Understanding the UAE startup opportunity with Brad Gerstner and Ibrahim Ajami | E1751

33:10So maybe you could talk a little bit candidly about how do people feel about that? Yeah, you know, it reminded me of 2016, 2017 when we first set up in San Francisco. Actually, some of the managers in California back then told us that, listen, you shouldn't set up here. You should just give us your money. And because this is our craft, it's not something that you should be doing. And if you fast forward till today, that engagement narrative perspective has shifted a lot. Listen, I say this to a lot of managers that come from the US and from other parts of the world. Sovereign Wealth Fund's investment in technology and allocation to technology is here to stay and is only going to grow from here.

33:58Why? Because the Sovereign Wealth Funds, let's face it, were doing a lot of public market. They were doing a lot of real estate. Private equity started. But now you're seeing a big interest in venture, early stage venture, and more private equity. For two major reasons. A real recognition that there's a lot of value to be created in technology and in venture companies and building enduring technology companies. And number two, you have to understand that technology is starting to impact large swaths of these countries' GDP. So the importance of engaging in technology is a very big national priority.

34:38You have to understand it. You can't just give the money to another fund manager. You have to be a part of creating it and shaping it. You got to get closer to it. By the way, both healthcare technology and the role of technology in healthcare and also broad technology. So I think the managers, the thoughtful, smart, forward-looking, partnership-oriented managers are going to look at the Sovereign Wealth Fund as allocators and say, how do I work with this new, very important constituent over the next 10, 20, 30 years? I mean, just to that point, you know, obviously there's a seminal moment where we talked about software eating the world.

35:14And now we're here at a moment where AI is going to eat software. Yeah. Okay. And if you're sitting, you know, that's why there's such interest in all the conversations I've had with Ibrahim and his team, with the EAA, with others who are here about, you know it is no longer about technology and then all these other industries our defense industry our hydrocarbon industry every industry has turned into a technology industry yes and so that national imperative around investing in technology is not just about diversifying away the hydrocarbon economy it's if we want to be the most competitive in the world at all the other things in which we compete from tourism to the financial industry sector then we have to be technology forward and i found just the you know i'd be curious jason your take on this just the general level of curiosity and iq from government to allocators to founders here yeah of these issues is extraordinarily high yeah uh it used to be silicon valley was like a secret playbook you know there was like a handbook and you know people just didn't understand a lot of how the mechanics how the tactical issues were handled strategy um i had a number of people while i was here tell me um i i would like to have lunch with you because i'm going to be a kauffman fellow i'm going to be coming to silicon valley and um have an office here you know different allocators different family offices and i thought that was fascinating there they want to learn the craft of being a venture capitalist an angel investor not just blindly put money in and oh yeah tell me in 10 years how my fund did.

36:55And that's a very distinct difference. The curiosity level and the interest in this is palatable. Listen, when you're a fund manager like me, you're trying to raise money, the hardest thing to do is get in front of those elite LPs, limited partners, right? How do you get those connections? Well, iConnections is how you get them. So check out iConnections. This is a platform to help connect and meet elite capital allocators. What a great idea. And these are the biggest LPs in the world from every category, endowments, foundations, sovereign wealth funds, and iConnections speciality is building and connecting their global network of capital allocators with a diverse range of fund managers.

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38:08This is the largest capital allocator event in the world with trillions in LP money represented. So sign up at iConnections.io slash twist, iConnections.io slash twist. Yeah, I have a question for you, Ibrahim. You know, we've just gone through this period, you know, 2000, I mean, the COVID period, technology asset bubble that we went through, interest rates went to zero, all asset prices went to the moon. We have 2022 interest rates reset, technology prices collapse. And a lot of allocators in this part of the world had really just started allocating to technology. And all of a sudden, right into the teeth of this major correction.

38:50And what we see around the world is while we've had a massive financial dislocation, so asset prices are down 50 to 70 percent, we also have a major platform shift with AI. and so right at the time arguably that people should be allocating to venture capital right this vintage that's coming up which is going to benefit from a major platform shift you see everybody narrowing their apertures pulling back the pulling back right how do you deal i mean it seems to me you have a natural advantage just because of the long-term strategic planning of the country but talk to me about like the internal dynamics what are the pressures on you from the big bosses about pulling back?

