you, there s three.
2
SPEAKER_01
Carbon capture.
2
SPEAKER_01
You know, Mark Benioff, my dear friend and I, were the first two people to invest with you on that one.
2
SPEAKER_01
It was just a concept.
2
SPEAKER_01
Tell people what you re doing.
2
SPEAKER_01
So many people are worried that we, you know, we ve been hearing these factors, like in 12 years, we re beyond the point of no return and a lot of fear out there.
2
SPEAKER_01
A lot of people trying to figure out what to do.
2
SPEAKER_01
Then you hear contrary information, but you ve got
2
SPEAKER_01
practical solutions.
2
SPEAKER_01
One of the things I love about you is it s like you said, you don t have to be green or you don t have to worry about the environment.
2
SPEAKER_01
We re going to make this so it s economically feasible.
2
SPEAKER_01
Tell us a little bit about carbon capture and what you re moving on in that area.
2
SPEAKER_00
Well, there s two ways to avoid the CO2 in the atmosphere.
2
SPEAKER_00
The first is not to put it there in the first place, but the second is to maybe take it out.
2
SPEAKER_00
And, and there are some processes that will be very very hard to avoid putting in the atmosphere, like air aviation.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s very very hard to make a solar powered airplane to go a long distance you can make a very small plane that can travel a short distance but to have intercontinental travel, you re going to need to burn fuel.
2
SPEAKER_00
So what if we can take the CO2 from that fuel back out of the atmosphere after it was already placed in there from an airplane?
2
SPEAKER_00
Well, how do you do that?
2
SPEAKER_00
Well, it takes energy to do that.
2
SPEAKER_00
If it takes energy to do that, and you burn fossil fuels to make that energy, it defeats the purpose.
2
SPEAKER_00
But if it takes energy to do that, and you can use solar energy to do that, then you could actually do it in a clean way.
2
SPEAKER_00
And if you can take that CO2 out for less than the value that it has being taken out, you can actually do it profitably.
2
SPEAKER_00
So my goal is to come up with a solar-powered way, at this company Carbon Captured,
2
SPEAKER_00
to use heat from the sun to take the CO2 back out of the atmosphere and then turn that back into something useful such that people will pay more for that than it cost me to take out.
2
SPEAKER_00
Thus, it could be a scalable business.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s very challenging, but the physics completely says it s possible.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s an engineering challenge.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s not a breaking any laws of physics challenge.
2
SPEAKER_00
I love it when there s an engineering challenge because that means that just smart brains can get together and solve it.
2
SPEAKER_00
A little bit like you said, the beautiful thing about technology today
2
SPEAKER_00
is you can use your brainpower and make something that has global impact because the whole world is now your customer.
2
SPEAKER_00
I think of the businesses I started 25 years ago, they were little businesses that you make a product, you have to sell it, you got to put it in a retail store, you got to find customers, there s no internet, you can t reach people.
2
SPEAKER_00
Now, you have a global marketplace for what you re making.
2
SPEAKER_00
If you make something that impacts people s lives, it can touch the whole planet.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s why brainpower has such a, it s a little bit like the Archimedes, give me a lever, a long enough I can move the earth.
2
SPEAKER_00
Now you can use your brainpower to really move the earth in a positive direction.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s what s so exciting about entrepreneurship right now.
2
SPEAKER_01
Last question, then we re going to come back to you, but I m going to get the next entrepreneurs.
2
SPEAKER_01
What does the future of energy look like then in your mind and how far out is it?
2
SPEAKER_00
Well, I think this decade, we can make energy round the clock cheaper than fossil fuels.
2
SPEAKER_00
And up to now, solar energy, renewable energy was more expensive than fossil fuels, or it was only less expensive for a few hours of the day.
2
SPEAKER_00
My goal is to make it cheaper than fossil fuels all day long.
2
SPEAKER_00
If you can do that, then why would you burn fossil fuels?
2
SPEAKER_00
It s just cheaper.
2
SPEAKER_00
I think the way to make people shift is not to beg them or cajole them or tell them it s better for them, just make it economical.
2
SPEAKER_00
If you make it economical, everybody will want to do it.
2
SPEAKER_00
I really do think that money drives this, so I think that s the way you have to go.
2
SPEAKER_01
It really does, because you see things like California, where they ve been trying to be a lead in the country by creating regulations about using green and renewable fuels.
2
SPEAKER_01
But then you see all these blackouts that are occurring because they don t have the storage capacity that you re now providing.
2
SPEAKER_01
That alone changes the game.
2
SPEAKER_01
That s very exciting, Bill.
2
SPEAKER_01
I m so privileged to have you as a friend and a partner, and seeing what you re doing, being on the cutting edge with it.
2
SPEAKER_01
I m really excited for people to hear a bit more from you.
2
SPEAKER_01
Let s pop now, and let s talk here with Jason Green.
2
SPEAKER_01
Jason?
2
SPEAKER_01
Tell me a little about your history, if you wouldn t, how this came about, because as I alluded to earlier, share with us a little bit, you were researching neuroscience, you re going to become an MD and PhD, and you created VR work to help people learn how to walk again, and now all of a sudden you re creating vertical farms and aquaponics.
2
SPEAKER_01
Tell us a little bit how that came about.
2
SPEAKER_02
You know, it s, and Tony, thank you for having me, it s a little bit more connected than it seems, you know, biology at its core,
2
SPEAKER_02
um, is whether you re looking at a plant or you re looking at people, there s kind of fundamental laws that govern performance.
2
SPEAKER_02
And the work that we were doing, um, in a medical context was we re developing these environments where we were controlling everything that the patient could experience.
2
SPEAKER_02
So for patients who had lost the ability to walk because of a non spinal cord injury.
2
SPEAKER_02
So let s say that they lost the feelings in the bottoms of their feet.
2
SPEAKER_02
Now imagine walking around the world.
2
SPEAKER_02
If you couldn t feel your feet.
2
SPEAKER_02
How would you know when to pick it up or put it down?
2
SPEAKER_02
Imagine if you had constant vertigo.
2
SPEAKER_02
So you basically, you know, you re lost at sea all the time.
2
SPEAKER_02
You know, what would you do if you couldn t feel your relationship with gravity?
2
SPEAKER_02
How would you know when you re standing up straight?
2
SPEAKER_02
And so what we would do is we d create these environments where we were controlling all of that through virtual reality for patients.
2
SPEAKER_02
So we were creating a visual environment that was showing them it could be chasing a bullseye or it could be their body as an avatar.
2
SPEAKER_02
And by playing with the sensory environment that we were showing these patients, we could attune them so they could be more sensitive to, for example, if they lost their inner ear equilibrium system, they have constant vertigo, we could train them to rely more on vision.
2
SPEAKER_02
And so it was through that process of creating these environments
2
SPEAKER_02
that ultimately brought me to indoor agriculture.
2
SPEAKER_02
The fundamental argument in indoor agriculture is the same.
2
SPEAKER_02
You ve got this biological thing, in this case, a plant instead of a human patient.
2
SPEAKER_02
And as an operator, you re controlling everything around the plant.
2
SPEAKER_02
You re controlling the temperature, you re controlling the light, you re controlling the humidity, you re controlling the nutrition environment.
2
SPEAKER_02
So you re creating the sensory environment for the plant.
2
SPEAKER_02
And having come from designing environments around improving the performance of the most complex
2
SPEAKER_02
of the human brain, how you could do that for plants is pretty straightforward.
2
SPEAKER_02
And coming at it from the angle of a computational biologist, the key thing is you have to figure out how that system computes its environment.
2
SPEAKER_02
How does it take that information in and turn it into meaningful outputs?
2
SPEAKER_02
And so the labs that I worked in, in a neuroscience context, had spent years figuring out those models for human brain performance.
2
SPEAKER_02
And a lot of the companies in indoor agriculture are developing these models around plants.
2
SPEAKER_02
And what we felt was missing was this concept of the microbiome.
2
SPEAKER_02
The microbiome is this invisible layer of bacteria that lives in and around all living things.
2
SPEAKER_02
And it can account for up to 90% of the genetic activity of organisms.
2
SPEAKER_02
And so what we felt was missing when you try to design an indoor farm that can produce extraordinary quality products at below the cost of field production, and that to Bill s comment about making it economical, that to us is the only role that indoor agriculture or vertical farming
2
SPEAKER_02
has in the market is if it is a more cost-effective solution than what s coming out of the field.
2
SPEAKER_02
Otherwise, you re never going to make that transition.
2
SPEAKER_02
So it s developing not just that model around the plant, but developing these whole ecosystems that could cultivate all the microbiology that you find in well-managed soil, because that s where all the processing is happening in biology.
2
SPEAKER_01
and you re doing this with like 90% less use of water.
2
SPEAKER_01
I mean, I ve been looking because of wanting to feed people around the planet.
2
SPEAKER_01
And even when we re doing, putting together our $15 million XPRIZE to feed the next billion, one of the first things I looked at was vertical farming.
2
SPEAKER_01
Cause you know, you want to get these in cities all around the world where you ve got concentrations of so many human beings.
2
SPEAKER_01
And no matter what I saw, nothing was practical.
2
SPEAKER_01
Nothing was pragmatic.
2
SPEAKER_01
Nothing was even within the reach.
2
SPEAKER_01
And you guys are already starting to do this at a point, it sounds like where,
2
SPEAKER_01
the cost effectiveness makes it worthy of doing, not to mention the quality of the product.
2
SPEAKER_01
But how are you using so much less water and doing this and yet having a full-blown ecosystem?
2
SPEAKER_01
Can you give us the little hint of understanding?
2
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_02
So the full-blown ecosystem here is, you know, what s happening in an ecosystem.
2
SPEAKER_02
You ve got animals, plants, and microbes, all that invisible stuff, what I call the microbiome.
2
SPEAKER_02
You know, that s what s in an ecosystem.
2
SPEAKER_02
And so in our ecosystem, we re cultivating fish.
2
SPEAKER_02
And those fish are not only a source of protein, the world needs more sustainable protein, fish consume, or to grow fish for protein is a fraction of the carbon of producing whether it s, you know, chicken or beef, all those terrestrial animals.
2
SPEAKER_02
use a huge amount of energy, produce a huge amount of carbon.
2
SPEAKER_02
Fish, it s a tiny fraction between a 30th and a 100th of the energy to produce a pound of protein.
2
SPEAKER_01
So we re cultivating- The challenge, of course, is we ve overfished most of the oceans.
2
SPEAKER_01
We re seeing that already happening.
2
SPEAKER_01
With another billion people, we can t support it.
2
SPEAKER_01
And also there s so much pollution.
2
SPEAKER_01
I had mercury poisoning to the point I was rushed to the hospital because I was eating, I was very disciplined, just salad and fish, salad and fish.
2
SPEAKER_01
But it was swordfish and tuna, which, you know, they re like 50, you know, they grow to an older age.
2
SPEAKER_01
They acquire all the mercury from the smaller fish.
2
SPEAKER_01
So you re developing mercury-free fish.
2
SPEAKER_01
You re putting yourself in an environment that s cleaner.
2
SPEAKER_01
There s no E. coli.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s pretty extraordinary.
2
SPEAKER_01
Clarify that if you would.
2
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, so we re because we re able to control everything about the environment from the water
3
SPEAKER_00
conditions to the feed.
3
SPEAKER_00
The issue with tuna out in the wild is tuna is at the top of the food chain.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s eating all the things that have eaten all the things that have eaten all the things, and so you end up with mercury poisoning.
3
SPEAKER_00
Well, what if you could grow that same fish, but control the feed that it s getting, ensure that it s the highest quality food so you don t have pollution, so you don t have heavy metals like mercury?
3
SPEAKER_00
That s what we re able to do with indoor agriculture.
3
SPEAKER_00
Our ecosystem starts with fish.
3
SPEAKER_00
We then break down all the waste from the fish using, it s kind of a process like brewing beer.
3
SPEAKER_00
So we re using microbes to transform their waste into an organic fertilizer.
3
SPEAKER_00
We re then growing plants in a vertical farm.
3
SPEAKER_00
We re providing all of that fertilizer directly into the plant roots.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so to your comment about reducing water use by 90, 95%, the big issue there is we re controlling for the runoff and the evaporation.
3
SPEAKER_00
We re applying the water that has the fertilizer that s irrigating the plants directly into the roots.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so you don t have all that water loss into the ground or into the atmosphere.
3
SPEAKER_02
Oh, it s amazing.
3
SPEAKER_02
What does the future of food look like to you?
3
SPEAKER_02
I think it s a lot more delicious.
3
SPEAKER_00
I like that.
3
SPEAKER_02
It s not just efficient, but delicious.
3
SPEAKER_00
I know that s one of your passions in life.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
The future of food has to be more delicious and more affordable than it is today.
3
SPEAKER_00
And, and for us, you know, we really started with, if we are going to enter the indoor agriculture market has to be cost competitive, it has to be a better option than what s coming out of the fields.
3
SPEAKER_00
Quality, of course, safety, of course, it has to be something that can that the consumer that you and I want to eat for dinner.
3
SPEAKER_00
But if it s going to make a change to the marketplace overall, it s got to be more effective.
3
SPEAKER_00
So I think that what we re going to see in terms of food is it s going to be an improvement in the flavors.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s going to be an improvement in the nutrition.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s going to be an improvement in texture.
3
SPEAKER_00
All those things that you really care about in your food and all of that will be more efficient and you won t have to think about it.
3
SPEAKER_00
It will be by the nature of it being a more delicious and a more affordable product that the markets will transform themselves.
3
SPEAKER_02
and it can be done locally and it can also make a huge difference in the pollution of the planet or lack thereof in this case.
3
SPEAKER_02
It s beautiful.
3
SPEAKER_02
I want to go deeper with you but I want to make sure we bring Mikhail into the conversation here.
3
SPEAKER_02
Mikhail, tell us a little bit about how this came about.
3
SPEAKER_02
You ve been fascinated by space from a very early age.
3
SPEAKER_02
I know you built several companies successfully over in Russia and then you had a dream to come here.
