Civil war. The investor and founder. Thank you for joining us. How do you feel about the word russian mark about the word . I love the word. At least people will remember you. You were born in sri lanka. The civil war broke out between the hinfdu minority. Both of my parents are buddhist. My dad was in the civil service. He was able to insinuate himself to get posted to the Canadian High Commission the sri lankan High Commission in canada. We emigrated. Emily had the war started . The war started. My dad talked about being a communist organizer. There is pushed back from the government. There was a lot of pressure on my father to the point where we could not reasonably return without his or our life being in jeopardy. We filed for Refugee Status and the government gave us Refugee Status. We stayed and life as we knew it stopped and we had to start all over again. Fast forward and i am here with you. It is not supposed to turn out this way. It did. Emily did you go from being fairly well off until . I showed it to my parents and they complained. I took a job in finance and i remembered what it is like. We sought the joint tax return and the most amount of money they had made was 32,000. They lived above the laundromat and grind it it out to get us into good schools and give us music lessons. How do you do that . My mom was a housekeeper and trying to better her english. She was able to become a nurse aide ands and my dad struggled to find a job. The best we could do was escape a difficult situation and try to set a good example. Hopefully, they will learn and do the same thing. The reality is that Silicon Valley trades on two things. One is lore, and the other success. In terms of lore, ive paid my dues. I have worked in three of the top five internet businesses created. I did not necessarily found them, but i was at the foot of all three of them. I just dont care what anybody thinks anymore. I have no troubles. Im relatively healthy, knock on wood. Financially secure. So why arent i saying what i believe . My dad had nothing. He stood up and he was able to say this war shouldnt happen. What is the myth of chamath palihapitiya, and what is the reality . The reality is i deeply insecure person who got extraordinarily lucky. More lucky than i deserve. Who is trying very hard to leave a reasonably positive legacy so that i feel like i did the right thing. I feel like there are way more people that are way more talented than me. I think the myth is that im aloof, arrogant. I say whats on my mind. I guess at some level maybe all of those things are true, but the me that i know is just the same guy that feels like my parents gave up a lot. I feel like i should be really doing something important. Were you like this when you were young . Has this evolved . Have you become more courageous . Alcohol is a great truth serum. Money is a great amplifier of courage. What else do i have to be afraid of at this point . I have an obligation to do what i need to do, to help people and build some things that are interesting. And frankly, to make more money, because if i can make more money, i will have a better sense of what i have to do. I spent the last two months in a long, drawnout battle to figure out if we could launch a 100 Breast Cancer test for the united states. I wanted to subsidize the whole thing. It would have cost about 150 million to do this right. So you are saying with 150 million, you could create a 100 Breast Cancer test . All of those things are possible because money amplifies your ability to do this. So as a kid when you did not have money. All i wanted to do was be rich. I just obssessed about the forbes list. I thought it was the most important thing in the world. No context other than i hated to be poor. It just sucks to be poor. We did not have a car until i was 17 years old. That is what created this insecurity, i think. For two or three years, i would explicitly lie about where i lived. I think it was because i was ashamed. Theres a codename for you charlie foxtrot, cf. Which also stands for crazy effer. Are you a crazy effer . Yeah. How did you end up in Silicon Valley . It was very accidental. When i graduated, i took a job in finance to relieve the immediate pressure i felt on my family. Very quickly, i thought it was boring. My girlfriend at the time who is now my wife. Had moved down here. That is how i came down here. I applied for a bunch of jobs. Thats how it all started. How did you get the job at facebook . I had known sean parker. He was president at that time . He said that he was going to be in washington, d. C. Where aols offices were. Ill be with mark zuckerberg, do you want to meet . We had a meeting and i thought this was super interesting. These guys are onto something. I did a deal with facebook. We integrated aim into the pages of facebook. In that process, thats how i got to meet them. What was he like at that time . High potential, but still very young. Did you know . Did you have a feeling that it emily did you know . Did you have a feeling that it was going to be huge . Emily i dont think we knew until about mid2008. Then we could say to ourselves there is a formula here. By formula i mean that we understood the psychology of why people wanted to be a part of this. Once you understand the psychology, that is just a matter of building features and software that bring that psychology to life. People loved this emotional and responsiveness that facebook could give them. The formula was to figure out how these early behaviors could then drive the ability for you and me to pull other people, and because you wanted more of that psychological feedback. Emily you are legendary when it comes to growing facebook. What did you do . How did you do it . How much of it was you and how much of it was facebook . Chamath 99. 