39:34Did you allocate too much? How are you guys thinking about allocations changing in the post-correction of 2022? First of all, like I said, we have been investing in technology for nearly a decade now in software and internet and healthcare and health tech. I remember when COVID happened and we had this massive acceleration in investing, We didn't just show up and say, oh my God, let's start investing in technology. And then when this reset, recalibration that we're going through happened, we didn't just say, okay, let's just backtrack completely and contract and stop investing. It goes back to we as Mubadla are devoted to innovation.

40:16We as Mubadla are committed to technology being a very important part of our long-term strategy. And we learned a lot during the semiconductor cycles, the importance of focusing on fundamentals, the importance of having a steady hand through the cycles doesn't mean we didn't make our mistakes we also made mistakes during 21 2020 and 2021 by we're a part of we are part of the the macro that's unfolding but we are uniquely positioned in the world today to continue to play a very important role in technology by leaning in yeah what what what no i have one observation go go go the high don't get too high with the highs and don't get too low with the lows and i was just thinking as you were talking you had this experience obviously we all had the experience 2018 2019 you have this the pandemic happens it actually increases the value of zoom increases the value of stocks peloton everything goes to the room more consumption digital consumption more people use uber eats etc um and then you mentioned okay we had a similar experience we were educated through the cycle of semiconductors but you also have a fundamental swing in value Where oil, they were predicting, would be$300 a barrel, and we've seen it go down to$30,$100.

41:32Oil fluctuates 5x, 10x, I think you've experienced. So does that contribute to your ability to stay calm with big swings? I think a combination of that plus a committed, long-term focused leadership here in Abu Dhabi. Yeah. is a financial global institution like Mubadla that's deep and large and very well capitalized that can take a long-term perspective. How big is it? We manage$280,$290 billion. $290 billion. So nearly$300 billion assets unimaginable. If you look at Abu Dhabi in total, it's over a trillion dollars of sovereign wealth. I mean, you think about - It's the entire venture industry times.

42:15But the wisdom of the founding leader of the country, I think they started the Sovereign Wealth Fund two years after the country was founded. That's right. Right? So they could have just went out and spent all the money like many - Yachts, Ferraris. Like back to Libya and other countries. Yeah, sure. They could have squandered the resources. They lived quite humbly and said, we got to invest all these resources in the future. We live in a dangerous part of the world. Like, let's really build this, you know, this incredible place that we dream about. And our sovereign wealth funds, you know, I can speak on behalf of Mubadla.

42:45We've been building this institution, the management system, the culture, the values over the past 20 years. And we've made some mistakes and we've grown and we've evolved and we've never wavered on our long-term commitment of really being a responsible, astute, smart, long-term focused investor and standing behind our commitment to the companies that we back. Brad and I were talking about this. you know and this is something we also learned from from engagement with some of our best partners in silicon valley which is every interaction with a founder is a is a sales process but there's also sort of a bargain where if you commit on delivering your side of the of the house we will deliver on our side and that's something that mobile is very very committed to you know we didn't when when semiconductors went through in cycle we didn't just decide oh it's time for us to exit and we don't we hate this industry right we stuck through it through very very challenging times and we're doing that today with software do you have some companies that are just been impacted by this downturn down 60 70 80 percent and how are you handling that yeah fintech companies are you know consumer companies are also impacted significantly listen i think we're going through um like many of the other leading technology funds are doing we're spending time triaging our portfolio deciding which companies to lean into and support and there's some companies where we're saying, listen, we don't believe this company will be a big, important company in the future.

44:12So let's decide what to do there. Yeah. And being very rational about it. Yeah. It's very hard to be rational, I think, when the market swings this hard. And you also have a deep chip stack, if you were to think about it. And so you could put bad money after good. And so having that discipline, it's hard when you have a big chip stack. One of the things I wanted to ask you about a lesson learned, you know, or maybe, you know, something. There's a view that when you have$300 billion or a trillion dollars of sovereign wealth, you know, that venture capital at the end of the day is a pretty fragmented craft industry.

