United airlines, jeff smisek. Airlines are very complex businesses, first of all,. And they have very different fleets. They have different facilities. Rose different routes. Different technologies, different routes, different cultures that you bring together as well. And in many cases, underinvestment that you have to do catchup investment on just to bring to the state where you need it to be. There are also theyre also heavily unionized, so youre dealing with labor unions and individual contracts and joint contracts. And change is hard. Even when change is good, people resist change because its difficult to go through change. Rose kutcher and smiesec next. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. Rose Ashton Kutcher is here. He is, as you know, an actor, but you might not know that he is an investor. In 2011 he created a Venture Capital fund called a grade investments. A grade has invested in spottify, uber, and four square. Now he combines his passion for acting with his love of technology by playing an icon of innovation, steve jobs. Here is the trailer for jobs. Steve. It takes guts to drop out like did you. Higher education comes at the expense of experience. What are you working on . A computer terminal that hooks up to the tv for the display. Uh, steve . Whoa. These are stateoftheart. Nobody is making anything like this. All right, okay welcome to Apple Computer. Is this everything . Its a startup. I think we should start with around 90 grand. Could you repeat that . If youll have me aboard. Apple went public this morning. Since i was 14. Cant stop me we gotta make the small things unforgettable. Typeface isnt the pressing issue. Get out. Hes trying to start a were with i. B. M. Steves been doing the impossible ever since he was in the garage. Im trying to build apple, and theyre taking it away from me . If you keep heading down this path, i will not protect you. Its a blatant ripoff. Im going to sue you for every cent. Are you your own worst enemy. The board is unanimous. Steve will no longer be involved in this company. 10 years after steve jobs departure, the future of Apple Computer is in jeopardy. In life you only get to do so many things. Were going to make apple cool again. Heres to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do. If were going to do this thing, we need to come up with a name. Apple. That is so much better than laser beam computers. Rose im pleased to have Ashton Kutcher at this table for the first time. Welcome. Great to have you here. Thanks for having me. Rose we share a passion for film and technol at very different levels. Steve jobs, just a sense of who the the essence of this man who has been on this show as well, but youve said there are few people when they walk into the room, the room is different than the way it was when steve jobs walked into the room. I never had the good fortune of meeting him. But i think theres theres this this iconic understanding of who steve jobs was, and which is really who he became. This you know, the guy with the black turtleneck and the pant and the shoes and shaved head and round glasses. And it was always this sort of mirror image that never changed, and there was this constant consistency and a standard with which he brought when i was studying the character, i found a lot of specific patterns, or things that he said again and again and again, and even interviews where he talked about that his real job was to to constantly reinforce the vision of his company. And, you know, its interesting, there arent very many people in the world that you see that you go, that guy is consistently and constantly iconically that. And i think one of the things he was doing with his whole appearance was allowing the products that he created to be the feature of any presentation that he gave, so you knew steve was going to look like and be steve. But the products would change, and to keep the focus on the product, he created a consistency in and of himself, but, wow, i mean, talk about somebody who understood engineering and understood art at the same time. You know, i i ive said it out loud. Id say it again eye really think hes like the Leonardo Da Vinci of our day, somebody really had an appreciation for aesthetic design and beaut and art but also understood how to make things work and made things that made peoples lives better. Rose he also seemed, therefore, to have some sense of what life was about. Yeah, i think you know, you see a guy like that and for a lot of people eye mean, i admire him as a hero, really, and people like that in our minds they start to become larger than life. People that experience that great level of success,un you know, the Michael Jordans of the world, the steve jobs of the world, the people who go to this rs of other stratosphere of brilliance. And i think that steve had a humanity to him that was really complicated but really interesting. And i think it was grounded in his scars. As a kid he was given up for adoption, and i think there was a sense of rejection that he felt when he realized that. And history repeated itself and he was again rejected by the very company he created. And i think that there was a little bit of a mistrust of people that came from that. And so i think the way that he received love and received trust was by creating products that people loved, by which people he felt that people loved him. If they loved his products, it meant that they loved him, and it was this way to create relationships with people almost at a fingertips distance. Rose there was also this demanding perfectionism that he had. Yeah. Rose even to the point sometimes of being rude and difficult. Yeah. Well you know, i i think it was his flaw, but it was also his gift. Which is oftentimes the case. Un, if you if you imagine this this creation and the demand and the care for the consumer that they have to love this thing. Because if they love this thing, it means they love me. And if you if you imagine that, the demand for perfection becomes really personal, and i think that people that didnt care as much as