95 was facebook and 50 basis points to me. In my job, i inherited an unbelievable leader who had an unbelievable vision. And i was lucky to have a group of people who wanted to tolerate me for 45 years. Emily i know for a fact that startups today are consciously looking for their chamath. I know one startup that has a codename for you, charlie foxtrot. It also stands for crazy effer. Are you a crazy effer . Chamath yeah. Emily tell me something you did that was crazy. Chamath the typical thing that people would do, you go and talk to google, yahoo , ebay and ask how they expanded internationally. It was always the same answer. We take some really white mba and they go out on a package. I was like, eff that. So, we went and hired in brazil, only brazilians. Prerequisite, they should not be able to speak english very well. We would do this and all these markets. For example, in russia, i thought about it. We didnt do this. I thought about it. You can buy a list from a russian Hacking Group with every single persons name in russia. And for a while, i was like wow. We should just buy this list of every single persons name and we will run google ads so that when they search for themselves, they see links to a fake profile. We didnt do it. I want to be clear. The point is you have to be able to figure out where is that line. Emily what are facebooks Biggest Challenges today . Chamath it is the challenge of any successful company. The internal inability to disrupt yourself. Think about what happens in a company, not just facebook google, apple. Extreme wealth creation. All of the distraction that creates. Extreme amounts of incremental focus, attention, press, adulation. The acolytes come out of every single part of the woodwork. Oh, my god you are it takes a really, really special person to not be able to be affected by that. Emily google and facebook are trying to do the same thing. Who wins . Chamath i think they both win but in different ways. I think what happens is that google wins with respect to the entry point. They own the front door to the internet, and they own the front door to the 90 of the mobile apps. Facebook owns the experience once youre there. Emily speaking of another big company that youre not fond of you once wrote that tim cook has created a milquetoast, saynothing, uninspiring, margin tweaking image for himself. You also said that apple should bypass tesla and make elon musk the ceo. Do you still believe that . Chamath yes. Emily why . Chamath i think that he is very good at what he does. I think he is probably an exceptional operationally minded ceo. The question is can that person inspire the type of creative types to build the next lily pad . My intuition on this is no. You go to a company like apple death marching to a trillion dollar market cap. Think of the amount of wealth that is created in a place like that. Think of what that means for that individual engineer who has the next great idea. If youre trying to build the next great thing, where the person at the top is not necessarily optimized for thinking that way and being as maybe as disruptive, and rather wants to create a holistic communal work environment, im not sure greatness comes from those boundary conditions. Emily can apple only get there if they have a new leader . Chamath its a multitrillion dollar category. Tesla is a good one to me. It is something we would all love, an apple experience in our car. There are many other areas, home automation. If apple built your house, they would sell more houses than anybody in the world. Emily how much longevity do they have . Chamath they have a lot of longevity. If there was any way we could wind back the clock, thats the one thing i wish would have never happened. Emily what is the social Capital Partnership . Where did the idea come from . Chamath i started it with a larger ambition. Hopefully, a much more Important Mission than just investing and generating returns. Basically what i saw in 2011 when i was leaving facebook, i saw three massive trends. The first was that everything was moving to mobile. The second was there was a massive amount of regulatory change that we had never seen before. The third was that things were getting democratized at a rapid pace. If i took those three trends and apply them to markets, where i thought they would be most disruptive, what would they be . Those three trends in my opinion will disproportionately affect health care, education, and financial