44:49There are only so many winters that get created. You know, angel investors are writing$500 ,000 checks. But at the peak, we saw, right, we saw some gigantic funds get funded, right? And the most famous one of all is the Vision Fund, $100 billion, Vision Fund 1, and then they have Vision Fund 2. You were an investor in the Vision Fund, so J. Cal wouldn't let me do the job here if we didn't ask you about the Vision Fund. So tell us a little bit about that journey, and what, if anything, you take away from this idea about the industrialization of venture capital? And is it even worthwhile for somebody who maybe wants to partner with you but only needs$20 million a year to have that conversation?

45:36Or are you only looking at the scale players looking to partner with? Absolutely not. We're also, you know, we've committed million dollars to small emerging managers because these smaller emerging managers can provide us insight and signal and understanding and triangulation that potentially maybe these larger funds could not. So we also need like beat on the ground. Yeah. You know, the SoftBank experience was and continues to be a very important one for us. First of all, I just want to make sure, I mean, I want to remind you, we structured that fund commitment in a very unique way where 60 % of that capital has a PREF instrument to it.

46:14So it's not just an equity commitment. So there's some protection mechanisms, which obviously are playing out today in our favor. And that was a very important part of the structure. Which means for an audience who doesn't understand, you get to have your money come out first. You have some downside protection. If something like Uber and that portfolio were to go down, you would be able to get more shares or some more consideration. And 60 % of that earns an interest. And then we also get our first money back. We get the interest first, then our PREF instrument, and then any losses. So I think you're right in how you articulated that.

46:52SoftBank was just another unique moment in history. where they took a view and we participated in that where potentially capital was a moat. And if you can deploy a significant amount of capital in these companies and provide them with the fuel they need, they could potentially grow exponentially and dominate the markets they're in. And we saw that play out in the likes of Uber. It didn't play out in many other cases that we thought it would. so i don't believe that thesis holds anymore in the world we operate in today that's changed especially as we talk about um ai the world of ai what happens with potentially ai disrupting major industries you know the some of these companies might not require the significant amount of capital this is the key point and we've been talking about this a whole bunch around the poker table and in our discussions and as we deploy capital um i had on this podcast in the past week uh uh aaron levy from box brian chesky from airbnb and reed hoffman from linkedin fame and a capital allocator himself um and all three of them i asked him what percentage of work of your teams your companies your firms will be done by ai by the end of this year 2023 so just you know six months from now or seven months from now they all came up with the same number 30 percent And so if you look at brad's thesis about getting fit hey, maybe you don't need as many employees Maybe you added too many and then you add to it.

48:24Well, everybody's going to be 30 percent more efficient the companies we've invested in Can pause hiring because they're actually adding if they had a hundred people in the company They just added 30 this year Because the hundred are so much more efficient now the question becomes Does next year is it 30? Or does it compound? because the technology is getting better and those developers instead of getting 30 better in 2024 they become 50 or 80 or jobs they were doing are eliminated and then we see more riffs or we see them being deployed for new products and services and how quickly do they go down the product roadmap and to me and that's incredibly exciting we have companies brad maybe you could tell me which ones are the most capital efficient because you do a lot of public market investing public market investing which ones have the highest revenue per employee and then where could that go if the trend continues because we were talking hey uber hasn't done a riff they did it back during covid but they haven't done it since but the revenue went up 30 or whatever it is 20 30 and the cost stayed fixed and that's what's made their stock grow in the free cash Well, you know, revenue per employee actually went down over this COVID period, which had never really happened in technology, right?

49:50Because these businesses, you know, the ones we all know about, Meta, who touches 3 billion consumers or Google or Amazon, etc. Their incremental EBITDA margins in those business are probably over 90%. Okay, so for every incremental dollar of revenue, 90 cents of that is falling to the bottom line. Because it's a fixed cost business. Correct. They're just inherently very profitable businesses. But two things happened. Number one, they started getting attacked by Washington, D.C. And so I frankly think they wanted to hide a little bit the profitability of the businesses because the stocks going up every day didn't help their standing in Congress.