3
SPEAKER_02
Tell us a little bit about it and tell us about some of the breakthroughs, what this propulsion system is driven by water if you would.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yes, thank you.
3
SPEAKER_01
I
3
SPEAKER_01
I grew up in a small Siberian village, but the space always was my dream and fascination.
3
SPEAKER_01
And when I already was a small kid, I was thinking that finally I would like to work in this area.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I remember back in 1993, when I was 16 years old,
3
SPEAKER_01
actually in an interview to the local newspaper that I told that I want to build space propulsion and finally be engaged in space exploration.
3
SPEAKER_01
But yes, I built like several companies in different industries, even I was studied as a plasma physicist.
3
SPEAKER_01
I built companies in manufacturing, retail,
3
SPEAKER_01
but finally I hit my middle age crisis in 35 and I decided that I need to do something interesting and I started building the space companies.
3
SPEAKER_01
And when we started Momentus, the idea behind this was pretty simple and obvious because, you know, the space is a new territory and the mastering of new territories is impossible to imagine without transport.
3
SPEAKER_01
The invention of a proliferation of new means of moving like people and goods, like railways, aviation, containers, this has created the modern economy that we know.
3
SPEAKER_01
Space exploration is not an exception.
3
SPEAKER_01
But the physical nature of this territory create enormous challenges.
3
SPEAKER_01
Because here on Earth, we are on the bottom of this huge gravity well.
3
SPEAKER_01
To deliver cargo into orbit and defeat the gravity, you need to accelerate things to the huge velocity.
3
SPEAKER_01
eight kilometers per second.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s 20 times faster than a bullet.
3
SPEAKER_01
So, and as a result- Holy cow, that s a great metaphor to help people understand.
3
SPEAKER_01
Please continue.
3
SPEAKER_01
And finally, less than 5% of the initial rocket starting mass reached the orbit.
3
SPEAKER_01
So the answer actually lies how to make it cheap.
3
SPEAKER_01
It lies in reusability and in mass production.
3
SPEAKER_01
But the tyranny of this rocket science, they basically contribute to the large rocket sizes are necessary.
3
SPEAKER_01
And it drives a strategy for companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin, with developing huge, big, gigantic cruisable rockets like SpaceX, developing like Starship, New Glenn.
3
SPEAKER_01
And we will see this launch course into space that will be just a few hundred dollars per kilogram and will open a lot of opportunities.
3
SPEAKER_01
But then the problem is like, the rocket s only efficient to launch masses into low orbit.
3
SPEAKER_01
But if you need to distribute cargo to different orbits, or deliver to the top of the gravity well, like a geosynchronous orbit, or to the moon, or different elliptical orbits, you need to add additional, like a three, six kilometer per second, so another 20 speeds of bullets.
3
SPEAKER_01
And if you use conventional rockets for this, like the proportion of the mass
3
SPEAKER_01
reduced from 5% to 1%.
3
SPEAKER_01
So to deliver one ton of cargo, you need to start with 100 tons.
3
SPEAKER_01
In many cases, if delivered mass is much less than capability of huge low-cost rockets, you need to use more expensive small and medium-sized rockets.
3
SPEAKER_01
And it s all required multi-modal transportation, connecting flights, which actually never was used in space, when you have huge ship rockets delivering cargo to low orbit.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then last mile space vehicles, space tax distributing cargo between orbits to the higher orbits.
3
SPEAKER_01
And this is why we created Momentus in 2017, because we developed the space tax and hub and spoke multi-modal transportation to space.
3
SPEAKER_01
And we are having our first full commercial mission actually early next year in January with the Falcon 9 rideshare.
3
SPEAKER_01
But the main challenge, how to build a space tax on the technology, very cheap and very low cost.
3
SPEAKER_01
And the answer is how to build actually the nature of the propellant that they re using actually contribute to the cost a lot.
3
SPEAKER_01
If you use like a chemical propulsion with this cryogenic liquid oxygen, it s expensive.
3
SPEAKER_01
If you use this high pressure xenon, which is extremely expensive, it s also expensive.
3
SPEAKER_01
We come with the idea to use water as a propellant.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s not only make our vehicles extremely cheap.
3
SPEAKER_01
I like to tell that our vehicles look like from Mad Max movie.
3
SPEAKER_01
Actually, it s simple.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s damn simple.
3
SPEAKER_01
There are no moving parts.
3
SPEAKER_01
Also, the water is most common mineral.
3
SPEAKER_01
In the solar system, you have water everywhere.
3
SPEAKER_01
In the moon craters, you have water in asteroids.
3
SPEAKER_01
So it means we re building technology that not only have the short-term advantages, but long-term, because we have this gift given to us by the solar system process of evolution, the water.
3
SPEAKER_01
And we build this long-term sustainable way how humanity can move to this new element, to the solar system, to the space.
3
SPEAKER_02
And how does that affect the average person?
3
SPEAKER_02
If I ask you, what s the future of space?
3
SPEAKER_02
What is Momentus really trying to do?
3
SPEAKER_02
And how will that benefit the average person so they get a perspective as well?
3
SPEAKER_02
Like, why do you wanna create this?
3
SPEAKER_02
And what s it gonna do for the average person here on Earth?
3
SPEAKER_01
You know, the people actually do not sometimes underestimate the value of even existing space technologies.
3
SPEAKER_01
Let s imagine that tomorrow will happen some solar flare and all satellites will be disappeared.
3
SPEAKER_01
Actually, it can happen, by the way.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s like there are some probabilities that in case of the big solar flare, all satellites will be wiped out.
3
SPEAKER_01
What will be in this case?
3
SPEAKER_01
It s not only you will lose probably like a TV connectivity, you will lose like a signal of the precise time, so all the cash machines stop working, you will lose like a GPS signal, so there are no navigation, there are no paper maps, and then people cannot use Uber Eats, DoorDash, it will be hunger all over, because people cannot now like get the food, I mean, we so much living with this.
3
SPEAKER_01
But actually, it s not enough even now like a space sensors.
3
SPEAKER_01
For example, it was a huge forest fires in California.
3
SPEAKER_01
I was a CEO of one of the largest forest company in the world.
3
SPEAKER_01
I knew that if you can detect the forest fire within one hour after it started, you can actually easily to fix it with just helicopter or with drones.
3
SPEAKER_01
But now, there are no satellite constellation that can detect it within one hour, it can take maybe once a day.
3
SPEAKER_01
or for even agriculture to collect data about soil moisture content, there are no satellite installations that collect this data.
3
SPEAKER_01
I m not talking even about internet.
3
SPEAKER_01
We re living here in the Bay Area, and we don t have so little coverage in
4
SPEAKER_01
some places, so there are no internet.
4
SPEAKER_01
Hopefully, with like a Starlink and other projects, it actually create a new category of services.
4
SPEAKER_01
Space economy is pretty small now, so just $400 billion, it s 0.1% of global GDP, but once we believe that we are on the verge of this new, big, gold rush in space, and it will be many applications and many new users that can drive this economy to become trillion dollar and change all our life.
4
SPEAKER_00
And that you re, again, I want people to know this is not something that you re dreaming about.
4
SPEAKER_00
You ve got contracts with NASA.
4
SPEAKER_00
I saw your stock just dropped almost 30%.
4
SPEAKER_00
Is that right?
4
SPEAKER_00
Was that the number I saw people are like starting to jump on and say, wow, he s got a technology that can make us have space travel be so much cheaper.
4
SPEAKER_00
And also all these resources, moving satellites around, there are so much space junk.
4
SPEAKER_00
People realize that s out around the earth.
4
SPEAKER_00
Now they re starting to fall into the atmosphere.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s starting to become a real issue.
4
SPEAKER_00
but no one s even thought about space trash before.
4
SPEAKER_00
But you have the ability to propel and move things in a different position or capture them.
4
SPEAKER_00
So it s pretty darn exciting what you re doing.
4
SPEAKER_00
So if I asked you the future of space, what does that look like coming through your eyes as a pioneer working with these other pioneers?
4
SPEAKER_01
I think the final future of space that it will become more self-sustainable.
4
SPEAKER_01
So people will use the space and space applications to do many things for manufacturing.
4
SPEAKER_01
for energy production, for data mining, for steroid mining, for getting all this rare and precious metals from the moon or from other steroids.
4
SPEAKER_01
It sounds like a fiction, but actually, we see that the number of satellites that launched, 10 years ago, it was launched 70 satellites.
4
SPEAKER_01
This year, up to now, it was launched more than 1,100 satellites.
4
SPEAKER_01
This year alone, that s wild.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yes, this year alone.
4
SPEAKER_01
10 years ago, it was launched just 70 satellites a year.
4
SPEAKER_01
Just now, it s 1,100 satellites alone this year.
4
SPEAKER_00
How many satellites are around the earth right now, circulating around, do you know?
4
SPEAKER_01
Around 10,000.
4
SPEAKER_01
10,000 satellites, wow.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, 10,000 satellites.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, and launch cost dropped significantly, basically to order of magnitude.
4
SPEAKER_01
It used to be $100,000.
4
SPEAKER_01
Now it s like just a few thousand dollars.
4
SPEAKER_01
It will be a few hundred dollars.
4
SPEAKER_01
And it will open so many new ways how to use the space.
4
SPEAKER_00
Manufacturing, like you said, mining, all these things.
4
SPEAKER_00
I mean, Elon Musk shares your vision, but you re filling a void for these gentlemen who are these great visionaries that are building these huge rockets.
4
SPEAKER_00
You re filling the void of how to connect and move these things into different locations.
4
SPEAKER_00
Very exciting.
4
SPEAKER_00
Congratulations.
4
SPEAKER_00
Let s go to, let s go to Dakin, if I may.
4
SPEAKER_00
Dakin Sloss, brother, how are you?
4
SPEAKER_00
I m doing great.
4
SPEAKER_00
Thanks for having me on, Tony.
4
SPEAKER_00
Great to have you, man.
4
SPEAKER_00
Tell us a little bit about, you know, you have a unique history.
4
SPEAKER_00
You started out moving in one direction of life.
4
SPEAKER_00
You made this U-turn or V-turn, so to speak.
4
SPEAKER_00
And now you re, you re seeming to collect some of the smartest people in the business.
4
SPEAKER_00
I know your fund is, you know, performing at a level.
4
SPEAKER_00
I got a call from Paul Tudor Jones or an email from him the other day, and he was saying, copied the email, someone else telling him about
4
SPEAKER_00
that he has money in your fund, but saying we should do some more with this fund.
4
SPEAKER_00
And he called me and said, tell me more about this guy.
4
SPEAKER_00
Is this really real?
4
SPEAKER_00
And in the letter it talked about you might have some of the highest returns since 2018 for VC funds, or at least in the top grouping.
4
SPEAKER_00
Tell us a little bit about your journey and tell us what you re really driven by and what are some of these companies that you ve been pulled to that are really changing the planet or have a chance to change the quality of life on earth?
4
SPEAKER_02
Thank you for having me on, Tony.
4
SPEAKER_02
To start, my journey is I was a physicist and mathematician studying at Stanford, and I thought I was going to go work on academic pursuits.
4
SPEAKER_02
I really realized I wanted to have an impact on the world here today and now.
4
SPEAKER_02
The way to do that is to build companies like Mikhail and Bill and Jason are doing.
4
SPEAKER_02
I previously built two tech companies.
4
SPEAKER_02
My experience was, I was actually sitting in the hot tub with Gabby and talking about how broken VC is.
4
SPEAKER_02
I just wrote a blog post about this today.
4
SPEAKER_02
The notion of founder-friendly VC today is someone cuts you a check and leaves you alone, which tells you what the other VCs are doing, which is messing everything up by getting in your way and giving you advice about stuff that they shouldn t be giving you advice and thinking they have the answers, ultimately.
4
SPEAKER_02
And I, as an entrepreneur, was kind of complaining about it.
4
SPEAKER_02
I was like, you re an entrepreneur, go build a product that fixes this.
4
SPEAKER_02
And Prime Movers Lab is the product that fixes it, because we re actually actively engaged in supporting our founders, and at the same time,
4
SPEAKER_02
time, we re humble enough to know that if you ve heard the things that they re building right now, nobody knows the answer for how to build these things.
4
SPEAKER_02
We got to figure it out together and we can take expert lessons.
4
SPEAKER_02
We ve taken a lot of lessons from you, Tony, and that they ve applied that help them accelerate, but we ve got to figure out how to apply it because these are such brand new contexts.
4
SPEAKER_02
At the end of the day, the thing that motivates me is each of these companies has the ability to radically improve the quality of human life.
4
SPEAKER_02
I think we do get bombarded by so much negative news, but at the end of the day, this is the most exciting time to be alive.
4
SPEAKER_02
If we compare to what it was like to live 100 years ago, 500 years ago, 1,000 years ago, the quality of life today is already outstanding and extraordinary, and it s due to technology.
4
SPEAKER_02
In the next decade,
4
SPEAKER_02
the level of improvement in the average human being s life.
4
SPEAKER_02
In the next 30 years, kings would have killed to be poor today.
4
SPEAKER_02
It s just so incredible.
4
SPEAKER_00
I always tell people that, I always say, listen, a Faro, what would a Faro given to be able to fly, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
To go to someplace in a few hours that we complain about sometimes instead of a few months or years or never, you know, what would they, you know, a Faro couldn t afford to have someone make you a two hour movie to entertain you for $150 million.
4
SPEAKER_00
And we paid 10 bucks more today.
4
SPEAKER_00
Like people have lost track of how great life is.
4
SPEAKER_00
So, you know, tell me what kinds of returns have you seen by finding these early stage companies
4
SPEAKER_00
And what all these entrepreneurs have said, maybe I ll even put a link for those interested to know more about what you do, because I know I encourage you to make a video with all these founders telling about what you ve done.
4
SPEAKER_00
And it s mind boggling how you brought the key resources they ve needed, not just the capital, but the resources, the people, the elements to really grow their businesses.
4
SPEAKER_00
Tell us a little bit about what kind of growth are you seeing in your fund and what is your vision going forward?
4
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, we are fortunate that our first fund is on track to be one of the best performing funds of 2018, if not the best performing fund of 2018, it s too early to tell.