services. And i was like, wait a minute. Those things matter. Then i was thinking this is it. We need to create a platform that over the next 2030 years can rewrite the rules of those things in a way where we can affect outcomes for people. And i am like, that is my lifes mission. That will feel like i did everything i was supposed to. Emily you do have social in the name. Chamath social comes from society. I want to help society. I want to build things for people. Emily some people would say you have had big exits from companies. Are those worldchanging companies . Chamath when we find people that are doing their own version of things that will create value, we get behind those guys in a big way. And so things like tinder allow me to do Breast Cancer c. O. P. D. Chronic heart failure, starting a university for kids. Emily how is social capital different from andreasen horvitz . Chamath phase one, phase two. Phase one is the same thing. And i think phase two is completely different. Emily what phase are you in . You are giving them the chamath secrets . Chamath it is hard to find these people. We give it to them in a box. Emily chamath in a box. Chamath as we become successful, our goal is to have a pool of capital to reframe these things. And that is the end game. Emily a few years ago, you called out airbnbs founders for taking money off the table and not giving employees an opportunity. What did you take away from that . Chamath i took a lot away from that. If there is any way where we could wind back the clock, thats the one thing i wish would never have happened. It wasnt fair to the team. It wasnt fair to me. I said what i said. I wanted them to hear what i said. Thats all i wanted. Emily do you wish you didnt say it . Chamath no, but i wish we did not have to deal with it in a public way. Emily more bridges burned there . Chamath no bridges burned. But its like well, probably yes. Its a bad thing all the way around. Emily this is my question. You had a problem with how they were taking money off the table. Is Silicon Valley ethical . Is Silicon Valley loyal . Chamath i think its deeply moral and ethically gray. Its not 100 years old. Emily what do you mean by gray . Chamath there arent defined ways of doing things. We are inventing things every day. And in things that are new people are going to try a bunch of different things. Some things will work, some things wont. No one is acting criminal. They are deeply moral. People care to do the right thing. Emily the Tech Community is being blamed for the rising inequality. You dont require your companies to donate 1 of their time equity to philanthropy. Chamath no. My companies are forprofit companies. Thats not their job. Their job is to educate people. Emily you are personally invested in this fund . Chamath i am personally the largest investor. Emily how much . Chamath 120 million. And counting. Emily do you think you can beat the returns of other vc funds . Or the absolute distributions . Chamath we are obliterating the market. 30 points of alpha above the nasdaq. The private side are roughly the same. I mean it is really good. We are involved in 10 billion 15 billion Unicorn Companies in meaningful ways. Emily i want to know about your poker hobby. You dont just enjoy poker, you are in the world series of poker. Chamath it would be great if one day we were able to film this. There are 20 extremely successful businessmen. We play regularly in an unbelievable game in los angeles. Since then, i started my own version of that here. Emily who is the best poker player in Silicon Valley . Chamath if i had to name, i could name a couple who i think are exceptional. David sachs, dave goldberg, my wife. She is a really, really good player. I have been on a twoyear downturn. Ive lost for two straight years. Emily you and your wife have been together before you were very, very rich. How do you manage that transition . You have kids. Chamath weve made a decision that we are giving it all away. Emily how do you want to be remembered . Chamath i want to be a person who people say generally did what he felt was the right thing, lived a life that was morally true to his beliefs, and in a small way, paid off the debt to his parents. Emily chamath palihapitiya, thank you for joining us today on studio 1. 0. Emily he has built some of the worlds biggest pop stars. It all started when Scooter Braun stumbled across a Youtube Video of a kid in a canadian talent show. That kid was Justin Bieber, and braun is a manager who catapulted him to superstardom. As a Music Industry goes through traumatic transformation, braun is reinventing his own empire, producing movies and tv shows, investing in Tech Companies like for more stars he can make along the way. Joining me today on studio 1. 