50:27Number two, you had the COVID moment. And in the COVID moment, everybody thought these elevated growth rates were going to last for a really long time. Everybody got unfit. They, you know, we're talking about meta going from 40 ,000 employees to 80 ,000 employees, Google going from 110 to 190 ,000, like extraordinary number of hires working from home. We know they weren't really working from home. Okay. So productivity plummeted. So there are two things that happened. One, this idea of time to get fit really became, has become a lexicon, not only of Silicon Valley, but of all the startups. Like we all knew it to be true.

51:05Like we could just do more with less. That was before AI. Okay. So it was possible that, you know, and read Mark Zuckerberg's memo that he wrote in March of this year. So year of efficiency, and we're doubling down on AI. And just by getting fitter, he said, leaner is better, flatter is faster. They got faster and better with fewer people. Okay. Now on top of that, they're going to train their own engineering co-pilot on top of chat GPT-4. And every engineer at Meta is going to get 40 to 50 % more efficient. So now you tell me. They went from 40 ,000 to 80 ,000 employees. They're tightening their belt.

51:47They're going faster. They're having more fun. It's getting leaner. And now you layer on AI on top of that. I think we're about to see three to four years of massive margin expansion in technology companies. And when you say margin expansion, we mean profits. Cash coming in the door. It's going, these companies, I agree, they're going to become cash printing machines. And at the early stage, a three-person company is going to start to look like a 10-person company. A 10-person is going to start looking like a 30. I think this million dollars per employee, and I think it peaked in some companies at two, maybe Apple or some.

52:22I think we might see five and$10 million revenue per employee companies. and well think about think about whatsapp had it stayed private oh my god yeah you're going to touch a billion people and you know you have 20 20 people in the business going to 50 people in the business um so i instagram was 15 or 20 when they had 100 million people but i think the point the ibram made is really important i just want to kick it back to you on that you know what i love about the way you said it is with a lot of intentionality we looked at this we looked at this notion that capital could be a weapon. It could be a competitive moat, right?

53:01And it didn't play out that way. And part of the reason it didn't play out that way is because when interest rates went to zero, the problem was everybody else used it as a weapon. So what we ended up doing is destroying the economics of these businesses because Lyft had their backers who gave them too much money and every market ended up having too much and they all chose to lose money, right? And so now the interest rates have gone back up. Now we have a cost of capital. The stupidity is getting wrung out of the market. And what I love is you're saying, you're saying as one allocator, Mabatala is not going to reenter the game of using capital as a moat.

53:39You know, and what is very exciting for us about this AI cycle are two things. especially for Abu Dhabi we could if you think about Snowflake or Stripe or even Meta and you go to them and you say you know what come and set up an Abu Dhabi we can give you the golden visa and we can set up everything you need Snowflake would say okay well I need to put 20 software engineers and I have to put 50 sales people I'm going to need a 100 person team on the ground in Abu Dhabi for me to do what I need to do right with ai potentially that's just 10 or 15 people yeah so plenty it just reduces significantly the friction and the barriers for a company like snowflake to start thinking a lot more seriously about markets that before were potentially just tertiary markets secondary markets and number two is young entrepreneurs and founders that could potentially from the region from abu dhabi that could potentially start companies using ai and for them to scale whereas previously they needed to get talent they needed to set up offices they had hard resources they can do this a lot more efficiently so again we've um talking about getting fit we've been preparing we've been getting fit for this moment for some time and we truly believe we're ready for it we are ready for it and having the two of you here in a way demonstrates that we're ready for it it's very interesting um your your greatest uh asset was how deep uh you know this chip stack is how how large the fund is and now that's not an asset now you actually have to be clever you have to be nimble yeah you have to sharpen the blade it cannot just be we could throw money at the problem and you know and you know who the most important brand ambassadors for us are our founders because we've been investing in these relationships for over a decade and and a lot of our founders that call us now and say, hey, we'd love to talk to you about it.