steve which was most people sometimes got the gauntlet of that, and they caught they caught brunt end of a brutally honest guy that was brutally honest because he actually cared so much for the end creation. And if you were a person that was able to not take it personally, he made you better. Its kind of like one of these football coaches that you see thats really tough on their players but they make them better. Rose this is a clip from jobs. This is where steve is stalked to steve wozniak, played by josh gad. No more decks, no more mainframes. That changes everything. Thats pretty cool, i guess. Hi, charlene. Its profound. How come you didnt tell me about this before. I was working on it for my own exactly, exactly. For your own. For you. Its what you wanted, its what your gut, your instinct wanted. Burr brain wanted something that didnt exist and you just willed it into existence. What do you call the system . The operating system. The operating system. Thats what i call it. Its a realtime display of current operations. You can see what youre working on while youre working on it. This is freedom. This is freedom, to create and to do and to build and and as artists, as individuals. Look youre overreacting. Even if you were developing this for freaks like us and i doubt you are nobody wants wants toa computer, nobody. How does somebody know what they want if theyve never even seen it. Rose how are you going to handle in the film the last years of the life. So the film actually goes through the launch of the ipod. Rose right. And, you know, when you do a movie you have to decide what you put in and what you leave out. Rose exactly. Most people once the ipod hit, there was a vertical integration of hardware and software that apple had that just started this whole new growth cycle for the company. And i think that thats the part that people it is pretty fresh in peoples minds and people kind of remember it. But the story we thought was interesting was this tale of a guy who had a friend, an idea, and a garage. And took that and built what is what was the most profitable country in the history of mankind. And the struggle along the way in an effort to do that. Rose and for a while, the largest market cap of any company in the world. Unbelievable. Rose 600 billion. Its stunning. Well and he didnt get to see that. The one well, i think he knew it. Rose he que it was coming . I think he had an awareness of it but i think the thing that made apple magic was an ethic that i think steve had which was this ultimate compassion for the consumer, and he focused the energy of the company on innovating the consumer experience, innovating the product, and in a way, he wasnt beholden to the shareholders. He wasnt trying to create margins. He wasnt reenergying his company to make it look better on the books. Im sure there was some of that going on, but his focus was actually creating extraordinary consumer experiences, extraordinary products that in turn created values for the shareholders, and i think a lot of people lose sight of that in a world where margins and revenue and profit becomes a driving force of wall street. Rose quarterly earn, rather than longterm strategies. Yes. Rose take a look at this. This is steve jobs on this show not talking about apple,ile brought it up but talking about his film which he had just gone into that business after leaving apple. Here it is. How do you think of yourself . Um after apple, how do you think of yourself . The things that ive done in my life, i think the things we do at pixar, these are team sports. Theyre not something one person does. You have to have an Extraordinary Team because these are these are youre trying to climb a mountain way whole party of people, a lot of stuff to bring up the mountain. One person cant do it. Rose john lasush was sitting at the table, and he told me about it later. I talked a lot about apple but he wanted to talk about pixar and the movies. He he walked out the door and john lassure told the story which i had forgotten because he remembered it so vividly. Steve came back and and he looked at me and i was standing up and saying gb he said, i know what to do about apple. I can fix it. And he did. Yeah. Well, at the same time he was running pixar, he was runed next. , and next had built this machine that wasnt really performing in the marketplace, but he had he had a a key component of software in open step, which actually, you know, is this Software Layer that allows other Software Developers to build on top of it and you can build these stacks which actually enables moores law. And he also when he came back into apple he had the great advantage of the internet, and ting you know, when he went into park and went into exreer ox, and gownd the gui, and the graphic interface and the mouse, and the one thing he had at the same time and didnt see it was networked computers. When he started to build next, he started to recognize that and realize that any knew thats where things were going. I think the combination of open step and that the internet was starting to have a surge enabled him to turn it on. A lot of it is skill. A lot of it is diligence. A lot of it is brilliance and hard work and a lot of it is timing. Rose absolutely. Life is timing often, as you know in your own life. Where did this interest in Technology Come from . I was a biochemical engineering major in college. And in 1997, i went to the University Iowa school of engineering, and learned how to program in fortran, which is a very antiquated code at the time. And i sort of i appreciated it, and id sort of understand the mechanics of engineering, but i had one particular teacher and i dont recall his name he said, scientists discover problems and engineers solve them. And i didnt really become fascinated with technology so much as i became fascinated with solving problems, and the process of that. And sort of a little bit of the ego that goes with it. And as i you know, as the internet started to really have robust capacity, i had a Production Company at the time, and started focusing