4
SPEAKER_02
I think at the end of the day, though, that doesn t have to do with us, that has to do with the quality of the CEOs, the quality of the visions that they re pursuing.
4
SPEAKER_02
I love
4
SPEAKER_02
I ll butcher this quote, it s one of yours, but you get the level of insight based on the level of impact that you re going out to have.
4
SPEAKER_02
Obviously, we re excited to make money, but most of the money we make goes to the same types of causes that you re contributing to and supporting.
4
SPEAKER_02
Much more important is that impact that we can have.
4
SPEAKER_02
Amazing human beings have shown up in our lives because of the impact that we re going to have, and because of the contribution that we re going to have.
4
SPEAKER_02
I think people get this idea around impact.
4
SPEAKER_02
I wouldn t call it we re doing impact investing, because I think the term has been tainted,
4
SPEAKER_02
by a lot of people who went out to go fix a problem, but didn t think about the economics in the way that Bill, for example, is thinking about the economics.
4
SPEAKER_02
There was a whole wave of clean technology that didn t deliver on the promise, because people were on starry-eyed visions like, no pun intended, out in space.
4
SPEAKER_02
The amazing thing about what we re doing is it s all backed up by science, it s all backed up by hard facts, it s all backed up by cost models,
4
SPEAKER_02
where we can see the unit economics of these companies, and we can understand this is not just going to work, it s going to be wildly profitable for their partners, their customers, and for everybody around them.
4
SPEAKER_02
I think that combination of big vision with really grounded in like, what can we deliver in the next 12 months?
4
SPEAKER_02
What can our revenues be?
4
SPEAKER_02
What can our unit economics be?
4
SPEAKER_02
It s important, and it s something that has been divorced in VC, where you get these big visions, but they re just not actually tied to anything real.
4
SPEAKER_00
I think a lot of, quote, impact investing, like you said, was people saying, I m going to invest in something because that s the promise to make a difference.
4
SPEAKER_00
But as you said, there were no cost models.
4
SPEAKER_00
And so the returns of many of those have been mediocre, to say the least.
4
SPEAKER_00
And so what I love is this combination of being driven by impact, but with the hard science to show that you can scale something and then figuring out, as Bill does and all three have been doing, how do I make sure that you don t have to care about impact to use this technology?
4
SPEAKER_00
You want to use this technology because it s cheaper, better, faster.
4
SPEAKER_00
And that s what gives you the competitive edge.
4
SPEAKER_00
Listen, we, you know, all of you have built companies from scratch that have tremendous potential.
4
SPEAKER_00
Lots of people have visions, but rarely do people realize those visions.
4
SPEAKER_00
All of you are realizing right now, you re already realizing on a huge scale.
4
SPEAKER_00
Some of you have sold previous companies.
4
SPEAKER_00
I d like each of you, and I ll start with you, Dakin, because you see the common pattern.
4
SPEAKER_00
No, maybe I ll end with you because you see the common patterns.
4
SPEAKER_00
Let me go back to Bill.
4
SPEAKER_00
What do you think are the most important keys for entrepreneurs out there?
4
SPEAKER_00
We have people out there just starting businesses.
4
SPEAKER_00
We have entrepreneurs that are, you know, running billion dollar companies.
4
SPEAKER_00
that started from scratch.
4
SPEAKER_00
What do you think is the difference?
5
SPEAKER_03
between the person that envisions it and finally executes it, which is such a small percentage, and those that, you know, keep dreaming about it, they re excited about it, they work at it, but they never get there.
5
SPEAKER_03
What s the difference between envisioning and realization of that vision?
5
SPEAKER_03
Start with you, Bill.
5
SPEAKER_03
I like small questions.
5
SPEAKER_03
Because if anybody asked me, I ll tell you, 150 companies, 45 IPOs, you d know.
5
SPEAKER_01
First of all, you have to be passionate about what you re doing, for sure, because that s not enough, but it s a requirement.
5
SPEAKER_01
Because no matter what you do, you re going to face hard times.
5
SPEAKER_01
And if you re doing that zigzag path, making it through the zag is challenging.
5
SPEAKER_01
There s always going to be some valley of death in between that you have to cross.
5
SPEAKER_01
And you have to be passionate to make it through that.
5
SPEAKER_01
So that s a given.
5
SPEAKER_01
But more than that, you have to build a complementary team.
5
SPEAKER_01
You have to get people who have the other skills that you don t have.
5
SPEAKER_01
And I know when I started out in business, I was looking for people like me, people I liked hanging out with.
5
SPEAKER_01
And I needed to find more people that weren t like me.
5
SPEAKER_01
I needed to find people who knew how to run the trains on time.
5
SPEAKER_01
I ve got big ideas, but you have to execute.
5
SPEAKER_01
I had to find people who knew how to keep the books, and keep the payroll, and get the rent, and all that.
5
SPEAKER_01
So I needed to find other talent, and I needed to find people
5
SPEAKER_01
who were glue between people who didn t work well together.
5
SPEAKER_01
I needed to make people work well together.
5
SPEAKER_01
I had to learn those talents myself, but I had to get those talents into the company first.
5
SPEAKER_01
So surrounding yourself with complementary skills is very, very important.
5
SPEAKER_01
I would say the biggest thing, if you want to make a business though, really that has a world-changing impact,
5
SPEAKER_01
you have to do something that other people aren t doing.
5
SPEAKER_01
You re hearing that from every idea you re hearing from today.
5
SPEAKER_01
We re all doing things that are a little bit contrary to the way other people are doing things.
5
SPEAKER_01
You have to be contrary, but right.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s very easy to do something the same as everybody else, and you could be okay, but you have a lot of competition because everybody s doing the same thing.
5
SPEAKER_01
You can be contrary and wrong.
5
SPEAKER_01
That s very easy.
5
SPEAKER_01
But you need to be contrary and right.
5
SPEAKER_01
So I think that a very important part of making a successful business, and I always love looking for this in everything I m working on, is what s my angle?
5
SPEAKER_01
What is the new thing that I know that s different than what other people know, that they don t believe yet but will be true?
5
SPEAKER_01
and I m going to go make it true.
5
SPEAKER_01
I have something that I figured out before most people have figured it out.
5
SPEAKER_01
And so looking for that essence in your business is very valuable, and I think important to make something impactful.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s not easy.
5
SPEAKER_01
That s a very high bar.
5
SPEAKER_01
You don t come across those every single day.
5
SPEAKER_01
But taking your idea and looking at it over and over from different angles and figuring out, what s my twist?
5
SPEAKER_01
where everybody else is going this way, how can I go a little bit this way where they re not going yet?
5
SPEAKER_01
But that s still correct.
5
SPEAKER_01
I m not doing it just to go different.
5
SPEAKER_01
To just be different from everybody else, that doesn t count.
5
SPEAKER_01
But it s got to be different and better for a reason, and understanding that reason, and then doubling down on that.
5
SPEAKER_01
I think that s very valuable to make a business work, and I try and look for that all the time.
5
SPEAKER_03
That s beautiful.
5
SPEAKER_03
I think one of the biggest mistakes people make is the one you started with, which is they surround themselves with people who think the same way because it s encouraging, but you need all those different hats on your team in order to get the job done.
5
SPEAKER_03
And also your point, I actually teach this to business owners.
5
SPEAKER_03
It s like, if you do what everybody else does in your industry and you do it significantly better than everybody else, you get a micro improvement.
5
SPEAKER_03
But if you do something that no one else is doing in the industry and it works, or it has an advantage that s coming,
5
SPEAKER_03
You get a geometric advantage over everybody else, and you become the brand in that industry.
5
SPEAKER_03
And you ve done that over and over and over again through many industries.
5
SPEAKER_03
When we come back and we re talking just with you, by the way, I want to prepare you.
5
SPEAKER_03
I want you to share the story of Google and AdWorks, because people have no clue that you re the one that really got that ball started.
5
SPEAKER_03
It s an interesting story.
5
SPEAKER_03
So I m going to call on you for that later.
5
SPEAKER_03
Just plant the seed in your head, if I may, Bill.
5
SPEAKER_03
Mikhail, let me ask you, let me pop over there, because you come from a different culture initially in Russia and so forth.
5
SPEAKER_03
Tell us, what do you think is the difference between those people that dream about things versus those who actually realize it?
5
SPEAKER_03
What are the components that make the difference between those that dream and those that perform?
5
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, this is an excellent question.
5
SPEAKER_02
We all see in our career experience people with a bright spot, who is like the
5
SPEAKER_02
different combination of the qualities but sometimes it s difficult for them to become entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship it s different than even leadership.
5
SPEAKER_02
I think like entrepreneurs usually have inside themselves like several persons like a little bit schizophrenics we re all a little bit schizophrenics because from one hand we should be in order to
5
SPEAKER_02
in order to move forward, because there are value of moving forward and making mistakes rather than sometimes thinking, because you are learning from mistakes.
5
SPEAKER_02
And you will have a lot of failures.
5
SPEAKER_02
You will have a lot of setbacks.
5
SPEAKER_02
So you need to be stubborn, insensitive, thick-skinned person.
5
SPEAKER_02
Otherwise, it s like a constant failures.
5
SPEAKER_02
Just they will destroy you as a person.
5
SPEAKER_02
But from another hand, you need to be sensitive and tender to people, to new ideas,
5
SPEAKER_02
to like everything that s happening around like markets, people, and to be one person with this like two, sometimes very discreet and contradictory, it s pretty rare.
5
SPEAKER_02
I mean, and this is probably the reason why it s not so many people actually
5
SPEAKER_02
can be entrepreneurs for many, it s really hard.
5
SPEAKER_02
It s psychologically hard.
5
SPEAKER_02
It s a very painful way.
5
SPEAKER_03
So the first is the capacity to push through those failures and learn from those failures, but also not to get stuck with one approach.
5
SPEAKER_03
Cause I ve seen a lot of entrepreneurs, they get stuck with one thing.
5
SPEAKER_03
They believe it s the right thing and they don t stay open to new ideas.
5
SPEAKER_03
It s my idea or the highway.
5
SPEAKER_03
And I know Bill, I see you nodding your head.
5
SPEAKER_03
We both have seen so many companies where they had brilliant ideas.
5
SPEAKER_03
And if they just, it wasn t enough just to persist,
5
SPEAKER_03
It was the capacity to test and retest and be willing to fail and call failure learning, which is what it is.
5
SPEAKER_03
It s failure when you don t learn anything, right?
5
SPEAKER_03
But if you learn something, you move forward.
5
SPEAKER_03
But that combination, Mikhail, I know you ve done.
5
SPEAKER_03
It s the only reason you ve succeeded at the level you have because you ve constantly made those corrections to get where you want to go to find these tools that can literally change the way we travel through space.
5
SPEAKER_03
Jason, how about for yourself?
5
SPEAKER_03
You ve looked at things from the medical perspective.
5
SPEAKER_03
You re looking at now from an environmental perspective, a human perspective.
5
SPEAKER_03
What do you think makes that difference?
5
SPEAKER_03
Because you ve seen so many businesses also with great ideas, great entrepreneurs, lots of persistence, a lot of passion, and then they just never deliver.
5
SPEAKER_03
What s the difference between the one that delivers no matter what, finds the way, and those that don t?
5
SPEAKER_00
I think there s a couple of things in what Bill and Mikhail have shared and I wanna use Dakin as an example again and continue to pick on him.
5
SPEAKER_00
I do think that a compelling vision is where it all starts.
5
SPEAKER_00
And if you look at across the portfolio for Dakin, for example, this is very clear picture of what the world can, should, and will look like.
5
SPEAKER_00
And I think for every entrepreneur, they hold this, every great entrepreneur holds this vision of what the world can, should, and will look like.
5
SPEAKER_00
And then there s this, I think, in great entrepreneurs, willingness to say, but why?
5
SPEAKER_00
Why should it be this way?
5
SPEAKER_00
Why isn t it this way?
5
SPEAKER_00
You can call it, there s a great book, Start With Why, there s first principles thinking.
5
SPEAKER_00
But I think great entrepreneurs try to understand
5
SPEAKER_00
why it is, why it can be, why it should be, why it will be.
5
SPEAKER_00
And then there s this matter of vulnerability.
5
SPEAKER_00
I mean, you, Tony, talk about, you know, not just that everybody needs a compelling future, but also, you know, you talk about rip it open.
5
SPEAKER_00
And I think entrepreneurs who are really there to play.
5
SPEAKER_00
are there to say, I m here to do this.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s not about me, it s about this.
5
SPEAKER_00
And it s about learning every day and it s about being wrong and it s about supporting others and not being the star of the show.
5
SPEAKER_00
And you have to be willing to a certain degree, like be willing to lose yourself to become something better.
5
SPEAKER_00
And not to lose yourself to become less, to become something worse, but willingness to say like,
5
SPEAKER_00
I think I m great, and I think I m so incomplete.
5
SPEAKER_00
I know I m not the entrepreneur I need to be, but if I can do better today, if I can do better tomorrow.
5
SPEAKER_00
And that comes from building a great team.
5
SPEAKER_00
And it comes from looking at failure as learning.
5
SPEAKER_00
And that sort of vulnerability, I think is core to being successful as an entrepreneur, and probably being happy as a person, your willingness to be vulnerable.
5
SPEAKER_03
It makes life meaningful and makes people connect with you.
5
SPEAKER_03
When you pretend to have all the answers and no one does, you separate yourself from everybody and suffering is separation, right?
5
SPEAKER_03
That s really what happens.
5
SPEAKER_03
But I think your point is so critical.
5
SPEAKER_03
Early in my life, I began to think about, you know, why was I able to be able to touch so many people s lives?
5
SPEAKER_03
And it s like, I m no genius.
5
SPEAKER_03
I just really care.
6
SPEAKER_01
so much drive and hunger.
6
SPEAKER_01
And one day I realized to myself, at least, I believe life supports whatever supports more of life.
6
SPEAKER_01
Meaning if, you know, if a bumblebee that s not supposed to be able to fly is going after what it wants in those flowers, you know, it s got a higher purpose.
