Transcripts For RT Worlds Apart 20240713

Reading the articles about you listening to some of your previous interviews i caught myself humming. Face to face our then behaved hang tough saying hungry. Have you ever associated to yourself with that song eye of the tiger. The reason i imagine it is because it was 1st of all number one single indian ited states for 6 consecutive weeks soon after your most to the United States or your parents read more broadly i thought that it kind of depicts. How you relate to risk and adversity is this real love defied the kick that you seem to get out of uncertainty am i wrong here it has always been the case with you or did you have to foster it i dont think ive ever been a thrill seeker i think im a grown up with them as you blocked him probably helped me develop at the risk part of pretty quantitatively enough to actually do a challenge of building things i like things kind of difficult but its not the only like risk for the sake of for us going to way that lets say a war correspondent actually seeks out conflict and then sure. Its an interesting observation that you just made because. You were introduced to reese earlier on not as some blind you know dark im sick or im no one but actually calculate to build probability and. Many people especially in this country tend to fear risk more they tend to fear they fear more and they risk it represents a threat how do you think it should be dealt with well i mean its not always easy to set your emotions aside and to calculate everything right but certainly in what i do professionally and making investments i think something actually got in the way and. Will for this to be us to make some of the information that you have. According to act logically now i know that you are not the. Big fan of talking about your experience on the mit Blackjack Team but let me ask a few questions the whole thing was depicted in in a famous movie 21 and its shown there as. Was it really as dramatic as it is portrayed in the movie it has some dramatic moments but no nothing like about the movie that movie was based on the story it wasnt that actual story itself theres another movie on the History Channel that tells the story but even there i think they turned that into a little bit of a plot you know where the plot curve in reality we got kicked out all the time and we came back and that was just the nature of the course and such a story thats didnt want to. Feel alive you had that was done when people were asking you about that because i mean you found that you had accomplished many other things but when you look back at those year is what is it in terms of Life Experience that you tube from. Early years is there something that stayed with you there were many former important things that i learned while writing this blog to chemicals my 1st start up. The graduate program and i teach to do it and it was also my 1st fund you know we were paid taxes we made returns for investors we were all souls in the stores and learned lots of stuff about how to run an organization that can really trust everyone. Valid probabilities and opportunities and how to repeat well how to trust your intuition and how they synergy not so much about the i would say and then terms of working with your team mates and building a culture within the organisation probably hear us within the casino and hold no interest in it was just pure numbers like falling in exact script writing down everything that happened and modeling it and those fires talking about it actually ive always been there transparent about the story im happy to talk about it there was just a period of time when that was in the news a lot before this movie actually came out where i its not that i felt i didnt want to talk about it its that i was actually frustrated because it was in fact of the time the most interesting thing that i had to say and the full of it and much driven to become more you quit playing because you started. Your own company down after a few attempts to start your own companies you moved to investing whats so interesting whats just thrilling about investing for you well i guess i felt like i had to run my own business. I started a Software Company in 97 the fold in 2000 and even before sold if you did right if you were in child sex as and then fill in that thing. And what i liked about it i think was actually the mentoring got a little bit mentored by older entrepreneurs around boston when i had my start up there was a group of people young founders hold a mentor and after i sold my company i was invited to come back to the group as a mentor even though i was much younger than other mentors. And really enjoyed that a Little Something theyd been missed out on the little when i was younger but i also realised operate over business i didnt have the patience to do one thing in the 15 years to build a big company i just didnt have it and i didnt have the purpose within the company that you need to have but i loved. Helping founders and i viewed them as my customers and so i started investing it to be involved in lots of different businesses which suited me but be to really learn to become a better mentor or a better advisor to make an impact on these peoples lives because the one thing about black. Not satisfying to me was that the i made money didnt scale wasnt huge amounts of money but i made a few 1000000. 00 but never really had any customers no one think that it was just money for the sake of money in your recent interviews you are pretty open about not being motivated by making money and this is pretty unusual for an american because you are an american right now its their highly materialistic society you still being its big is what sat you free for a war shipping it. Thats a little bit question let me 1st on this i have an american passport and theres many things i like about the country from identity to know its a complicated thing and identity and i never really felt like i was an american i certainly dont feel like im a russian i feel like im russian and in some ways but not a russian right i also feel in some ways like a jew its part of my identity the american part might be a little stronger than those other 2 but what ive discovered more recently is that what i really am as an immigrant as the son of parents that moved from one place to another the change. In my life from the part in russia to the part of america actually became the defining moment and if anything i think people of the other people who have gone through that from a new country to any other country i just have more in common with them than i do with with americans as a whole the russians as a whole now if i may dwell on the issue of investing a little bit longer i heard you say that you are now trying to invest for the purpose of making change rather than money and as somebody who has covered a number of. Well american