a lot of energy towards producing content for the digital platform, and started to see how software was just disintermediating and disrupting businesses everywhere, and at the time, it was really disrupting businesses that traded virtual goods, whether it was video or music or payments. And now were watching that Software Actually move into businesses that are actually disrupting hard goods and the transaction of hard goods. And i think its just watching it happen got more and more exciting. I made an investment in skype when they exitd ebay. And then it subsequently sold to microsoft and started making small ainge will investments in companies and i got swept up in the spirit of entrepreneuring. Rose exactly. Youre not just an investor. You really have gotten involved. You know the players, and youve gotten involved in a significant way. I love sitting with entrepreneurs who have a vision of the world that is greater than the one that were living in. And i love this the spirit of it, and the fact that they dont just look at the way things are and go, well, theyre going to be like that so we need to work around it. They actually go right into it and they punch regulation in the mouth sometimes, and they punch bloated Business Models in the mouth, and they explook go, wait, wait, we have this new tool that can actually make this process more efficient. And i think its exciting, and in the same way that there was an industrial revolution, i think theres a technology and Software Revolution happening right now, and i also think its going to be a very profitable endeavor. Rose does your celebrity and your media career serve your entrepreneurial ideas . Yeah, i think it does. I have a platform to help some of these Small Companies promote their platform. I think it helped me get in the door and have a conversation with people. Otherwise, theyd say, wait a second, werent you that dumb guy on the 70s show. But at least theyll pick up the phone when i call. And i think the biggest thing i think acting really serves it. As an actor you look at the characters that you play and you try to break them down and you try to understand what motivates them and what they want and why they want what they want and what their tactics are to execute on what they want. We mostly focus on Computer Software products. And when you look at a Consumer Software product, the user interface and the User Experience is really similar of breaking that down, similar to breaking down a character you play because youre trying to understand what the consumer wants and youre trying to intuitively serve them into a process that actually executes your vision. And so i end up working a lot with entrepreneurs helping develop their user interface and the way that people are relating to their products and how the product is actually serving the interest of the consumer. Rose and how do you go about it, through angel investing or through what . Yeah, so i have a fund called a grade with my partner, and with some great limited partners that are a little bit more tech savvy than we are, that help us out along the way. But we go in, we find a company that we think is interesting. We find an entrepreneur that we think has moxie and the perseverance to actually solve their problem and the capacity to do so. And then we try to find problems that have great density. So we look for companies a lot of times really what appear to be really Boring Companies that have been working the same way for a long time, and try to find inefficiencies and find ways that people are Hacking Solutions to problems. And then we invest in those companies and we really try trinot to invest in any company that we dont feel that by lending our services and our time and our thoughts and our contacts that we cant actually benefit if you dont add value. If we dont add material value we dont do it. A lot of times these companies are growing so fast and are in great demand if youre not an investor who adds to the company they dont want your money. Rose you obviously enjoy doing both things, do you not . You enjoy acting on one hand and the entrepreneurial on the other. They serve each other well. Rose and i got to play steve jobs. I got to study one of the great entrepreneurs of all time which taught me a lot and i think i can utilize things they learned to help the entrepreneurs. Rose what is it you learned about twitter than most people did . I understood the value of media transparency. And theres as a person that has gained enough success and i found fame to be somewhat challenging, and i saw a lot of Media Outlets that would report on what i was doing and nation inaccurately. Rose so you thought youd tell your own story. At first i thought that was the interesting thing. Ill tell people what im doing and then theyll know the truth and that way its a pretty good defense mechanism and then i started to see the capacity to promote things through the platform. And i said, wait, this is a true broadcast device but its better than a broadcast device because most broadcasting devices are oneway systems with no feedback loop. But because twitter had an instant feedback loop i could iterate my process and my broadcast really, really quickly, and then i started to see the bigger vision. I met jack dorsey the chairman of twitter. We talked about what he was trying to build and what his vision was, and i took a trip to russia with the state Department Russia had an interest in building a Silicon Valley of that, and they wanted to figure out how to build an ecosystem around it, and i had an opportunity jack was on the trip, and we started to use it we were talking some college kids, and they all had their phones out in the beginning. It was a governmentsponsored thing. And the people were like, you need to shut your phones off, telling the kids they needed to shut their phones off. And i realized all the questions they were asking were staged questions by government officials and i stood up in the panel and said turn your phones back on. I want you to record everything that we say and tweet out eve