55:46We just heard from this other founder and say, listen, not only do I, I'm looking for an investment, but I also want to understand how I can expand to your part of the world, how I can potentially build a real business in your part of the world. We didn't have that dialogue in 2015 and 2016. Yeah, I mean, we did see Google, Uber, a number of companies, you know, expanded to the region and have very profitable businesses. so there is definitely hundreds of millions of customers here across the various countries but it is not a monolith again you you have to address egypt very differently than the ua very differently than saudi each one is very unique and that's going to be an incredible learning process the other thing that i find is super fascinating i've been very lucky and because of my public profile I'm able to raise funds.

56:35It's not very difficult for me. But my funds are smaller. And in the United States, the large LPs, let's say university endowments, you know, and retirement pension funds, they're not adding a lot of new fund managers. And the existing fund managers, the large ones, they just decided to bigger and bigger funds, and we're going to have multiple funds, and we're going to raise them faster. They're not adding new fund managers. So then Then you have all these new fund managers. But domestically in the United States, the biggest complaint I hear is, oh, this giant university,$10 billion,$20 billion,$30 billion.

57:13They're going to add one new fund manager. And then on my trip here, I've met, I wasn't going to do any meetings, Brad. I was just coming here to hang and do cultural stuff and restaurants and each shawarma. And my trip got culturally and food trip got ruined because I have had 10, 15 meetings and they're adding new managers there's an appetite to work with new managers and to do it quickly and to start relationships so for fellow fund managers who are you know in their first second third fourth fund who are not making progress because you know let's face it some university or some pension fund they've already allocated you got those funds what 10 years ago correct how many of them are adding a new fund if injuries and horowitz or whoever's coming to them with their crypto fund, with their next fund.

58:01And there's a feeling amongst those large ones, if I don't do every fund by this big brand name, then they're going to get upset and they're not going to give me an allocation in the main fund, the small series A fund, the crown jewel. Maybe you could talk, Brad, a little bit about that log jam that obviously this region unlocks. And that's what I've seen here. When I came in the lobby, we saw all these people we knew. They were the younger fund managers. They were the 30 and 40, 50-year-old fund managers whose funds were under 10 years old, not the 40-year-old funds. And that's probably a different experience in the region because, I mean, Mabodala's got these extraordinary relationships historically with the Apollos and the Silver Lakes and the KKRs.

58:42Private equity has been big in this region for a long time. I think it's venture that's newer to the region. And listen, a lot of the allocators here started allocating in 2018. they start moving some chips on the table and then venture blows up in 2022. Like it didn't get off to the best start in terms of building reputation here. Time it wasn't ideal. But in the US, you know, you've seen our chart, the TVPI to DPI chart. So you just get a lot of paper marks. They're not turning into distributions as a result. And that coupled with the fact that venture managers have not marked down their books.

59:19Yes, they haven't taken the medicine. Means that under the endowment model, these endowments, charitable foundations, and others have what's known as the denominator problem. They're over allocated. So when you look at the denominator in these businesses, the denominator has gone down for Harvard or for MIT or for Children's Hospital. The total value of their endowment has gone down. Because the mark to market things go down immediately. So their holdings in public. Meta, Google, et cetera, those go down immediately. So on a percentage basis, it looks like your venture holdings are a much bigger percentage of your overall holdings.

59:57So they went from 5 % to 10 % to 15 % to 20%. Correct. Because they have not been marked properly. And for a fund manager, it's painful, maybe even shameful in their minds to mark it down. So they wait and hope that the market catches up. They hope they get a kick save. The reality is they're doing a disservice to the industry because now it makes these people feel like they're over allocated. But if you just mark the venture books the way they should be marked, which is down 50, 60, 70 percent like their public market counterparts, then on a percentage basis, you would be back to where you were before.