6
SPEAKER_01
It s pursuing its desire, but that pollen sticks to its legs.
6
SPEAKER_01
And now sure enough, you know, we pollinate, we have more flowers, kind of like whatever you want for your life, your desire, desire in Latin means of the father, you know, your desire has a higher purpose.
6
SPEAKER_01
And if your desire is just supporting you, you re going to get a certain level of insight because you re part of life and life supports life.
6
SPEAKER_01
But if your desire is to help a family, now you get a different level of insight.
6
SPEAKER_01
If your desire is to help a community, and not what you tell other people, you know what your desire is, what your driving force is.
6
SPEAKER_01
You get a different, and if you desire to help humanity, which all of you have in common as I do, and it s not what you position.
6
SPEAKER_01
I ve watched how you all live.
6
SPEAKER_01
Anybody can watch how people s lips move.
6
SPEAKER_01
I watch how their feet move, where they put their money, their time, their energy, their focus.
6
SPEAKER_01
And all of you have dedicated your lives to this.
6
SPEAKER_01
So when you re trying to help humanity, regardless of what anybody else thinks, you know it.
6
SPEAKER_01
There are insights you get that you just won t get for any other reason because you are supporting more of life.
6
SPEAKER_01
I really believe that s true.
6
SPEAKER_01
And Jason, what you re doing right now with food is so critical.
6
SPEAKER_00
What you re hearing now is how people are using their talents, their gifts, to improve conditions for all of humanity.
6
SPEAKER_00
They re leveraging their passions to make the world a better place.
6
SPEAKER_00
But you don t have to transport people into outer space to be able to make an impact.
6
SPEAKER_00
You don t even need a degree.
6
SPEAKER_00
See, there are tools where you can hack your psychology that almost every great entrepreneur knows.
6
SPEAKER_00
They use these to make their dreams a reality and leave a legacy that benefits others.
6
SPEAKER_00
For the first time, Tony is going to be sharing these tools for free.
6
SPEAKER_00
It s an event called the New World, New You Challenge, taking place on January 21st.
6
SPEAKER_00
It s an amazing event that will not only provide a concrete roadmap where you can see your goals accomplished this year, but it ll awaken your soul for the months to come, no matter what life throws at you this year.
6
SPEAKER_00
To join this free challenge, go to www.make2021myyear.com.
6
SPEAKER_00
That s make2021myyear.com.
6
SPEAKER_00
We hope you ll join us.
6
SPEAKER_01
Bacon, you re working with all these entrepreneurs, not just these three.
6
SPEAKER_01
We re working with COVAX.
6
SPEAKER_01
It s created the only vaccine that is not using live virus or manipulating mRNA.
6
SPEAKER_01
It doesn t have to be shipped at minus 80 degrees.
6
SPEAKER_01
So you re constantly finding these tools and these people.
6
SPEAKER_01
So you have to make these bets.
6
SPEAKER_01
What do you see?
6
SPEAKER_01
What have you done?
6
SPEAKER_01
And what do you see the most successful entrepreneurs do that succeed in spite of all the challenges versus the ones that have great ideas that die?
6
SPEAKER_02
I ll say first off, I actually don t think I was a particularly great entrepreneur.
6
SPEAKER_02
I was very focused on me when I was an entrepreneur.
6
SPEAKER_02
And that created a lot of limitations.
6
SPEAKER_02
And I could have had a much greater level of success if I was in the current orientation that I am, which is about service.
6
SPEAKER_02
And I m really a servant to these three people and the CEOs of Kovacs and many other people.
6
SPEAKER_02
At its core, there s only one thing that all companies that have succeeded have in common.
6
SPEAKER_02
They didn t give up.
6
SPEAKER_02
And that s like the starting ingredient.
6
SPEAKER_02
And so we look for people who have run into walls.
6
SPEAKER_02
And what they hear when they hear no is, oh, you haven t figured it out.
6
SPEAKER_02
I have to go figure it out.
6
SPEAKER_02
So that s the first step.
6
SPEAKER_02
The second step is what they ve pointed to, which is a really rare combination, having that, I am going to make this happen no matter what, but being flexible on what the this is.
6
SPEAKER_02
Because you learn things from customers, you learn things from investors, you learn things from partners that mean you need to tweak the vision.
6
SPEAKER_02
The core is the same.
6
SPEAKER_02
We are going to make energy dramatically cheaper.
6
SPEAKER_02
We are going to make food supplies radically more cost effective.
6
SPEAKER_02
we are going to make space accessible to everyone over the long term.
6
SPEAKER_02
That vision isn t going to change, but they ve all changed a lot about how they re doing it, whether it s an underlying piece of the technology, or it s which hires they re making, and they re constantly iterating and adjusting.
6
SPEAKER_02
What that comes down to is zero ego.
6
SPEAKER_02
These three people are some of the most successful people I ve ever had the opportunity to work with,
6
SPEAKER_02
And they come to me and talk about like, how am I getting this person to join my team?
6
SPEAKER_02
And they have no sense of how incredible they are, because they re not focused on themselves.
6
SPEAKER_02
And this is what we screen for.
6
SPEAKER_02
We screen for persistence.
6
SPEAKER_02
And then we screen for, we use your top six, your model of human needs.
6
SPEAKER_02
And we look for people who are motivated by growing and giving.
6
SPEAKER_02
If you re motivated by growing and giving and you are relentless, you will find a way to succeed.
6
SPEAKER_02
It may not even be in this particular company, but it might be in the next iteration of the company.
6
SPEAKER_02
I think two of the three companies we ve backed with Bill are the third or fourth iteration of that particular company.
6
SPEAKER_02
And that s the core of it.
6
SPEAKER_02
There s a lot of little details, but persistence and being motivated by growing and giving.
6
SPEAKER_03
I thought of something, just thinking about entrepreneurship and listening to what everybody said.
6
SPEAKER_03
Definitely, some of the incredible things about entrepreneurship, this is not required for success, but this is just what s so incredible about entrepreneurship in general, is you get to empower others.
6
SPEAKER_03
You get a chance to really empower others.
6
SPEAKER_03
You get to unlock human potential.
6
SPEAKER_03
You get to go to others in your company, give them an equity stake,
6
SPEAKER_03
and get them to do things they wouldn t have done otherwise that you turn them into owners like you think about if you go to a yogurt store, and the person behind the counter is being paid minimum wage or if the person is the owner, the different level of service you get because the person owns.
6
SPEAKER_03
So you can turn all these people in your company into owners with that think like that.
6
SPEAKER_03
Then a little bit what you re saying about your own learning, being an entrepreneur is one of the biggest opportunities for self-discovery and self-learning.
6
SPEAKER_03
You are always reaching, maybe like rock climbing, a new obstacle, a new
6
SPEAKER_03
a new barrier that you have to break and learn yourself.
6
SPEAKER_03
You have to learn how to hire different people.
6
SPEAKER_03
You have to learn how to do the next stage of evolution.
6
SPEAKER_03
You re always learning.
6
SPEAKER_03
If you like learning, entrepreneurship is incredible because it s just going to always be throwing new things at you a little bit.
6
SPEAKER_03
Sometimes they re not the things you asked for, but they always cause you to learn.
6
SPEAKER_03
That just makes it so exciting.
6
SPEAKER_03
It s so rewarding just because you learn something every day.
6
SPEAKER_01
The learning ever stops.
6
SPEAKER_01
You ve anticipated my next question, which for all of you is, I m curious, and I know it s hard to do this, because you ve built multiple companies, built 150, right?
6
SPEAKER_01
You know, Mikkel, 304, Jason, all that you ve done.
6
SPEAKER_01
But what would you say is one of the single most important lessons you ve learned in pursuing, creating a world transforming company?
6
SPEAKER_01
It s different if you re just trying to compete in the marketplace with other people, or you re just trying to do something someone else has already done a little better.
6
SPEAKER_01
What s one of the most important lessons you ve learned
6
SPEAKER_01
will continue to guide you that you ve learned thus far in building your companies.
6
SPEAKER_01
And maybe I ll start with you, Bill, because you ve done so many of them.
6
SPEAKER_03
Well, I think I think you touched on it already.
6
SPEAKER_03
You start off with a particular passion and vision, and it s not going to turn out like you planned.
6
SPEAKER_03
You need to keep that mission the same, otherwise, you re giving up and making a different business.
6
SPEAKER_03
It s not going to be the way you initially envisioned it.
6
SPEAKER_03
You have to have the flexibility and adaptability to adjust to what the market is telling you.
6
SPEAKER_03
There s that great
6
SPEAKER_03
Mike Tyson line about everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.
6
SPEAKER_03
I actually feel that that applies to business, your customer punches you in the face.
6
SPEAKER_03
You go out with this idea, and then all of a sudden, the customer comes in, and it s like, you need to rebound from that.
6
SPEAKER_03
look at where that punch came from, figure out how to not get hit by that punch next time and adjust.
6
SPEAKER_03
And if you give up after the first punch, it s over.
6
SPEAKER_03
But if you adapt and have a new stance and have a new, new, new, new path, you can go again, that zigzag path, you can go back to where you were trying to get, but it s not going to be the way you expected.
6
SPEAKER_03
So give us an example.
6
SPEAKER_01
If you would have a punch that you got from customers, either by they re not buying or stop.
6
SPEAKER_01
how you adapted and it became successful.
6
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, so I had a company called Knowledge Adventure.
6
SPEAKER_03
We were making educational software for kids.
6
SPEAKER_03
I had a passion.
6
SPEAKER_01
It was in the 1990s, right?
6
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, exactly.
6
SPEAKER_03
Steven Spielberg was an investor and we had all this great vision to help kids fall in love with learning.
6
SPEAKER_03
and it just wasn t working.
6
SPEAKER_03
We were making these great, great products.
6
SPEAKER_03
We poured our heart into it, but people just weren t buying them at enough rate to keep the company going.
6
SPEAKER_03
So in a hail Mary, save the company move, all 65 employees went out into the retail stores on Christmas time and just stood in the aisles and demonstrated our products.
6
SPEAKER_03
We just walked our way in the store.
6
SPEAKER_03
We bribed our way in by giving a box of donuts to the guy at the front door to say, hey, we re here to demo, like we hadn t had permission.
6
SPEAKER_03
We were just there to demo the products.
6
SPEAKER_03
We opened up a laptop and started demonstrating.
6
SPEAKER_01
These were CD-ROMs in those days?
6
SPEAKER_03
This is like a CompUSA and egghead software and fries and stuff like that.
6
SPEAKER_03
What we saw in the aisle, well, one, we could boost the sales and we d show up, but we only could go to 65 stores.
6
SPEAKER_03
There were 2,000 stores, we couldn t cover all of them.
6
SPEAKER_03
We boosted the sales and
7
SPEAKER_00
But what we mostly saw was people picking up our product, a mother would pick up our product, look at both sides of the box and put it down and walk away.
7
SPEAKER_00
We re like, gosh, she s got kids, she s the perfect product for her, why aren t they buying it?
7
SPEAKER_00
And we realized,
7
SPEAKER_00
Our messaging was bad.
7
SPEAKER_00
We weren t really conveying on the packaging.
7
SPEAKER_00
You couldn t try the software.
7
SPEAKER_00
There was no internet yet.
7
SPEAKER_00
It was 1993.
7
SPEAKER_00
No browser yet.
7
SPEAKER_00
No Netscape even until 1995.
7
SPEAKER_00
We weren t really communicating what was the benefit.
7
SPEAKER_00
even though we had our heart in that.
7
SPEAKER_00
We changed the name of the product from Knowledge Venture to Jumpstart Kindergarten.
7
SPEAKER_00
Give your kids a boost on kindergarten.
7
SPEAKER_00
And now, instead of being for all kids, and the parent wasn t sure if it was right for theirs, now it was good for five-year-olds, like just five-year-olds.
7
SPEAKER_00
If you have a four-year-old, you re going to buy this product.
7
SPEAKER_00
So we narrowed down the focus so much to focus on only one year.
7
SPEAKER_00
But the product took off like crazy.
7
SPEAKER_00
And we got punched in the face by customers saying, I don t understand what you re trying to tell me.
7
SPEAKER_00
And we just changed our messaging to bop them over the head and explain what we were and what we were trying to do.
7
SPEAKER_00
And we took off like crazy.
7
SPEAKER_00
We sold 20 million copies.
7
SPEAKER_00
And didn t you sell like first grade, second grade?
7
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, yeah.
7
SPEAKER_00
So after having success with kindergarten, we made a whole series.
7
SPEAKER_00
We made Jumpstart Elementary, where we had one grade K through six.
7
SPEAKER_00
And it was fantastic, but it was basically customers telling us, you re not explaining to me what you re doing.
7
SPEAKER_00
How can you fix that?
7
SPEAKER_00
And we racked our brains to figure out.
7
SPEAKER_00
Now that you hear the story, you go, well, it s obvious.
7
SPEAKER_00
Why did you do that?
7
SPEAKER_00
But it was not obvious to us until we actually watched customers at the moment of not buying.
7
SPEAKER_00
to figure it out.
7
SPEAKER_03
And that s the type of that s the kind of reconnaissance that entrepreneurs got to do instead of staying back and in their head.
7
SPEAKER_03
I mean, so often entrepreneurs make the product they want.
7
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
7
SPEAKER_03
This is the product the customer really wants and needs.
7
SPEAKER_03
Right.
7
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
7
SPEAKER_00
Now, if the customers had said, oh, make this a violent war game, then we would have said, no, that s not our mission.
7
SPEAKER_00
We can t do that.
7
SPEAKER_00
So we kept our mission of what we re trying to do, which is make kids fall in love with learning.
7
SPEAKER_00
We just had to explain how we were doing it differently.
7
SPEAKER_03
And you sold that company for a nice profit too, didn t you?
7
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, yeah, no, we sold the company for $90 million a few years later to Vivendi, so it worked out very, very well.
7
SPEAKER_00
But the company went from almost going out of business to successful sale in just a few years, but only by listening to the customer.
7
SPEAKER_03
Beautiful.
7
SPEAKER_03
Mikhail, can you tell us what s one of the most important lessons you ve learned?