0 Scooter Braun. Thank you for joining us. You were raised in connecticut. Scooter that is true. Emily the son of an orthodontist and dentist. Did you think you would be dominating pop music . Scooter im just having a good time. When i was younger i thought like every kid that i wanted to play in the nba and nobody told me i would grow up to be 511 and not have the hops i thought i was going to have. One thing led to another and read a couple books that inspired me, and here i am. Emily what music was Scooter Braun listening to when he was 13 years old . Scooter 13, it was my bar mitzvah circuit. I like to move it move it. I was a big Michael Jackson fan, and i loved boys to men. I also love to biggie. I was the first kid in the suburbs to discover biggie because i played in a basketball camp and my friends were from harlem and they were like, you dont know notorious . I went back to the suburbs with this mix tape and when it hit the radio four months later i felt like i owned it. It showed me for the first time the idea of self discovery of music. Emily can you sing . Scooter until about puberty. My first job was dancing and singing on weekends at bar mitzvahs. Emily one of the values of your companies have a superhuman work ethic. Scooter originally came from guilt. My grandparents are holocaust survivors, and my parents did not grow up with a lot. Knowing i was a first generation to have a little bit of something, i wanted to work harder than everyone to make my own mark in the world. Emily you went to college, but school did not really suit you it seems. Scooter i went to Emory University in atlanta. I found myself wanting to do business, wanting to not sit in class. I started selling fake ids for about two months, then i realized i was going to get caught. I was really good, though. Emily you became a Party Promoter when you were 19. Scooter i was throwing all the 21 and up parties. I dropped out of school because there was a guidance counselor who told me the story of Robert Woodruff, the guy of cocacola the largest endowment of amory. I thought, this is great. At the end he looks at me and says, do you know why i told you the story . Robert woodruff is one in a billion. The chance of you being a Robert Woodruff is nearly impossible. You need to stay in school and stop with this pipe dream. I said, thank you very much. He goes, we are cool . I said, yes, im dropping out of college. Emily do you think you proved him wrong . Scooter i dont think he cares. Emily do you care . Scooter i want my kid to go to college someday. I dont like the fact that he told me i should not believe in my dream. While we are young, this is when we should take chances. Emily what was your dream . Scooter i had just read a book about one of the founders of dreamworks, david geffen. The truth is i wanted to be an entrepreneur. Emily you became quite a celebrity on the atlanta hiphop scene, ludicrous and celo were going to your parties. You threw a party for britney spears. Scooter i was a good Party Promoter. They were coming to my parties. Emily what was your first big break . Scooter Jermaine Dupree given me an opportunity to work at so so def. It could have been steve rivkin, he was the first person to give me a record deal for asher roth when no one else would. Emily in the early days, how were you looking for talent . Scooter i signed a couple acts in atlanta where i had to learn the hard way. I failed. Emily there are myths about the greatest founders, the greatest entrepreneurs that are so often boiled down into legend. What is the myth of Scooter Braun and what is the reality . Scooter the myth is that i plugged them into this machine. Every single day it is hard work. I think there was a point in my career where i did such a good job where i went from being ok scooter young entrepreneur to being Justin Biebers manager because i did a really good job and so did he. The myth is people think success is this beautiful, glamorous fun thing. I get paid for the bull. I do Everything Else for free. The reality of me is i am a normal, flawed person who just is too stupid to know that i shouldnt be doing something. Emily Justin Bieber. Ariana grande. What is your secret . Scooter the first time i saw justin, i knew i could get him to be a worldwide pop star. Emily Justin Bieber, sigh, and ariana grande. What is your secret . Scooter sometimes its a gut thing. The gangnam style was a phenomenon here. He could do it live so incredibly well. Justin is one of the most talented people ive ever met. He has so much pressure on him growing up in front of the entire world. I think hes handling it fairly well and he will learn from his mistakes and become a better man for it. Arianna has one of the best voices ive heard in my entire life. Emily how are you different from other managers . Scooter my style is family. Personally i think that if you care about someone, you deeply care about them, you will stay of the extra hours to do something for them and vice versa. I have been called stupid by plenty of my mentors because they say, you are too close, but i think its better to feel the than not feel. Emily how do you make sure some of these artists are not just a flash in the pan . Scooter i promise to every artist i work with you know what is. Emily how much longevity does Arianna Grande have . Scooter there are very few people on the planet who can sing like that. Its really on her. Shes 21 years old now. As long a she keeps making the right music, it can last forever. Emily Carly