1:00:30So you have this denominator problem. You do see the aperture narrowing. Listen, I think it's great for the industry. I watched the cycle in 1999. I watched it in 2007. 2007 all the all the hedge funds showed up in silicon valley they were all gone in 2008 same thing happened in 1999 um and so this sort of creative destruction it doesn't just apply to to founders and operating companies it applies to venture capitalists and allocators and lps alike and so you know we're going through that process but when you come over here you get a real sense this country has been on a 50-year journey right and it's like when we're when we're done here i want to show you the before and after pictures that i just saw of dubai 2005 to today i mean it went from nothing to you know this gleaming city abu dhabi i mean these before and after pictures are utterly shocking they only happen with incredible long-term strategic planning a commitment by the government coupled with industry so when they have an industry focus and a commitment to innovation technology it means something imagine if the united states actually had a strategic plan around innovation and technology they're they're not involved the only thing we've seen in our lifetime was the chips act which was an acute moment of abject fear because of the taiwan situation that wow we can't take this risk we must have chip fabs in the united states so so my just wrap it up by saying i don't think the allocation issue is all the sudden you know ibrahim woke up and said oh the u.s allocators aren't allocating so i want to have brad and jason over and i want to like this is part of i get the sense of a 50-year journey they want to be carbon neutral by 2050 they want to diversify away from hydrocarbons and they're doing they're saying the same thing that you and i are saying to ourselves the best thing to bet on for the next two decades, five decades, is technology.

1:02:31It's going to be the thing that drives humanity forward. And you'll never hear us say, you will never hear us say that we're not allocating to new managers. How could we? That's not the strategy. What if a new manager shows up with a very unique point of view, with a very clear strategy that it's different, with some sort of a special energy and magic about that person? Why would we close ourselves and shut ourselves from allocating to new managers? Again, as we think about Mubadla going from$300 to$600 to a trillion over the next 10, 15, 20 years, some of these managers will play an important role in that growth trajectory for us.

1:03:16So it's also, as Brad said, this process of creative destruction, it's also about us learning and growing with them. the loyalty uh is something that's come up over and over again it's part of the culture huh like this gratitude humility and loyalty i keep hearing these themes over and over again very important educate me in the audience on how business works here because i've been taking these meetings and uh somebody pulled me aside and said maybe slow down maybe too many details uh maybe build the relationship in the first meeting second meeting maybe more details third meeting uh data room so just on a pragmatic basis take take the time invest in the relationship you know Brad invited me to his office in Menlo Park and then I said hey why don't you come to Abu Dhabi and then when I come to Silicon Valley in a couple of weeks we're going to have dinner to get to learn about us and through that process we'll learn about you and then we can start mapping out okay how can this relationship what does this journey look like together it's just it's very very important just because of our long term nature we want to be partners with you through good and bad times.

1:04:25It's not just about a quick transaction. A lot of managers that come here present a fund and then you never hear them say, hey, do you want to commit to my fund? It's not how it works. The bar is very, very high. So you also have to fight and you have to invest in that relationship. Makes sense. I think that's how it worked in Silicon Valley. When I hear Bill Gurley tell stories about benchmark, that's how it worked in the States for a long time until the denominator problem. And I think all of our endowments, all of our retirement funds hit their target. and then the venture funds who were already in those relationships maximize those relationships as capitalism and as they're apt to do can i can i tell you two stories please um about people that invest in relationships the first time i met bill girley yeah i went to his office in san francisco and he walked into the meeting with a folder that was full of research about our company and our ceo and he walked in he said you know hey i just read all these interviews about your ceo and and and he He was asking all these questions and he was so curious.

1:05:23And I walked out of the meeting and I was like, wow, this is one of the best venture capitalists in the world. And he had spent so much time trying to learn about who we are before I even walked in. I've had so many meetings where I just walk in and people say, what's Mubadla anyways? Versus like, that's the quality of the human Bill Gurley is. By the way, I'm lucky to be sitting on a board with Mike Moritz and I find in this privileged position to also work very closely with him on a couple of opportunities of sequoia legend in the business that's right as a journalist in the 80s and and i message i whatsapp mike moritz or i send him an email and i say you know sir i'd love to speak to you about this and he's literally when you say sir by the way he is a sir he is knighted that's right it is sir moritz by the way and he keeps telling me don't call me sir and i can't i have to call him sir and and uh he responds to me and less than seconds in less than an hour i'm like i don't understand this is one of the greatest venture capitalists and sometimes you're right people that don't respond to you for like a month ultimately you know it's it's just a part of who you are it is the it's so interesting that michael moritz story when i was pitching my company and i did my second company i uh had uh mark cuban as my investor again because he had backed my first company uh or yeah and so i said well maybe i should try to get venture capital and i said well who are the two most famous venture capitalists john dore and michael moritz so i emailed them both and i said i just sold my company webluxing for 30 million dollars to aol 18 months after i started it i've got a new idea i'd love to talk to you about it we met one time at this internet summit uh in laguna but you probably don't remember because i was a kid back then best jason and i kid you not in an hour my phones rang i didn't pick it up because i didn't have his number on my phone and he left a voicemail at my desk phone on my phone and replied to my email in the first hour yeah i said when can you come up now john door and this is no dick to john the next week one of his uh partners called me and asked me to come there i had already been to sequoia and had made the decision to go to sequoia before i was in the office with the the glider perkins team and i always took that lesson with me i now start at the top of my inbox and i reply back to the last 10 people who've emailed me because at least those people have that michael more at's experience and that's what made sequoia great was that lightning fast response and that they out hustled everybody there was a sense of urgency that matched the founder's sense of urgency and then bill girley was has that trait of a prepared mind he's coming into every whether it's going to a concert or going to a basketball game coming to a poker game or investing in a company or working with a partner that's right it's interesting you know jason you you know that we've heard a lot about the all-in pod over here.