7
SPEAKER_03
You ve built several companies, sold them, you worked in different countries doing this, in very different cultures doing this.
7
SPEAKER_03
What s one of the most important lessons that you ve learned as an entrepreneur that guides you today?
7
SPEAKER_02
Finally, the main reason why companies succeed and why a company failed, it s the people, it s your team.
7
SPEAKER_02
Ultimately, nothing behind the company, technology, market, the people, it s the main thing that you have.
7
SPEAKER_02
It s interesting by moving from one country to another, I moved from Russia when I was 35, it s kind of time when you already
7
SPEAKER_02
you already like a set up as a personality so it s like you are moving to another country and living the second life it s not like you move as a student or kid so it s it s very interesting to see how different even it s like everybody looks the same like you probably if you close your ears you see the same people they look the same everything s the same but it s very different and
7
SPEAKER_02
I think like the main failures that I had in my entrepreneurial career was finally with building open and honest relationships with communications.
7
SPEAKER_02
And in many cases, like, especially because Russian culture is kind of very leaning to some kind of politics, you know, a little bit hypocrisy, we re more Oriental.
7
SPEAKER_02
And based on the Russian standard, I was very Western.
7
SPEAKER_02
But when I now moved to the US, now I understand that I am more Russian.
7
SPEAKER_02
And I think the main value that actually Bacon gave me, it was not the money.
7
SPEAKER_02
Actually, he was my mirror.
7
SPEAKER_02
And he always like to tell me how I look like and how I need to change myself.
7
SPEAKER_02
And I m still working on me.
7
SPEAKER_02
It s not easy.
7
SPEAKER_02
I mean, for me, it s definitely working on my usual mode of, you know, it s easier.
7
SPEAKER_02
And you always should remind yourself, hey, I mean like, you need just like to talk to the people, what do you think?
7
SPEAKER_02
You don t need to actually have like several different stories.
7
SPEAKER_02
You need to just, and it s difficult to do actually.
7
SPEAKER_02
It s really difficult to do, especially when you are in a company with many executive, everybody is, you know, have their own like ideas about everything.
7
SPEAKER_02
You don t want sometimes to like,
7
SPEAKER_02
heard personally these people, and it s hard.
7
SPEAKER_02
It s really hard, because especially you like these people, everybody.
7
SPEAKER_02
Value of open communication that finally need to come from you as a leader of the company, it s extremely, extremely important.
7
SPEAKER_02
The larger company is more important, because when a small company, you can play.
7
SPEAKER_02
You can play, you can keep in mind everything, but when it s a big company, the culture around the company.
7
SPEAKER_02
If you do not create this culture,
7
SPEAKER_02
then it s a recipe for failure.
7
SPEAKER_02
So I think that my main lesson is still I m learning this lesson.
7
SPEAKER_02
I m still trying to be the great entrepreneur and the leader of big company.
7
SPEAKER_02
I hope I can come through this, but it s real work.
7
SPEAKER_03
I hear three things then from you here.
7
SPEAKER_03
One is I hear the right people in the right seats, right?
7
SPEAKER_03
Because we all know what that s like to have good people in the wrong seats.
7
SPEAKER_03
And it s like, you know, you can have a situation where I ve seen it as an investor and as an owner of companies, you get, you know, a really great product and the wrong team and they ll mess it up.
7
SPEAKER_03
you get a terrible product and the right team, they ll change the product or service and they ll find a way to make it succeed.
7
SPEAKER_03
So it s that, but then the capacity to attract those people is the vision that was talked about both by Bill and Jason and Dakin, the ability to have that vision that can attract those quality people, something that s pragmatic and real.
7
SPEAKER_03
But then as you said, that requires you to keep growing, because there s that rule of 125, I m sure you ve all heard, right?
7
SPEAKER_03
That s why the army is organized the way it is, military.
7
SPEAKER_03
When you get beyond 125 people and it s,
7
SPEAKER_03
research shows, I don t know, the 125 is exact.
7
SPEAKER_03
People don t know each other as much.
7
SPEAKER_03
It s different culture, different communities.
7
SPEAKER_03
So it s a big company, as you said, creating culture, the philosophy that drives all decision making.
7
SPEAKER_03
Because in the beginning, I remember my companies would say, well, you know, what does Tony think?
7
SPEAKER_03
And what I had to train people to do is what s right.
7
SPEAKER_03
And once they knew the values and he was right and the culture shifts now, you know, I went from $50, $100 million companies to now we do over $6 billion across all these different industries and all these different employees, but there s a common culture in all those pieces.
7
SPEAKER_03
But the most important factor I really want to honor you for Mikhail is, and it shows your humility because you ve built these huge companies, you re building a billion dollar company moving forward now, is that capacity to never think you have all the answers and to make sure you keep growing.
7
SPEAKER_03
My original teacher, Jim Rohn, was just brilliant in this way.
7
SPEAKER_03
Because I remember I asked him one time, I said, I have four fathers.
7
SPEAKER_03
And I said, we never had enough money for food.
7
SPEAKER_03
One of the reasons I feed 100 million people a year, 100 million meals here in the US, and I created this billion person challenge that we re 700 million meals now in six years.
7
SPEAKER_03
But I m now doing this challenge for the whole world to feed the next billion.
7
SPEAKER_03
But the whole drive was, how come my fathers work so hard and we don t have money for food?
7
SPEAKER_03
And Jim Rohn said something really interesting.
7
SPEAKER_03
He said, Tony, your fathers have not worked hard enough on themselves.
7
SPEAKER_03
They work too hard on their job.
7
SPEAKER_03
They ve not continued to improve themselves.
7
SPEAKER_03
I remember when I was doing Money Master Game, I asked Warren Buffett what the single most important investment he made in his life was.
7
SPEAKER_03
And I had these ideas in my head of, you know, I knew all the different big investments he d made.
7
SPEAKER_03
And he said, it s what you do.
7
SPEAKER_03
And it s what you re talking about.
7
SPEAKER_03
He goes, the best investment I ever made was in myself when I went to Dale Carnegie.
7
SPEAKER_03
He said, because when you invest in yourself and you keep growing, there s no limit to the impact that has.
7
SPEAKER_03
And putting an investment in a company is nice.
7
SPEAKER_03
He goes, but learning how to speak and communicate and expand,
7
SPEAKER_03
And then Jim Rohn said to me, he said, your father s I m sure all good men.
7
SPEAKER_03
But he asked me what they did.
7
SPEAKER_03
And one of my fathers, my natural father, worked in an underground parking lot.
7
SPEAKER_03
Before automation, he used to take people s ticket, count it up, and make the money exchange all day long, day and night for 41 years.
7
SPEAKER_03
And he never had enough money.
7
SPEAKER_03
We didn t have money for food at times.
7
SPEAKER_03
And he said, Tony, it s like we re all equal as souls, but we re not equal in the marketplace.
7
SPEAKER_03
And what you have to do is make sure that you have a way to add more value than anybody else, which means you must work harder on yourself and growing anything else.
7
SPEAKER_03
And then you can lead people.
7
SPEAKER_03
And Mikhail, you re living by that.
7
SPEAKER_03
So I really honor you.
7
SPEAKER_03
Thank you for that.
7
SPEAKER_03
Jason, you understand the question.
7
SPEAKER_03
You ve had a lot of lessons on both the medical side, helping the most complex thing, human brains, and now working here in agriculture and feeding people.
7
SPEAKER_03
What s the difference in your experience between those who dream and those who actually live the dream and actually make it happen in enterprise?
7
SPEAKER_01
There s one thing that came up for me, even before I talk about the most valuable things in building an enterprise.
7
SPEAKER_01
There s one thing that came up in what you just shared, Tony, and reflecting from Mikhail, this difference between values and virtues.
7
SPEAKER_01
Values are what you believe, and virtues are what you manifest as your behavior.
8
SPEAKER_02
Ben Horowitz does a great job with this in his last book, What You Do Is Who You Are.
8
SPEAKER_02
And that s a question I ask myself every day is like, who am I by the actions that I m taking?
8
SPEAKER_02
And that s a little bit more about the working on yourself.
8
SPEAKER_02
What are my virtues as opposed to what are my values?
8
SPEAKER_02
In terms of building an enterprise, as I heard
8
SPEAKER_02
Bill sharing with his experience on Jumpstart.
8
SPEAKER_02
You know, my mind, so we re, you know, 15 years late, more than 15 years later, where the value of learning, I think, has only been underscored by all of the different platforms that exist on the internet to allow you to learn.
8
SPEAKER_02
And so, you know, you think about that, you know, in that fast forward context, it s like, well, the vision there is, you know, so Jumpstart started as a way
8
SPEAKER_02
to learn and have this immediately executable opportunity in jumpstart kindergarten.
8
SPEAKER_02
But what we know is that everybody wants to learn, everybody wants to be better, that the vision for learning is infinitely scalable.
8
SPEAKER_02
And I think that s what
8
SPEAKER_02
That s what differentiates good companies from great companies.
8
SPEAKER_02
Good companies have a business plan, have a market opportunity, have a customer base, they execute on that, they re a good company, they re profitable.
8
SPEAKER_02
Great companies have an infinitely scalable vision with very clearly executable market opportunities.
8
SPEAKER_02
You see bad companies that have an infinite market opportunity and no executable vision.
8
SPEAKER_02
You see that in a Theranos, for example.
8
SPEAKER_02
That s the
8
SPEAKER_02
that s now the case study of a company that had a fantastic, compelling vision, but didn t have a clear next step, didn t know how to put one foot in front of the other.
8
SPEAKER_02
And that s what makes great companies great, is you have this infinitely compelling vision, but at the same time, you have this very clear and sober view on what s the thing I need to do right now?
8
SPEAKER_02
What s the opportunity I can be profitable in right now?
8
SPEAKER_00
That s great.
8
SPEAKER_00
That s really, that s succinct and clear and couldn t be more accurate.
8
SPEAKER_00
Thank you for that.
8
SPEAKER_00
Dakin, you re the final one wrapping up this question.
8
SPEAKER_00
What do you see as the difference?
8
SPEAKER_00
You see so many companies, so many entrepreneurs, so many visions that go unrealized or they begin only to end in short versus the ones that continually add value and continue to find a way to expand and grow and add value.
8
SPEAKER_00
What s the difference?
8
SPEAKER_03
I want to first just comment on what both Jason said about values and virtues and Mikhail said about culture.
8
SPEAKER_03
I think one of the proudest moments I ve ever actually had as a business owner is when people on my team, like my assistant, has come to me and said, hey, like you re doing something that s not consistent with our culture.
8
SPEAKER_03
and having your team so on top of the culture and the values that you ve promoted, that they help you realize when you re messing up and when you re not living up to the highest standard.
8
SPEAKER_03
And I think it s just a cool part of the entrepreneurial journey, if you can really nail it that way.
8
SPEAKER_00
So that it really is- I ve got enough humility to actually hear it and not be pissed when someone tells that to you.
8
SPEAKER_03
They said it less directly than I just said it.
8
SPEAKER_03
And yeah, I think on a tactical level, one thing I ve seen a lot of entrepreneurs mess up is they don t know the difference between the things that need to be the breakthroughs for the company versus the things that they should follow.
8
SPEAKER_03
You know, your phrase, success leaves clues and we don t need to reinvent the wheel here.
8
SPEAKER_03
There s a lot of stuff in a business that you don t need to reinvent the wheel.
8
SPEAKER_03
You need to go out and figure out who is doing this really well.
8
SPEAKER_03
The place people get caught up is they want to feel important, they want to feel unique, they want to feel significant.
8
SPEAKER_03
They go try and spend a bunch of energy redoing things that other people have already figured out really well.
8
SPEAKER_03
It s not energy that s going towards the one focused area that needs to be the breakthrough and needs to be the differentiator.
8
SPEAKER_00
So it s really concentrating on where the breakthrough is and not reinventing the wheel on wasting time on others and get caught up in the emotion of having to make it so personal.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s making what s personal what matters most.
8
SPEAKER_00
Really cool.
8
SPEAKER_00
I m going to ask you one more question here, and then we re going to go deep.
8
SPEAKER_00
And for the people listening, we re going to go to each of you, go deeper into your companies, which I think people are going to find fascinating.
8
SPEAKER_00
But let s start one last on the universal level.
8
SPEAKER_00
I could probably end the podcast with this as well.
8
SPEAKER_00
There s so much negativity in the press and the media.
8
SPEAKER_00
We know that there s nothing wrong.
8
SPEAKER_00
Media are good people.
8
SPEAKER_00
They work their tail off, and they have, I think, good intent.
8
SPEAKER_00
But the problem we have today is the economics of news.
8
SPEAKER_00
The news is no longer about informing us.
8
SPEAKER_00
Its purpose is to startle us, because we re not in the information age anymore.
8
SPEAKER_00
The information age died a long time ago.
8
SPEAKER_00
Now there s too much information.
8
SPEAKER_00
We re drowning in information.
8
SPEAKER_00
kind of starving for wisdom.
8
SPEAKER_00
And so what gets our attention, what snaps us, is something that jolts us.
8
SPEAKER_00
And so that s why it s your child made jelly of drinking water, film 11, you know, it s just, it was just we see the insanity and how it builds more insanity.
8
SPEAKER_00
So in a world where there s so much negativity poured on a daily basis, we miss all the extraordinary things that are happening in the world.
8
SPEAKER_00
So I m just wondering for each of you,
8
SPEAKER_00
What are the things that give you tremendous hope for the future when things start to get a bit stressful or overwhelming?
8
SPEAKER_00
It looks like the end of the world to some people.
8
SPEAKER_00
You guys don t go there.
8
SPEAKER_00
I don t either.
8
SPEAKER_00
But what is it that gives you a hopeful and optimistic and a sense of certainty that the future will be even better than today?
8
SPEAKER_00
Tell us your point of view.
8
SPEAKER_00
I d love to start with you again, Bill.
8
SPEAKER_01
Well, I think there s so many different ways to make the world a better place.
8
SPEAKER_01
If you re a teacher, you can teach thousands of kids in your lifetime and make a big difference there.