lot wars. I shiver at kohls of making the world a better place because that alone is responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths that simply didnt have to be how do you go about. Understanding defining what kind of change you want to see in the world and again for some reason youre packing a little some sense of a question in this case the function that going to stop me. Doing what i do know to change the world enough to make money so thats not strictly speaking correct. God i do it from reading i may be wrong i mean phrasing phrase it in your own way and what i do today after many many years of angel investing at some point become primarily not to change the world but to help particular founders because i enjoy helping people i enjoy the gratitude i got back at work in the selfish way after years of and running another accelerator started a new venture fund the fund is not a Philanthropic Organization yes we invest in companies started by immigrants we do have a mission around impacting the world in particular way we believe that the the the Financial Success of our fund will actually. Show it will point out the fact that people who want. To create value create jobs create companies to just consume services because the fund is structured as a purely for profit vehicle we have this mission right but the only way for us to achieve the impact you want to achieve is to build very large funds with partners in many countries that will take a couple of decades the rest of my professional life and the only possible path to that is through outsized venture returns to my limited partners and to myself right now so the actual path towards our mission is one of pure money making we use the fact that we are an organization which helps our marketing it helps our thinking it gets gains us the respect of this founders and ultimately hopefully get them to deals that are very competitive where money alone doesnt get you have to actually provide value. People like us the phone like the idea that there is a fund especially for immigrant founders and that puts you at odds with the current president of the United States President Trump who i know you dislike very strongly as he does like the leader of this country which were going to talk about later but speaking of President Trump he seems to be somebody who is not to many. Who is not afraid of breaking the socially politically imposed dogmas he really goes against the tide what he passionately believes in daunte you respect the results of going not just against the tide but against the opprobrium i like that part i do respect the decision hes successful in terms of achieving the results he is out for himself i think he has achieved some positive things. For the open about the fact that i do dislike a style i dislike personality but. Many things. I think oprah very positive for the economy lowering taxes corporations many other things while on the subject of immigrants integration i think we probably have some more left and some disagreements for it i think youll probably agree that he probably doesnt want the kind of im going to be on this thing and to come to the us i know that you wrote an open letter to President Trump delineating the contribution of immigrant interpreters to the economy and i thought it was a very eloquent letter i know but it was also a very misplaced argument because President Trump is not arguing for closing the use borders completely what hes asking for is preselecting who comes in then this is what you do in all your investing ventures being very selective about who you share your resources your time your reports light or 1000 died applied to immigration and thats what i just agree with trump i think trump agree with me that the kind of immigrants we are investing in are in fact positive for america and we have some other disagreements about some of the folks i mean i dont like his methods i can tell you what i dont like at all but what i really dislike. Feel like he is. Building a populist appeal to groups of people the middle left behind. Globalization by the but acknowledging and helping them find ski. Go and giving them someone to blame for their problems that bothers me but you know other politicians do as well its just i mean why do you think its just a political slogan because i mean if you actually look at the figures on the trunk the United States accepted roughly the same amount of immigrants of roughly a 1000000 each year thats very comparable. I dont think its just a Political School going to look let me say for the 3rd time i agree with President Trump on the fact that the kind of highly educated immigrants that come to the us to take. Qualified jobs and to build businesses i think ought to come to the country more and more occasionally in the implementation of these i think in addition to slowing down migration for for migrants for an educated workers they have also made it hard to get certain kinds of professional these i mean this is something that all countries still developed countries in the world practice Canada Australia new zealand you know all these champions of human rights theyre extremely selective about who they take and they have the benefit of the geography as a buffer against those who dont want to take so i guess what im saying is that i think the president probably has the same attentions to the left more of those kinds of people in practically speaking i think what i see is that its gotten harder for those people to go around but were disagreeing figures dont support that last year the United States accepted more legal immigrants in 2014 a particular examples but but they are i think youre looking for this agreement so the area of disagreement is that i believe the qualified workers should also be allowed another people invest them but people like we were i heard you say that you are for open borders you dont think that immigration should be controlled and although there are a couple of interviews i can decide where you stand out and i just dont understand how you square that with Property Rights reach depan to great deal on some notion of jurisdiction how do you square that with a. Private property well i actually dont have thats an excellent question. Lets talk about open borders so i do believe in Property Rights quite strongly im a capitalist when i say open borders im talking about the basic notion of human rights i think. The random circumstances of your birth the papers that to happen to receive based on where you were born its not up to you i think there should be equality of opportunity people property absolutely there is a 1000000 and refugees in the world today and you know why should you have a Privileged Access to your apartment when people are still living on the streets i mean you can make this sort of argument but because the context of the parts on the on the borders and there are