1:08:14That's been weird. Stopped on the street 20 times. Lots of people are listening to it. I think about the conversations that that grew out of, which is conversations with Bill. We all research, debate, are insatiably curious about everything. We have an ongoing dialogue about it. A docket forms and it ends up in this great dialogue, authentic dialogue among friends on the all-in pod. And the reason I think it's so appealing and so popular here is because that's exactly the culture that exists here. Like, without that curiosity, without that prepared mind, without creating the conditions for prosperity in this country, like, it would not look anything like it looks like today.

1:08:57And I'm convinced that 10 or 20 years from now, because of that DNA, it's going to be, you know, again, you know, way further ahead than it is today and way further ahead in the region. but you know the story about bill and mike that without that level of passion fire in the belly right to to to do what we do i would give the same advice to founders like a founder shows up in your office and hasn't done the research and is there just there with a bag looking to put some money in it like your conversion rate's going to be zero it's not going to happen because it's really about the people who are authentically passionate about moving the world forward and put in the miles i I mean, this is something that our CEO has embedded this value.

1:09:40Like, go out there and meet people and learn and be curious. He comes to Silicon Valley twice a year. And when he comes, you know, his request is, listen, I want to meet new managers and entrepreneurs and founders. And I want to learn about what they're seeing. That curiosity, but also go invest in going out there. I like to tell the story of there's this company in San Diego, an amazing company that we wanted to invest in. And I flew from Abu Dhabi to Los Angeles, landed in Los Angeles, took a three-hour drive to San Diego just to meet the founder and to demonstrate to the founder that, hey, listen, I'm here because I want to be in your place, in your offices, in your home turf.

1:10:24Two years later, the company ultimately did very well during COVID, got acquired. You know, I think that the fact that I went all the way there. Yeah, 36 hours. And invested the time to be with a founder meant a lot for him. Of course. And that's a deep value for us here at Mobada, which is, you know, you're not going to change the world by just sitting in your office here. You also have to go out there and you have to see the world and feel the world. I am already planning my second trip. Literally, all the people who I didn't get to be with, all the other regions, everybody's reaching out to me.

1:10:56And I'm like, I'm going to have to have a second trip and it's going to have to happen this year. I can't wait till next year. There's just too much going on. I mean, I, you know, J Cal, you really need to talk to Hub 71. Yeah. You need to do a launch collab, right? That'd be amazing. With Hub 71. And like, I think that it's, you know, it's high time to get some of your angel yum yums over here in Abu Dhabi. It's, there was, we're meeting with some VCs and they were like, should we do a podcast? I said, yeah, get good microphones and start interviewing people here. we'll listen uh you know and you could do this week in startups uae and that would be very cool i mean that would be this podcast studio here i mean they got this incredible uh in final issue we'll go close to the third rail here social issues uh very young country very progressive uh people have some thoughts on the women here in the uae the rights of women or alcohol consumption maybe you could explain and just educate people how this operates here because we again in america sometimes look at regions as monolithic and not very uh in a very granular way this felt like the party we're at last night felt like we were in uh los angeles or new york yeah i think people people were having cocktails no big deal uh people were smoking cigars um it was pretty normal uh didn't people weren't wearing burqas not there's anything wrong with that but it was not uh uh it didn't feel like this was like a repressed society in any way no no people should come here and and see what's happening on the ground this is a very open tolerant society what people don't know is that we just uh you know we just opened the the abrahamic center here in abu labi which is the place where you have a church a synagogue and a mosque all in one location.