8
SPEAKER_01
If you re a preacher, you can change people s lives by telling them to see something they don t see.
8
SPEAKER_01
If you re a lawyer, you can make laws to try and change things.
8
SPEAKER_01
I m a technologist, so I love that way of doing things.
8
SPEAKER_01
I can t do the other ones very well.
8
SPEAKER_01
What makes me optimistic is
8
SPEAKER_01
I think technology really can make the world a better place.
8
SPEAKER_01
It can be pure, it can use your brainpower, it can make people wealthy at the same time.
8
SPEAKER_01
You can make it so that people pull it from you, you don t have to push it on them.
8
SPEAKER_01
You don t have to tell people to do something they don t want to do.
8
SPEAKER_01
you make a better Tesla car, people just want it.
8
SPEAKER_01
He didn t have to bribe people to buy that.
8
SPEAKER_01
He didn t have to advertise it even.
8
SPEAKER_01
People just wanted it.
8
SPEAKER_01
I just love the idea that the thing that gives me hope against all those things you said, and all the noise in the world is
8
SPEAKER_01
I don t want to quite say build a better mousetrap and people will be the path to your door.
8
SPEAKER_01
That s not true.
8
SPEAKER_01
You do still have to stand out, and you have to make a whole bunch of other things work.
8
SPEAKER_01
Because the world is so flat now in terms of reach that people aren t hiding under, comparing it to this, Leonardo da Vinci.
8
SPEAKER_01
He s in Florence.
8
SPEAKER_01
His radius of reach was 50 miles.
8
SPEAKER_01
He was designing all these incredible things, but people knew about him for 50 miles away.
8
SPEAKER_01
Or maybe he would be known in Rome, but he would have to take a carriage there for a month to get to Rome from Florence.
8
SPEAKER_01
We don t have that problem anymore.
8
SPEAKER_01
We have the whole globe as our reach.
8
SPEAKER_01
So you can use your brainpower and actually positively impact people with things that they want.
8
SPEAKER_01
By filling that need.
8
SPEAKER_01
And you can bypass the press.
8
SPEAKER_01
What the press can t get in your way, if you make something that everybody wants, it doesn t matter what they say.
8
SPEAKER_01
Or at least I believe that.
8
SPEAKER_01
Or maybe I m idealistic enough to want to believe that.
8
SPEAKER_01
But I feel that way.
8
SPEAKER_01
So I just feel very optimistic that you can look at society s problems or a little bit like we ve been saying as an entrepreneur.
8
SPEAKER_01
What is wrong with the world and how should it be, let s invent the world that we want to live in.
8
SPEAKER_01
and let s try and make technology solutions to get there.
8
SPEAKER_01
That s very exciting to me.
8
SPEAKER_01
I feel very optimistic about being alive at this time.
8
SPEAKER_01
A little bit like Dakin said, it is one of the best times to be alive.
8
SPEAKER_01
You really have what we have, the great standard of living that we have.
8
SPEAKER_01
Joking about the pharaoh getting on the plane, like what pharaoh?
8
SPEAKER_01
Think about a pharaoh getting on a plane to go to Beijing today, complaining about the Wi-Fi, right?
8
SPEAKER_01
Complaining about the Wi-Fi.
8
SPEAKER_01
Think about what we have and what we can see with our minds and our brains and the power that we have today and the little things we complain about.
8
SPEAKER_01
And yet, there are some big things that we need to fix.
8
SPEAKER_01
And a little bit like you re talking about hunger, like we have food and I hate the term that I use almost.
8
SPEAKER_01
food insecurity.
8
SPEAKER_01
That is a bad euphemism for people starving.
8
SPEAKER_01
Think about it.
8
SPEAKER_01
I know what myself, if I don t eat at noon, my brain starts going in shutdown mode.
8
SPEAKER_01
I can t even think straight.
8
SPEAKER_01
Think about how bad it is that we have people on this planet who are going hungry.
8
SPEAKER_01
That s ridiculous.
8
SPEAKER_01
We ve got to solve that.
8
SPEAKER_01
What you re doing is incredible, and all the technology solutions we can come up with to aid and abet that are so powerful.
8
SPEAKER_01
I think we can make a really big difference.
8
SPEAKER_00
I m very optimistic.
8
SPEAKER_00
Me too, because, you know, I really believe that any problem humanity has created, humanity can solve.
8
SPEAKER_00
And even problems we haven t created, like, you know, the sun will eventually blow out this earth, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
It s going to explode and destroy it.
8
SPEAKER_00
And you got people like, you know, Elon and Mikhail and people of that nature that are looking out and
9
SPEAKER_03
saying, thinking that long term, I think, you know, whatever is overwhelming is because you re only looking at the moment and you re lost vision.
9
SPEAKER_03
It s like, you know, everybody knows there s two things that drive us fear or faith.
9
SPEAKER_03
And they re both made up.
9
SPEAKER_03
Imagine what is fear versus faith.
9
SPEAKER_03
They re both imagination.
9
SPEAKER_03
Imagination about the future, no one knows what it is.
9
SPEAKER_03
But fear is imagination undirected.
9
SPEAKER_03
And so it s like weeds, it grows you and rips you to pieces.
9
SPEAKER_03
But you know, faith is what every entrepreneur employs.
9
SPEAKER_03
And I think a lot of people have forgotten that.
9
SPEAKER_03
There s this four letter word that the whole world is having to come to grips with for some reason.
9
SPEAKER_03
There s an illusion because we ve been growing so fast and have so much technology and such great quality of life.
9
SPEAKER_03
It s that four letter word called risk.
9
SPEAKER_03
And every entrepreneur knows that you re only rewarded to the, you know, your ability to produce rewards beyond the risk by taking risks, by putting yourself on the line.
9
SPEAKER_03
If you re going to look for absolute certainty and security, you need to go to prison, or you need to stay home forever.
9
SPEAKER_03
But the world we re in now, any problem we have, we can solve.
9
SPEAKER_03
And, you know, Peter Diamandis, my dear friend and partner, always says, you know,
9
SPEAKER_03
all, you know, find a giant problem and you ve got yourself a billion-dollar company because if you can solve it, you can make that happen.
9
SPEAKER_03
And I think that s what we all as entrepreneurs, what drives us, and that s what drives the most successful entrepreneurs.
9
SPEAKER_03
Some just want to make money.
9
SPEAKER_03
There s nothing wrong with making money, don t get me wrong, but, you know, money is only a reflection of added value.
9
SPEAKER_03
You don t make a billion dollars unless you ve helped billions of people, you know, or at least a billion people is something significant.
9
SPEAKER_03
And all of you are driven by that.
9
SPEAKER_03
Let s go with you, Mikhail.
9
SPEAKER_03
What gives you hope when things look a little crazy?
9
SPEAKER_03
What s your hope?
9
SPEAKER_03
What gives you a sense that the future, even the short-term future, will be greater than the past has been?
9
SPEAKER_00
Probably it s not a fair question to me because it s a very easy question to me.
9
SPEAKER_00
I was born in a house with no indoor toilets, like sporadic electricity.
9
SPEAKER_00
I started with a kerosene lamp.
9
SPEAKER_00
I spent my first 16 years in the Soviet Union in a small town with 10,000 population.
9
SPEAKER_00
And I see how
9
SPEAKER_00
how the life around has changed.
9
SPEAKER_00
Even like, let s look on Russia, which kind of now run by, you know, like by Batman, you know, let s put it this way, you know.
9
SPEAKER_00
But still, if you look on the people, if you look on the younger people, the technology that we have all the access like the internet and the knowledge and the books,
9
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I have all the hopes.
9
SPEAKER_00
It s actually very difficult for dictatorships become sustainable in the world because people is educated now.
9
SPEAKER_00
People know what s happening in other countries.
9
SPEAKER_00
My grandparents never been abroad.
9
SPEAKER_00
My parents  grandparents didn t know what s happening in another country.
9
SPEAKER_00
But now people, except maybe for a few very totalitarian country, which kind of created medieval regimes like Northern Korea, people everywhere know what s happening.
9
SPEAKER_00
And I think this actually gives us a lot of hope that society is moving to the right direction.
9
SPEAKER_00
I mean, there are some bad things that happens like in China with Uyghurs when they use technology for concentration camps.
9
SPEAKER_00
But I think the general direction is very good.
9
SPEAKER_00
And I think we will be seeing the better society in the future that will be
9
SPEAKER_00
open to humanity, open to unlocking the power of each individual man, be fair for people who is weak and not capable, but at the same time stimulating people to achieve new horizons.
9
SPEAKER_00
It s difficult to see when you just live like the short life, maybe like in the US, like in the five, 10 years, everything change up and down.
9
SPEAKER_00
When you see this like a greater perspective, and I basically saw two systems, the Soviet system, and I can see this, it s very different.
9
SPEAKER_00
I think we re moving as humanity to the right direction, and we ll find a way to build the better society, the open society.
9
SPEAKER_03
As you said, the technology has made people around the world know it s possible, but the breakthroughs in the Soviet, I went to the Soviet Union when I was 23 years old.
9
SPEAKER_03
I was invited and it was still the Soviet Union.
9
SPEAKER_03
I got to experience what it was like there.
9
SPEAKER_03
I traveled from Moscow to Siberia to where you were and got to meet the people, got to experience it, but it turned me into a capitalist.
9
SPEAKER_03
I wasn t even interested.
9
SPEAKER_03
I didn t know what capitalist was.
9
SPEAKER_03
All I knew was everybody was supposed to be equal.
9
SPEAKER_03
It sounded so good to me.
9
SPEAKER_03
You know, everybody talks about socialism or communism and there s the description of it.
9
SPEAKER_03
And then there s the reality of it, right?
9
SPEAKER_03
And so you start to see that, you know, it wasn t equal and even slightly I watch people in Moscow standing around three blocks so they could get half a loaf of bread and a little bit of milk all day long.
9
SPEAKER_03
And we were on a train with all these other Soviets that were having caviar and having this incredible quality of life.
9
SPEAKER_03
It s just, it just doesn t work that way.
9
SPEAKER_03
But the fact that people could see a better life is what brought down that wall.
9
SPEAKER_03
It s what created that drive and so forth.
9
SPEAKER_03
And obviously leaders like Mikhail Gorbachev were willing to consider things in a new way.
9
SPEAKER_03
But you re right, the world is flattened and now, you know, a tribesman in Kenya can now, with that little cell phone, provide education from MIT, from Harvard, he can do business around the world, he can transfer finances, I mean, he can do anything he wants.
9
SPEAKER_03
I remember when I worked with President Clinton,
9
SPEAKER_03
And I remember there was a day when he and I were talking and he said, we want to keep these conversations private.
9
SPEAKER_03
I said, I agree.
9
SPEAKER_03
I said, why don t we consider using email?
9
SPEAKER_03
And he goes, I ve heard about that.
9
SPEAKER_03
I said, yeah, there s this thing called AOL.
9
SPEAKER_03
You should get an email account.
9
SPEAKER_03
In our first communications by email, I found out that the world knew I d worked with him because I was showing my wife at the time.
9
SPEAKER_03
I said, yeah, you can search things on here.
9
SPEAKER_03
Like I type my name in and boom, for that day, the Washington Post came up and talking about my working with the president.
9
SPEAKER_03
That s how much the world has changed.
9
SPEAKER_03
A person in Kenya with a little cell phone has more technology, more access to research, more economic, more everything than the President of the United States did a couple of decades ago.
9
SPEAKER_03
It s pretty wild.
9
SPEAKER_03
That certainly should give us hope because the process is accelerating.
9
SPEAKER_03
Now, of course, Bill and Mikhail, I think we d all agree that technology isn t one-sided.
9
SPEAKER_03
I love you.
9
SPEAKER_03
Technology can destroy us.
9
SPEAKER_03
Well, electricity can light up a city or you can kill somebody.
9
SPEAKER_03
So it is still the way it s used.
9
SPEAKER_03
good seems to have overcome evil for the most part throughout human history.
9
SPEAKER_03
And my optimism is that trend probably won t change.
9
SPEAKER_03
Jason, what gives you hope?
9
SPEAKER_02
And I tend to ask myself two questions.
9
SPEAKER_02
I ask myself, who s driving and where are we going?
9
SPEAKER_02
And there s so much reason for fear, right?
9
SPEAKER_02
That was your kind of opening.
9
SPEAKER_02
And it s like, but is there?
9
SPEAKER_02
I think about,
9
SPEAKER_02
the future of energy and I think who s driving and Bill s driving and where are we going, you know?
9
SPEAKER_02
And I think about myself as an entrepreneur, I think every entrepreneur has an element of, right?
9
SPEAKER_02
where am I driving to?
9
SPEAKER_02
What s my destination?
9
SPEAKER_02
And I try to think about the things that are within my control.
9
SPEAKER_02
It s like the, you know, give me the strength to accept the things that cannot change.
9
SPEAKER_02
And it s like, where am I driving?
9
SPEAKER_02
What s within my power?
9
SPEAKER_02
And, you know, to get caught up on like, is climate change a real question?
9
SPEAKER_02
And is it a real threat to humanity?
9
SPEAKER_02
Absolutely.
9
SPEAKER_02
But just to focus on the question, we re not going anywhere, right?
9
SPEAKER_02
All we re doing is we re bumper to bumper traffic, screaming about how terrible it is, but little do we know that we re headed to the promised land, right?
9
SPEAKER_02
Like that s sort of what I think about is where are we going and who s driving?
9
SPEAKER_02
And then I ask myself, am I driving and where am I going?
9
SPEAKER_02
And if I m not driving, then I know that I m looking at the question or I m looking at the situation wrong.
9
SPEAKER_02
And I look at what can I do right now to get to the destination that I wanna get to.
9
SPEAKER_03
And you just hit on what I found the most successful people, regardless of entrepreneurs.
9
SPEAKER_03
I always tell people there s three questions that we re always asking, three decisions.
9
SPEAKER_03
And one is, what are you going to focus on, right?
9
SPEAKER_03
Whatever you focus on is what you re going to feel, true or not.