going to finish and the reason is that i believe in private property i dont believe the country is like your partner simon lets take a very short break now we will return to this interesting conversation in just a few moments. But adoptions driven by banks failing and countries failing and now in lebanon theyve got a huge crisis and of course big clients come to the rescue. Welcome back to worlds apart to be a russian american investor and business mentor just before the break we were discussing present. Integration policies and as far as i understand in point in response to you your disagreement in 2017 you set out your own venture its you how foreign born interpreters is the goal to how down where there are. Or is the goal ultimately to introduce them today American Market well the goal of one of the tricks of the action at the center it maximum return to store a limited partners of which im the largest one myself we have discovered companies with an immigrant founder in the us and the canada are more likely to grow to be very large the majority of all the socalled going to courts the 1000000000. 00 plus about loose and private companies have an immigrant father 55 percent of them so this is not the kind of population the President Trump is actually cutting anyway lets stop talking about President Trump because i want to talk about another country russia and its leader who are not particularly about either you left russia 979. When i hear you discuss it right now my jaw literally drops because last year for example you compared moscow to you berlin during the 2nd world war when hitler was still in power and you are entitled to your own opinions please explain me why. You seriously believe that russia more than russia is akin to nafta jim. I dont believe this i dont. Recall making a comparison. I may have made a mistake in the interview to about. Maybe the taking of context im not sure if i made that comparison i think i was exaggerating i dont really feel that way here no i dont i dont find that youre still pretty critical about the state of affairs in russia and what was the gist of your disagreement with the policies of the direction this country has been taking. Expert on russia right i havent been here in 9 years. About planning to disagree with my point of view and it seems like theres a fairly high level of corruption still in the country today that may be getting a little better. In some ways some where its become a little bit more like like when i left in the seventys and you know what. The propaganda the nationalism i dont like i dont when there was a conflict with ukraine you know i was i had been travelling i was pretty sympathetic to the ukrainian view of things and. You know there are particular areas of disagreement but i dont think its fair to say that i like anti russian anyway and. I heard you say maybe again im taking you out of context but i heard you say that you are not particularly keen on supporting russian insurer nice partially because of how bad you think the situation in the country is at the moment the situation of a floor you know economic freedoms media freedoms. Russia found in america and canada why not here well were not really investing in europe at all right we are in a Small Organization and were very focused now returns and so the way we generate hider turns this by getting to know the founders and so just very graphically we invest in areas where we have partners. I didnt have that many russian speaking founders but i would say at this point if anything else im learning to sort of use my. Core strength and i have another partner no thats russian speaking from lithuania. And i think well be investing probably in more not less from russia but as far as people building businesses here its very far from sure i mean i think its probably harder to build a big Global Company in russia and your odds of making the world greater a better place greater if you actually. Risk open practive people to break the ground for who they are because its not only about growing business and i think going to someone whos trying to make the world a better place i you know i dont have such ambitions i dont have such capability but i know how to make money by investing in the real estate startups generate a 35 percent per year returns for 20 years straight with my own capital around the boston the great Financial Success and building a venture fund arbitraging away the low valuation of going to founders versus the proportional ability to create very large outcomes and where i do best which is where i live but im you know you often talk about making an impact and supporting a startup is not just about growing business its about stimulating it Phenomenal Growth and at the hands of the day its also about changing political environment because. One can argue that this country will never change unless there is an off people who can take responsibility for themselves for other people for the country and challenge the admittedly paternalistic even authoritarian system and make sure that the heat is on the authorities to treat down with respect grew other thing its a sure. You can have your own money and. Im doing what im doing i believe that the Financial Success of the fund will have a positive impact on the world because i think it will demonstrate that having a more open society is better that the immigrants are actually likely to create jobs create the wealth build the economy right i think. There are some global returns. Towards nationalism in the u. K. And brazil right now to some degree here at the borders more and more here and i think the world will be better when its moral put out or for whom because i mean we can see i mean its not populism when you look at the. You know who benefit globalization the most its a very very thin layer of people in the situation of the people who are disadvantaged by the call it is a problem and i mean there are some political tensions and dressing up globally as well. To bring everybody along but long term i do believe that the only good the world is an interconnected world i think were going to be more connected like thats an obvious long term trend or theyre not going to get more isolated from each other were going to get. I think it could go both ways because i mean if you i mean even the big coronavirus suddenly everybody used to be argued that you know last produce good drugs good medicine wherever you have the best production chains but now any countries not only the United States but many countries in europe including russia i mean russia was among the 1st to start to saying well we better have some production facilities in here in case of disaster strikes at the end of the day yes they are the world is more interconnected but it also makes sense to preserve certain Production Capacity in your own backyard. Perhaps in some cases but i do think in the long