1:12:48We have a tremendous amount of women talent in our leadership ranks. We invest extensively in women's development. And it's truly an important part of our values and our leadership agenda. So I think truly the best way to see it is you'd have to come and experience it. Yeah. This is a very, very special, what's happening here on the ground in Abu Dhabi and in the UAE is, again, such a unique moment of time. Not because of all the change and the growth geographically where we're located between the East and the West. um so you know it's a it's such a special cosmopolitan um with tremendous youth that is excited energetic focused on the future building growing learning uh we go out to the world we invite the world a lot of the youth have been educated in the west everybody i met who is The National went to Stanford, went to Oxford, went to D.C.

1:14:01or New York, worked at Goldman in New York for a couple years. It is incredibly cosmopolitan. And I think that's a very interesting part of the story here is how rapid the social changes are happening. Yeah. You know, just a couple of stats that I thought were pretty fascinating. The average age in the country is 30. right the u.s i think is 37 japan is 47 yeah okay uae university i think is 75 percent women the cabinet of the government is a third i think women um you know and then you know think about like major cultural third rails so the weekend uh you know in the uae was friday saturday to align with the holy day but because the rest of the world the weekend was saturday sunday and if you wanted to align with the rest of the world around business they literally got all the citizens to agree to change the weekend away from this very big deal right incredible and sent this amazing signal right i think which is that yes we can be you know committed to you know whatever religious faith that we are but it's got to align with also our broad national interests and initiatives um you know i was shocked to learn some of these things and just how those things evolved um so i i agree with you it's been a uh it's been a bit of an eye-opener for me um it's been a lot of fun you know hub 71 you think about hub 71 the startups and assume that oh all the startups are you know people from here um the the the startups represent 30 countries there's actually people that have come from the u.s people have come from china people come from japan to set up in abu dhabi they've made a decision to say listen i want to build my startup in abu dhabi so it's really the diversity of it that was incredible i mean i was people watching you know in abu dhabi and in uh dubai and they're separated by about a 70 minute car ride and there's going to be a hyperloop i understand for 20 minutes or a high-speed train uh soon between the two cities and um i was just trying to figure out where are all these people from and everybody i met it's just a different place hong kong australia new zealand united states just the diversity is just phenomenal it is like london or new york think about what we've seen the last few years um in china would you be excited to be a new founder uh in china today given the success of what's happened with jack ma and yaming and so many other education startup was basically nationalized.

1:16:44So if you had an education startup, it was - Or in the United States, right? Like in the United States, if you're coming over there, like remember, so much of our success from Elon Musk to Larry and Sergey started people moving from outside the United States into the United States because California created the conditions for prosperity, right? And we take that now for granted. And what I see is two major superpowers that drove most of the innovation on the planet for the last 30 years that are now taking the conditions of prosperity for granted. And you have a region like this that has its hand way in the air, that's transforming itself, that is actually doing those things.

1:17:25Golden visas, tax systems, support, investment. Regulation. Regulation. And so, you know, I just want to say congratulations. It's been a lot of fun. I look forward to spending a lot more time back here. and uh and jacow i'm glad that you know we got the chance you recorded the all in pod from yeah from here last night we got to do uh you know a fireside chat together it's it's been a lot of fantastic i mean and just to the people here what a warm welcome we got huh yeah so thanks to everybody and just it was very heartwarming and great that people listen to the pods and getting stopped on the street for selfies and and just it was very very kind and uh man that shawarma man i gotta take you guys back to the shawarma place tonight I went to the best Oh man It was incredible It's great having you guys In Abu Dhabi And welcome Welcome to Abu Dhabi Thank you for having us And we will see you all Next time On This Week in Startups Bye bye