9
SPEAKER_03
If you think of the worst possible scenario, you re experiencing it now.
9
SPEAKER_03
It s why that old phrase, you know, coward dies a thousand deaths, greatest person once, you know, so it s a real problem you handle it.
9
SPEAKER_03
Because what s wrong is always available.
9
SPEAKER_03
But, you know, so is what s right.
9
SPEAKER_03
And so hearing you, the second question that people see is when they re asking what am I going to focus on, do you focus on what you can control or what you can t control?
9
SPEAKER_03
And you already said what you focus on, focus on what you can control.
9
SPEAKER_03
Focus on what you can t control, you keep focusing on what you don t have instead of what you do have, you keep focusing on the past.
9
SPEAKER_03
You get those three patterns, you know you re going to be pissed off, frustrated, depressed.
9
SPEAKER_03
But successful people focus on what they can control.
9
SPEAKER_03
They focus on what they do have and how to use it to add more value.
9
SPEAKER_03
And they tend to focus on the present and the future as opposed to the past you can t change.
9
SPEAKER_03
Beautiful, Jason.
9
SPEAKER_03
Dakin, rounding off with you.
9
SPEAKER_03
What gives you hope?
9
SPEAKER_03
I know you have more than hope, optimism, excitement about the present and future.
9
SPEAKER_03
When things look poorly, what do you focus on?
9
SPEAKER_03
What gives you hope?
9
SPEAKER_01
First, I ll say I have absolute certainty that the future is going to be better than it is today.
9
SPEAKER_01
We have tons of evidence of this.
9
SPEAKER_01
What it comes down to for me is actually what Prime Movers Lab is about.
9
SPEAKER_01
It s about science and service.
9
SPEAKER_01
More abstractly, it s about matter and spirit.
9
SPEAKER_01
If we look at both of these realms, we are having tremendous progress.
9
SPEAKER_01
Civilization from a material level is defined by infrastructure
10
SPEAKER_01
of energy, transportation, and communications.
10
SPEAKER_01
If you look at any time there s been a step change in any of these things, the Industrial Revolution, the printing press, the average human being s life has gone upwards in life expectancy, but more importantly, in quality of life during that life expectancy.
10
SPEAKER_01
It s just without a doubt, you ask anyone,
10
SPEAKER_01
all of the right technologies are being put in place right now to make it so that the average human being can live on more food, more energy, more joy, more whatever it is that they want than at any other point in human history without having to do much.
10
SPEAKER_01
We re going to be in that place of radical abundance within the next 30 or 40 years, just from the resources that we re producing.
10
SPEAKER_01
But the second question is, is there the willingness to solve all of those problems?
10
SPEAKER_01
We were just seeing Sadhguru talk, thanks to you.
10
SPEAKER_01
And he talked about how we have to have the willingness.
10
SPEAKER_01
And what that boils down to is the level of consciousness, the peace of spirit.
10
SPEAKER_01
And if we look at what is happening in the world, I mean, you held an event with hundreds of thousands of people, maybe even a million people earlier this year.
10
SPEAKER_01
The number of people that are interested in raising their consciousness, the number of people that are pursuing meditation, pursuing spirituality is unprecedented.
10
SPEAKER_01
And these things actually go hand in hand.
10
SPEAKER_01
In a world, at least in the West, where people are freed up of maybe some of the day-to-day drudgery of a particular job, there is more time to invest in themselves.
10
SPEAKER_01
There s more time to go after what is life really about for me in the big picture.
10
SPEAKER_01
And I just think the media is not showing us an accurate picture of what s really happening in a person s day-to-day life.
10
SPEAKER_01
Just to say simply, I watched the movie Love Actually with the family during Thanksgiving.
10
SPEAKER_01
And you look at everyone greeting each other in an airport.
10
SPEAKER_01
You look at everyone welcoming each other home.
10
SPEAKER_01
And there s just a level of love that most people actually have in their day-to-day life that s not what the stories are in the news.
10
SPEAKER_01
And you take that plus the power of technology, we are going to have unbelievable lives.
10
SPEAKER_01
There ll be ups and downs, but we re going to have unbelievable lives beyond anything most of us can imagine.
10
SPEAKER_00
In fact, the truth is most of us already have unbelievable lives.
10
SPEAKER_00
You know, it s one of the things that I noticed when there was the people that were protesting years ago and they re saying, you know, the 1% are dominating the planet and I have a terrible life.
10
SPEAKER_00
And I was looking at the people that was on Wall Street, you know, they have an encampment.
10
SPEAKER_00
I actually drove over there and I hung out and chat with a few people.
10
SPEAKER_00
and they are like holding brand new computers, iPhones that cost more than the average person and you know two-thirds of the planet couldn t live on what they spent on one phone.
10
SPEAKER_00
They re drinking a coffee from Starbucks that costs more than most people live on per day and they re going those terrible one percenters and if you actually look at it if you live in the United States and you re in poverty and I hate anybody in poverty that s why you know I work to feed so many people just one approach to doing things
10
SPEAKER_00
But if you live in poverty in the United States, you re in the top 10% of earners in the world, right?
10
SPEAKER_00
The people that are complaining about 1% are the 1%.
10
SPEAKER_00
They just don t realize it, what they compare it to.
10
SPEAKER_00
So I think sometimes we don t make the progress because we buy the stories that have been told to us, have been sold to us to get us aggravated.
10
SPEAKER_00
I mean, anyone who s watching this right now or listening to this podcast, if you haven t watched The Social Dilemma, please do.
10
SPEAKER_00
It s on Netflix, I believe, or you can pick up a book by, I think his name is Lanier, the guy that wrote
10
SPEAKER_00
how to get rid of your social media accounts, or at least use them more intelligently.
10
SPEAKER_00
And we re like lab rats for a group of people that are basically getting paid to keep us online through dopamine hits by reinforcing what we believe and then pissing us off so we stay online longer.
10
SPEAKER_00
We have an incredible life now and an incredible life in the future, but we ve got to wake up to it.
10
SPEAKER_00
Otherwise, you can have this incredible life and you can live in misery.
10
SPEAKER_00
I mean, suffering, we have the greatest economic environment in history.
10
SPEAKER_00
Even with the challenges we re facing right now,
10
SPEAKER_00
And yet most people at the peak before COVID, before any of these issues, during the peak economic times, we had the lowest levels of happiness measured in 40 years in this country.
10
SPEAKER_00
Because what happens is people start expecting, you know, it s like this, you know, the phone you have, you know, people banging on it, like, you know, it s not doing it fast enough, it s going to a satellite, give it a moment, you know, it s like, we ve turned our lives into all this expectation, which makes us miserable instead of appreciation, which is what makes our life rich.
10
SPEAKER_00
So let s shift now.
10
SPEAKER_00
We ve been going for a while here and our listeners have been with us and I hope they ve gotten some great understanding of what you re doing generally, but also the principles that have made you all, you know, build companies that can literally shift the quality of life here in the world and made you plenty of money, billions of dollars in some cases for your companies.
10
SPEAKER_00
Let s, let s go back now and let s hit each of you for a few minutes, if I may, with just three, four or five questions each, just go a little deeper.
10
SPEAKER_00
And I want to go back to you, Bill, if I may,
10
SPEAKER_00
And I want, if you would, give us, you know, what it is that made you start Idea Lab?
10
SPEAKER_00
Like, what was the kind of conceit of that?
10
SPEAKER_00
Because there weren t a bunch of, you know, people out there, you know, building incubators.
10
SPEAKER_00
You wanted to be first in the world and you re the longest running one.
10
SPEAKER_00
What was in your mindset about that?
10
SPEAKER_00
What made that such an important component?
10
SPEAKER_00
And then if you wouldn t mind, share us just one story, because you and I have talked about this before personally, about Google AdWords, which, you know, you played a huge role in.
10
SPEAKER_00
but the story is really interesting in terms of the ups and downs and just a few minutes of it I think will inspire entrepreneurs or anybody even considering being an entrepreneur and also giving them what you said earlier which is what you start out as thinking it is ain t one of what it s going to be.
10
SPEAKER_00
So would you share a little bit of that for us?
10
SPEAKER_02
I had started a company after college that was acquired by Lotus Development and then I started Knowledge Adventure which we talked about that was acquired by Vivendi but just before it was acquired it was 1995
10
SPEAKER_02
And Netscape had its IPO.
10
SPEAKER_02
And the browser, there were 30 million browsers in the world, 30 million.
10
SPEAKER_02
Think about how low a number that is when you think about it now, because there s 4 billion people with connected phones, and maybe more.
10
SPEAKER_02
4 billion is probably an old number.
10
SPEAKER_02
30 million people who you could communicate with directly through a browser.
10
SPEAKER_02
I thought that was the most amazing thing because all my prior companies, I had to go struggle to get each new customer, either through a retail channel, or through advertising in the yellow pages, or putting up flyers.
10
SPEAKER_02
My reach was very small.
10
SPEAKER_02
Sort of like Leonardo da Vinci we talked about earlier, very small radius.
10
SPEAKER_02
All of a sudden, I could talk to the whole world, 30 million people.
10
SPEAKER_02
I thought, wow, there s so many things you can do.
10
SPEAKER_02
You need to make a Yellow Pages online.
10
SPEAKER_02
What about buying cars online?
10
SPEAKER_02
What about this?
10
SPEAKER_02
What about?
10
SPEAKER_02
I thought, boy, there s an opportunity to reinvent many businesses.
10
SPEAKER_02
I don t even know which one I should start first.
10
SPEAKER_02
I don t want to start one of them.
10
SPEAKER_02
I want to start all of them.
10
SPEAKER_02
What about?
10
SPEAKER_02
What about if I, instead of being a serial entrepreneur, which I was, maybe I could become a parallel entrepreneur and do them under one roof.
10
SPEAKER_02
What I would do is prototype the ideas, recruit great CEOs to run each one of them, put in the seed capital, help them grow and build the businesses.
10
SPEAKER_02
I would try a bunch of them.
10
SPEAKER_02
Some of them would fail, but I thought,
10
SPEAKER_02
this maybe would be a way to encourage more people to take risk, you know, your four letter word, because what happens if one of them fails?
10
SPEAKER_02
Well, we ll just start a new company.
10
SPEAKER_02
So I want to try and have a safety net of risk so that you could take that chance on a new idea.
10
SPEAKER_02
But if it doesn t work out, it s not that bad.
10
SPEAKER_02
It would not be a scarlet letter already, by the way, the United States.
10
SPEAKER_02
we have way less of a scarlet letter on failure than, say, in Europe or in other places in the world, where if you fail, sometimes people don t want to back you a second time.
10
SPEAKER_02
I actually view failure as a badge of honor, not as a badge of failure.
10
SPEAKER_02
It s a badge of honor if you learn from it.
10
SPEAKER_02
If you didn t learn from it, you ignore it, it s failure.
10
SPEAKER_02
If you actually learn from it,
10
SPEAKER_02
So that gave me the inspiration to start Idealab.
10
SPEAKER_02
We would start 10 companies under one roof.
10
SPEAKER_02
We d try it for one year.
10
SPEAKER_02
We d see if it would work out.
10
SPEAKER_02
Well, of those 10 companies, a few of them went on to be very successful.
10
SPEAKER_02
That allowed me to keep funding it and keep it going.
10
SPEAKER_02
And now, 24 years later, it s still running, because that fundamental concept of putting things together, learning from each of them, did work.
10
SPEAKER_00
So, uh, how many companies, how many companies, you know, we ve talked about successes, 150 companies.
10
SPEAKER_00
It s incredible.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
10
SPEAKER_02
But 60 failures, 60 failures.
10
SPEAKER_00
I got, that s all I want people to know.
10
SPEAKER_00
And by the way, that s an unbelievable ratio.
10
SPEAKER_00
That s like being one of the greatest batters in history, right?
10
SPEAKER_00
Cause it doesn t work that way in Silicon Valley, but you ve managed to do it.
10
SPEAKER_00
What do you think?
10
SPEAKER_00
Why have you, of course you ve had the failures, but why do you think you ve been able to help so many of them succeed?
10
SPEAKER_02
Well, we ve gotten better over time, because we ve learned some of these lessons.
10
SPEAKER_02
Yes, some of the lessons I already talked about about if your product doesn t have enough differentiation you re just competing with everybody else and there s not enough.
10
SPEAKER_02
If you don t find entrepreneurs with enough passion, you have to have that vision so you can stick with it through.
10
SPEAKER_02
Timing matters a lot.
10
SPEAKER_02
Sometimes you just have the unfortunate luck of timing.
10
SPEAKER_02
A recession comes and hits and wipes out five companies.
10
SPEAKER_02
Like 2008, 2009, that was awful.
10
SPEAKER_02
The companies, some of them were actually doing very well, but they just couldn t raise any more money.
10
SPEAKER_02
Bad timing wipes out companies.
10
SPEAKER_02
The
10
SPEAKER_02
Probably the biggest one though is timing in the other direction is, is the world ready for your idea?
10
SPEAKER_02
You start out and maybe it s even going to be a good idea in five years, but can you make it five years till it s a good idea?
10
SPEAKER_02
That means maybe taking your money and spending it more thoughtfully to last five more years till the world s ready for you.
10
SPEAKER_02
A lot of times, entrepreneurs, teams, they re in a hurry.
10
SPEAKER_02
I need to build my brand.
10
SPEAKER_02
I need to hurry up.
10
SPEAKER_02
I need to spend on marketing.
10
SPEAKER_02
Well, wait a minute.
10
SPEAKER_02
Why are you spending on marketing?
10
SPEAKER_02
If the world can t even buy what you re making yet, that money is going to be wasted.
10
SPEAKER_02
Convincing people to not build, hire a person VP of marketing, what do they want to do?
10
SPEAKER_02
They want to do marketing.
10
SPEAKER_02
Really having a balance between
11
SPEAKER_00
when the world is ready for what you re making and what you re making is very critical.
11
SPEAKER_00
So a lot of the genesis of Idealab was just to scratch my own itch of wanting to do so many things and what one other
11
SPEAKER_00
which is it s very, very important for a company to focus.
11
SPEAKER_00
Focus is a big, big deal.