Rae Jepsen when i see call me maybe, i cannot stop singing. Scooter i have already proven she is not a onehit wonder. Emily twohit wonder. Scooter ive heard the song that is coming next year, and she has more. Emily you encouraged bieber to parity with his friend stood to do for see how i would take off . Scooter yes. The first time i saw justin i knew i could get him to be a worldwide known pop star. I knew it in my gut. Its like this gut thing, like falling in love. With call me maybe, it was one of those moments. With gangnam style, i heard macarena and informer combined. Kids who dont speak korean are going to try to learn. I called scott nancy, who sent it to me. I said, find this guy. 60,000 views. Find him. Emily you found him at 60,000 views . Scooter yes. Emily now over 2 billion. Scooter everyone said the same thing, theres no way youre going to be able to make this record work. Its a korean pop song with a heavyset korean guy dancing all over the place. Emily what happened when you saw the video of Justin Bieber . Scooter i saw a kid who had six or eight videos at the time. He was singing at a contest at church. I was consulting for akon on a different artist. I was watching Youtube Videos of that artist, telling them what i thought of it. They were singing Aretha Franklin respect. In a related video, there was a kid in the distance. When i clicked on it, it was a 12yearold kid. Emily so it was an accident. Scooter i watched another video, and i saw him singing neos so sick. Emily you are the first belieber. You flew he and his mom down to live next door to you. Scooter they were canadian, so i definitely brought them over illegally. Emily you pay their bills. Scooter yeah, i got a tutor and did the whole thing. They became like my family. It has been a rough year for me, watching him. I really care about him, you dont want to see anyone going through stuff. To see him coming out on the other end of that right now, and knowing the plans for next year, and the fact that hes a kid ive had to learn its ok to let him step on that rake i let it hit him in the face. He has learned from those mistakes, and he will be a better man for it. He gets it. He said, i went shopping in france and all i wanted to do was walk down the street and just shop. There were 14 cameras around me. And 200 people started surrounding. I came to terms with the fact that, dont get angry, this is your life, and im ok with it and there are blessings that come with this. He is becoming a young man and im proud of him. Emily what kind of advice are you giving him . Scooter to the last year, i would argue like hell with him. Now its gone to the point where its just a young man going through it and dealing with it. Emily you see so many kids who can spiral out of control in hollywood. How do you manage that, as their manager . Scooter its like parenting. Ive got the best advice not from other managers, but from my parents. When people go through stuff youve got to be a rock and youve got to be solid and you cant be contradicting yourself. You cant be a yes man. Justin got discovered because people fell in love with the fact that he was raw the street playing his guitar and singing his butt off. Emily technology is changing social media is moving so fast. People can listen to music in so many different ways for free. How do you encourage your artists to change, to innovate in their own careers, to manage that transition . Scooter i dont think you can fight the times. You have to come to terms with the fact that album sales will never be what they were. Consuming of music is at an alltime high. The sharing of music worldwide has never been this big before. You just have to change your perspective. If they listen to something on spotify or discover something on pandora or they see a youtube clip of an artist singing and six months later that artist has their first record because they have been watching on fine or instagram or any of these platforms i tell my artists make music that you love. Be a great performer. Do your job and be authentic about it. The consumer will dictate what they want. My job is to make sure that for my artists, as many people turn their head and give them a shot as possible. I tell them, have fun, let me worry about it. Emily what are you worrying about . Scooter are we innovating, are we disrupting, and are we still waking up in the morning every day and saying, what can we do today . Emily how do you disrupt on the backend . Scooter im using the new mediums being presented. Technology is creating new highways for us every single day. Im hiring young, smart, innovative people and saying teach me. It is thinking outside the box and would people say, thats crazy, saying good. Emily you have been compared to Lieutenant Colonel parker, Elvis Presleys manager, who was criticized for being too controlling. Scooter its flattering to hear your name mentioned with legends and elvis anything. One, i never am going to take the commission that guy took. Thats the first thing. Emily how do you structure the business relationships . Scooter fair, industry standard, and i try to overdeliver. I try