term theyre going to live better off in a more open more accountable world now and i think countries will eventually lose their usefulness and i think its not that. Its not the final organization of humanity i think its its a layer write this book 1st cities then they had me in a sense and thats good right i think in order to solve some of the biggest problems that i think are going to have to have more and more cooperation the global level one day might have a Global Parliament i dont know. I think youre more idealistic down some of the founders of the soviet union to be honest with you whats the organisational principles to hold the countries together because i mean one of the reasons why marxism fail is because they did not take into account the irrationality of human nature and do you are now you know i seem to be so optimistic about the void humans are capable of in terms of cooperation arent you discounting the darkest side to humanity. Just fundamentally enough the most and im not making in the short term for their actions i think they sense arent going away tomorrow and probably will never entirely go away but i do think that the concept of human rights for instance is a universal one right i think equality of opportunity is an appealing idea universally and there are others but i think people today are about the planet as a whole and i believe in this kind of positive change in the long term i actually want to ask you about that because a few years back you founded the trouble maker a word of warning in 2015 that went to my desk the member of the group who spent 4 months in a russian prison for dancing in a balaclava in a church. The russians were defined as hooliganism by really just hatred why did you feel she she deserved the award. Actually wasnt correct in the church. And the reason and then the word was something i was doing for fun of the time. The reason you give it to her was the letter that she wrote while in prison. I think she went on a Hunger Strike i want to say she was complaining about conditions that are brave the troublemaking in this case was as a prisoner making trouble with the authorities of the prison the way it was presented in her own you know with a young lady in prison and a lot of the if you look at the impact that Hunger Strike had on trees and conditions and in russia its close to nil i mean its 0 block and many other activists in russia perhaps last slushie who go to prisons on a regular basis who provide legal aid mate who work with the authorities to compile damn abide by the law dont you think that by celebrating somebody like the dash they you are actually celebrating begin make activism rather than painstaking impactful but also a very boring change its possible its possible look i didnt have a will photo. From the a lot of research on the formal thing it was 10000. 00 prize once a year and i since you know i did it for a few years but. The idea the purpose of what i had was to change the specific issue like prison conditions in russia although they said no it the idea was just to send the signal out there and to other people who will take some risk make some trouble for the sake of something positive thats all thats all it was i mean the 1st of us know that a lot of these people are not this kind of troublemaker i was just you know someone inspired by people who think the rest i want to give a prize you understand that this is i mean tell me if you disagree with me this is a very american thing the american tradition of having these very noisy activism workers for a country like russia a change is very difficult it takes a lot of perseverance but it takes much less crowded i mean people who are really changing this country theyre receiving no attention whatsoever and yet they. Greatest thing i mean given how much criticism and. Some connection that you and your house with this country 71 to see as a more prosperous more democratic more transparent. Each way we do things about our what is a better role model for the Younger Generation somebody who dances in a church in a balaclava and goes in a Hunger Strike in prison for a couple of days or somebody who you know gives 2 years of his or her life to you you know im noticeable but meaningful change you know i know i asked myself the question i wasnt concerned with how to find the right role model for chance in russia per se yes i would love to see positive change in russia and elsewhere but you know like i said the purpose of the award was just to do the small philanthropic going to once a year. To somebody who has taken some risk to try to make the world a better place in some way and you know if you believe that i took the wrong. Area of offending and its a reasonable to me if not then there are the best possible i know it wasnt the best possible to have a limited time at the project thank you for spending some time and that is i appreciate that. Thank you and thank you for watching i hope to see you again next sunday on the part of. Join me every thursday on the alex salmond show and ill be speaking to guests of the world of politics or business im showbusiness ill see that. Thousands of american men and women choose to serve in the countrys military and the decision little sheltered lives every thing came to a complete. The day that i was raped. You know told a shot ill kill me and i see how it destroyed my life any screamed at me and he made me come in and he grabbed my arm and he write me with his birthing curia if you take into account that women dont report because of the extreme retaliation and its probably somewhere near about half a 1000000 women have now been sexually assaulted in the us military rape is a very very traumatizing thing to have happen but ive never seen trauma like ive seen from women who are veterans who have suffered military sexual trauma reporting rape is more likely to get the victim punished dont be offended and almost 10 year career or chose very invested in and i gave that up to report a sex offender who was not even put to justice or put on the registry this is simply an issue of tower and violence male sexual predators for the large part of target whoever is there to prey upon whether thats a man or one. Of. The stories that shape the way here or not a creek or the police are trying to decide to see whos at the front so they would to keep a ride with the refugees the windows r. T. Spent a night on the front line in the scramble to reach the. Contriving out towards the front say the hope of getting a sense awful what was going to happen to us we were trying to fill we stopped this my camera but being schoolteacher my looks like a mystery person out Joe Biden Bernie sanders now of the race for the u. S. Democratic president ial nomination following the all important so you could choose to put the amount of dawsons bidens now had from those that have dropped out there was a growing