11
SPEAKER_00
We didn t talk about that earlier.
11
SPEAKER_00
You need to be laser focused on what you re doing.
11
SPEAKER_00
You got to pick the thing you re doing.
11
SPEAKER_00
If you want to be better at it than everybody else, it s a little bit like if you want to win the Olympics, you better be focused on working out and trying and learning and getting better and better and better.
11
SPEAKER_00
Well, that s true of the business too.
11
SPEAKER_00
You got to be focused.
11
SPEAKER_00
But I wasn t focused.
11
SPEAKER_00
I was unfocused.
11
SPEAKER_00
I had a lot of different ideas and I wanted to do all of them.
11
SPEAKER_00
And I learned that at Knowledge Adventure, it got better and better the more focused I was.
11
SPEAKER_00
The more things I shared that were off focus made Knowledge Adventure do better.
11
SPEAKER_00
So I realized the only way I m going to succeed as a human being
11
SPEAKER_00
with my unfocus is to build individually focused companies, which are laser focused on their target, but I could be more like a bumblebee and jump around each of them and pollinate each one a little bit.
11
SPEAKER_00
Maybe, Dakin, that s what you do now.
11
SPEAKER_00
Dakin, you have an ability to help many companies, and then you, Tony, you help millions of people.
11
SPEAKER_00
You re able to spread.
11
SPEAKER_00
I thought Idealab would be a construct to allow me to do what I want to do, but still have companies that individually are successful.
11
SPEAKER_00
That was my story for that.
11
SPEAKER_00
The story of goto.com slash overture slash AdWords is a wild one.
11
SPEAKER_01
Please share this.
11
SPEAKER_01
I want you all listening to this because this is such an instructive story about your ability to navigate through things as well as all things you talked about, timing, etc.
11
SPEAKER_01
So please do share.
11
SPEAKER_00
It s 1997.
11
SPEAKER_00
Internet is still young.
11
SPEAKER_00
We ve got about 20 companies in our portfolio.
11
SPEAKER_00
They re all trying to get attention on the internet, buying ads.
11
SPEAKER_00
AOL would charge you $3 million to buy the gardening section.
11
SPEAKER_00
They wouldn t tell you how much traffic you re going to get.
11
SPEAKER_00
They wouldn t tell you how many pages you re going to get.
11
SPEAKER_00
They wouldn t tell you how many clicks you were going to get.
11
SPEAKER_00
It was ridiculous.
11
SPEAKER_00
I was telling our CEOs,
11
SPEAKER_00
You can t do that.
11
SPEAKER_00
You need to know.
11
SPEAKER_00
The whole point about internet advertising is it should be accountable.
11
SPEAKER_00
You should know what you re going to get.
11
SPEAKER_00
Yahoo was doing the same thing.
11
SPEAKER_00
Yahoo was charging on a CPM basis, cost per 1,000 ads, not telling you the quality of the view or anything like that.
11
SPEAKER_01
This is prior to Google doing anything, Yahoo was driving for some people or two, you don t even know it.
11
SPEAKER_01
We thought of Yahoo in those days, no one does.
11
SPEAKER_00
The only way they were showing the search results
11
SPEAKER_00
was based on the frequency of the word on the page.
11
SPEAKER_00
So in other words, if you type in the word cars, looking for a good website on cars, the website that would show up higher was the one that had more occurrences of the word cars on it.
11
SPEAKER_00
So everybody figured that out.
11
SPEAKER_00
So all they would do is put the word cars, cars, cars, cars, cars on the page to get higher.
11
SPEAKER_00
So everybody was in a spamming war to get more and more spam.
11
SPEAKER_00
So I started thinking, how could we come up with a way to fix that problem?
11
SPEAKER_00
All of my companies want to buy cost-effective clicks.
11
SPEAKER_00
They all want to pay on a click-through basis, not on a CPM basis, and not $3 million for three years with unknown traffic.
11
SPEAKER_00
And we had this idea, after trying 10 other ideas through all of 1997, that none of them worked.
11
SPEAKER_00
We had this idea, what about if we charge on a click-through basis on each keyword?
11
SPEAKER_00
What about if we have an auction for every word in the English language and in every language?
11
SPEAKER_00
So on the word cars,
11
SPEAKER_00
websites could bid a click-through price, and the higher they bid, the higher they would show up.
11
SPEAKER_00
Well, that means you re just paying money to get the people to come to your website.
11
SPEAKER_00
Well, yeah, but if you pay money, you re not going to buy the wrong keywords, because you have to be valid on cars to pay for the word cars.
11
SPEAKER_00
I came up with that idea, and everybody argued against it.
11
SPEAKER_00
Oh, that s ridiculous.
11
SPEAKER_00
You can t charge people for search listings.
11
SPEAKER_00
You can t charge people a search engine.
11
SPEAKER_00
I said, well, wait a minute.
11
SPEAKER_00
Yellow Pages does that.
11
SPEAKER_00
That s how you get ads in the Yellow Pages.
11
SPEAKER_00
The bigger ads show up first, then the smaller ads, and then the listings are at the end.
11
SPEAKER_00
Why don t we just be very transparent about what we re doing and tell what the cost per advertiser is and display it?
11
SPEAKER_00
So we did that we started that in February of 1998 little search engine called go to go to.com you go to go to.com you type in a keyword and all the listings will be sorted by price descending.
11
SPEAKER_00
And then the regular listings would be at the bottom, so we still would show everybody it s just that you could show up higher if you bid more.
11
SPEAKER_00
What would happen was, better results would rise to the top.
11
SPEAKER_00
They actually would, because you couldn t afford to pay $0.50 a click if you weren t relevant on that keyword, if you weren t actually delivering promise on that keyword.
11
SPEAKER_00
Businesses loved it, because they could all of a sudden have transparency in what they were buying.
11
SPEAKER_00
We got a huge flood of business.
11
SPEAKER_00
Revenues took off like crazy.
11
SPEAKER_00
Soon, actual searchers loved it, because they were getting valid businesses.
11
SPEAKER_00
They weren t getting spam anymore.
11
SPEAKER_00
Company took off like crazy, went public in a year, went to over a billion dollar valuation, unbelievable.
11
SPEAKER_00
We were doing hundreds of millions in revenues.
11
SPEAKER_00
Then in 1999, Google came out.
11
SPEAKER_00
And Google came out as a search engine with another way to improve relevance that was brilliant.
11
SPEAKER_00
It was called PageRank, after Larry Page, and it was based on link strength.
11
SPEAKER_00
Their Stanford thesis was about what about if we use the number of links into a website as a measure of the relevance of that website.
11
SPEAKER_00
And that was genius.
11
SPEAKER_00
And that was really good for non commercial terms.
11
SPEAKER_00
So Google started taking off like crazy for non commerce related searches.
11
SPEAKER_00
and we were taking off like crazy for commerce-related searches.
11
SPEAKER_00
I said, oh, my God, we got to partner with them.
11
SPEAKER_00
They came to us and said, we got to partner with you.
11
SPEAKER_00
You know how to make money.
11
SPEAKER_00
We have no revenues.
11
SPEAKER_00
We got to combine forces.
11
SPEAKER_00
We had numerous chances to combine with Google, and all of our chances didn t come to pass.
11
SPEAKER_00
We got them away.
11
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, both ways.
11
SPEAKER_00
Well at one time, our board of directors turned it down, because they said how can we acquire a company with no revenues like that.
11
SPEAKER_00
We re a public company we got to justify this to shareholders, it was just unbelievable.
11
SPEAKER_00
What a great merger would have been.
11
SPEAKER_00
Eventually, Google did go ahead and use our method of bidding listings, and they infringed on our patents, actually.
11
SPEAKER_00
We took them to court and said, you re infringing on these patents, and they said, well, we ll buy these out.
11
SPEAKER_00
They settled and bought them out for hundreds of millions of dollars, which turned out to be one of the biggest patent settlements at the time, but way too little compared to how valuable they were, but still, it was very, very valuable to us.
11
SPEAKER_00
And then Yahoo ended up seeing how valuable we were and acquired our company.
11
SPEAKER_00
So Yahoo ended up acquiring our company so that they would have a way to compete against Google.
11
SPEAKER_00
We were very, very proud to have played a place in the monetization of search.
11
SPEAKER_00
So Google invented probably the best search ever, but we invented maybe the best monetization of search.
11
SPEAKER_01
And together- Which has made Google one of the most successful companies in the history of the world.
11
SPEAKER_01
It started with the idea that you put it together, Bill Gross, you and your team.
11
SPEAKER_01
It s pretty amazing.
11
SPEAKER_01
What did you learn from that lesson though?
11
SPEAKER_01
Because there were so many ups and downs.
11
SPEAKER_00
Well, one definitely was we thought we had something really, really big, and I feel we should have held out to grow it bigger.
11
SPEAKER_00
Other of our investors were so happy to get a multibillion dollar exit that we sold to Yahoo.
11
SPEAKER_00
I wish we had stayed longer in it, because I think we realized it.
11
SPEAKER_00
I actually said, guys, I think this is $100 billion opportunity.
11
SPEAKER_00
And people laughed at me, Bill, $100 billion.
11
SPEAKER_00
Actually, that was too little.
11
SPEAKER_00
It was bigger than $100 billion.
11
SPEAKER_00
I was just picking the highest number I could think of as to how out there could I be.
11
SPEAKER_00
And they thought I was nuts.
11
SPEAKER_00
But I was nuts too low, not too high.
11
SPEAKER_01
That s near a trillion now.
11
SPEAKER_01
That s insane.
11
SPEAKER_00
What else did you learn from that that you would want other entrepreneurs to hear?
11
SPEAKER_00
Well, the other thing I would say, when we first started out with the initial idea, people pooh-poohed it.
11
SPEAKER_00
People said, that is a really, really terrible idea to put money in search engine listings.
11
SPEAKER_00
But we really knew this is important.
11
SPEAKER_00
This is the way it should work.
11
SPEAKER_00
So the lesson I would take away from that, which I didn t know at the time, but I say in hindsight, is if you really believe something is true,
11
SPEAKER_00
and people are poo-pooing it, don t listen to them.
11
SPEAKER_00
We didn t.
11
SPEAKER_00
We stayed with it.
11
SPEAKER_00
If I had listened to people telling me, stop that, we would have seen the bad review in the Wall Street Journal the day we came out, and we would have given up, and we didn t.
11
SPEAKER_00
When you see something that you know is right,
11
SPEAKER_00
sort of contrarian like I was talking about earlier, stick with it, fight through to make it be till now.
11
SPEAKER_00
Now, look at you and everybody knows that in hindsight, it s obvious, but it wouldn t have happened if we didn t push it through.
11
SPEAKER_00
We had in the three stages of truth, first, everybody ignores it, then they ridicule it because they actually got threatened by it, and then finally, they accept it as being self-evident.
11
SPEAKER_00
I feel that if you push through and take an idea that is ridiculed and make it self-evident, you have actually changed the world.
11
SPEAKER_00
Like that is actually changing the world because you made something happen that wouldn t have happened otherwise.
11
SPEAKER_00
So, as an entrepreneur, when you feel that and you know in your heart you re fighting for something that actually is important, keep the fight up, you know, keep going because that means you re actually going to make a difference.
11
SPEAKER_01
Well, for all those that are still with us, I hope that what you ve got from this, Mike,
12
SPEAKER_00
My goal in doing this was to maybe create a moment of excitement in you, where you think about the future in a different way, where you don t just listen to the news, which every day is droning on and on, and it has an agenda.
12
SPEAKER_00
Its agenda is not a harsh one, it s just an agenda that there s an economics to that news, unfortunately.
12
SPEAKER_00
And so good ideas rarely interrupt you.
12
SPEAKER_00
They have to be pursued.
12
SPEAKER_00
You have to look for them.
12
SPEAKER_00
So our goal here is to put you in front of those tools that can give you a greater sense of what s happening in the world, both so you can be a first mover yourself and perhaps make use of those things that are valuable for you.
12
SPEAKER_00
Secondly, we all need to become investors.
12
SPEAKER_00
You can use an Apple phone or you can own part of Apple.
12
SPEAKER_00
And the reason so many people suffer financially is not because the opportunity isn t there and it s not because they don t have enough money.
12
SPEAKER_00
it s because they re consumers they re not owners and if there s anything I hope this will get you to do is to think about the future in a new way that excites you to get you through the temporary ups and downs of issues like COVID or racism they re all real issues but there s nothing humanity has created that humanity can t solve as we ve already said but also if you want to participate in helping those people that are working on the cutting edge of increasing the quality of life for all people
12
SPEAKER_00
you can become an owner with them and you can prosper as they prosper in helping millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions, or perhaps billions of people.
12
SPEAKER_00
So hope this has been inspiring for you.
12
SPEAKER_00
And if you re an entrepreneur, I hope you ve listened to some of the great lessons that these entrepreneurs have given us by taking a couple hours of their time to just share from the heart what they ve learned.
12
SPEAKER_00
So I want to thank you, Bill Gross, the most successful entrepreneur in growing companies from nothing to over a billion.
12
SPEAKER_00
He s already got seven.
12
SPEAKER_00
No one s done that.
12
SPEAKER_00
If you re listening, it looks like he s got his eighth and ninth and maybe 10th one on the way.
12
SPEAKER_00
Mikhail, for what you re doing to open up space.
12
SPEAKER_00
Jason, for what you re doing to help us and make Brooklyn a farming environment, but any place be a farming environment with both, as you said, not only cheaper costs and better nutrients, but delicious.
12
SPEAKER_00
And Dakin, for your incredible pioneering efforts to pull together such great entrepreneurs.
12
SPEAKER_00
It s been a pleasure to spend time with all of you again.
12
SPEAKER_00
I love you, I respect you, and for all of you at home, thank you for joining us again for the Tony Robbins Podcast.
12
SPEAKER_00
Till we see you soon, live strong, live with passion, and God bless.
12
SPEAKER_01
The Tony Robbins Podcast is directed by Tony Robbins and produced by the Tony Robbins team.
12
SPEAKER_01
Copyright Robbins Research International.