to do as many jobs as i can so the artist does not have to go to many places and there arent too many chefs in the kitchen. That might be where the criticism comes from, hes trying to control too much, but what im really trying to do is get as many jobs done in one place so its a onestop shop. Emily how can artists make money in unexpected ways if not by selling albums, if not by touring . Scooter jimmy iveene been just showed it with beats. He built this empire. Emily what you think of apple buying beats . Scooter i will never bet against jimmy ivy. I dont know their exact plans. I have met dre a couple of times, but i know jimmy. You dont bet against a guy like jimmy. Emily i know you are an investor in spotify. Theres pandora. Can they continue to dominate music . Scooter theres enough room for all these platforms because people want to consume constantly in different ways and there is so much content coming. Emily you have gone into tech investing, invested in spotify huber, pinterest. How are you getting into these deals, what attracted you to technology . Scooter when i was in College Facebook launched. I actually emailed the creator of facebook, which was on the contact page, one profile for picture, and responded with eduardo severin, thank you for reaching out. I went backandforth with him over four months saying im working at so so def, i throw parties, i would love to be involved. I did not know it would become i said, what is facebook . Eight schools. I still have the email that says mark decided to launch 36 more schools in two wakes. At this time we dont want to do a deal. Emily you are making movies the giver, you are making tv shows how is that different from making music . Scooter my mom isnt very impressed with anything i do in music, but introducing my mom to meryl streep at the premiere of the giver, its ok now that i dropped out of college. Emily how about the tv show . It is doing pretty well. Scooter one more time. Monday nights at 9 00 on cbs. Scott manson, same guy who brought Walter Obrien to me. Scott said, this is a crazy life story, maybe we can do something on tv or film. To see the success and how much people are loving the show, it has been so much fun. Emily tell me about ithaca. Scooter i never talk about this. I believe theres power in numbers and power in collaboration. I believe managers and creatives and everyone should come together and Work Together in an alliance, and i put together a group of my friends, and it is simply that. It is an alliance of guys who get together and try and help each other build their businesses, because theres more than a to go around. Emily so this is a fund . Scooter when we have ideas and we want to go after things together, we can. Emily what is the next big trend in music . Scooter voices. Emily someone who can actually sing . Scooter i love the fact that everyone we sign can really sing. Justin got discovered because people fullilove with the fact that he was wrong the street playing his guitar and singing his butt off. Emily how much potential does youtube have to make more . Scooter the reporting there were so many people who said you cant sign acts off youtube. I think it is happening all over again. We have lots of stars who have come from social media and we will have a lot more because thats how people are discovering it. Emily philanthropy is important to you and giving back. How do you incorporate that into your work . Scooter every aspect of what we do has to have a charity involved. Every dollar we make here has to have some kind of charitable component involved. With our shows we try to give one dollar of every ticket sold to charity. Ive never had an artist say no to that. Emily you have been on so many lists, time top 100 most influential people. How old are you . Scooter 33. Emily what is next for you . Scooter im in the best phase of my life right now. I just got married. Over the next five to 10 years my real priority beyond that is i want to build a family. That is something im very proud of, and more young people should see people in the Entertainment Industry that are successful and know that you dont have to give up everything to have that. Emily so you cant sing, you cant dance, you cant really play instruments, but you can do some pretty good impressions. President s, i hear. President obama. Scooter my wife michelle, my daughters sasha and melia, i just want to say from my days in chicago to my days in d. C. , from the top to the bottom, were going to bring it back, moving forward, were going to create change, and were going to bring it back again. God bless america. Emily bill clinton. Scooter you know, i just want to say, being a manager for Justin Bieber and Arianna Grande and all these young people, its cool. Emily Scooter Braun, thank you so much for joining us on studio 1. 0. The following is a paid advertisement for the new face of time life, starvista entertainment. Welcome to my world these are songs we will always remember. Wont you come on too songs we grow up with. She lets her hair hang low. The music that always touched
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