announcer: "big problems, big thinkers" is brought to you by cisco. there has never been a better time to change the world. ♪ terre: we asked some of the best minds in the world from business, government, the arts, and academia, what are the most urgent problems facing humanity, and how do we solve them? the result is "big problems, big thinkers." ♪ >> what is the number one major problem facing mankind? >> i think it is the lack of education. >> politics has been getting dumber and dumber. >> there is a balance of green spirit. >> if we don't have a more sustainable way -- >> everybody has the capability of making a difference. >> remember your humanity.

and forget the rest. terre: hello, this "big problems, big thinkers." i'm terre blair. in this series, we confront the greatest problems facing the human race and we examine each issue by asking if there is an ethical framework to help us solve them. to do that, we'll hear from an extraordinary group of leaders as they search for answers and perhaps inspire us to take action. in this episode, threats to our economic future. after the world financial system teetered on the brink of collapse in late 2008, many new policies were put in place. and you'll hear about those. but what about other changes, in values, motivations and incentives? after all, markets rise and fall and rise again. but what are the lessons about markets and about ourselves that could mitigate the economic pain? so many lessons, but what have we actually learned?

warren: the fall of 2008 was something different than anything any of us had ever seen. ♪ warren: it was even more extreme what was going on immediately -- extreme what was going on in 1929 or the subsequent depression in a big way. the train came close to a stop and now it is again regaining speed. so that period was a big lesson to people who operated on leverage and demonstrated the interconnectedness of our system. and it demonstrated the destructive aspect of certain kinds of incentives and that sort of thing. >> we came to a period where situationally i could, if i were a bank, give a mortgage to somebody that wanted to buy an $850,000 home and showing no income statement. people who should've never taken out mortgages, took out mortgages. people who never should have given mortgages, were giving

them. people who should have not bundled them into bonds and selling them all over the world, bundled them into bonds and were selling them all over the world. people who were stamping them aaa, even though they were garbage, never should of been stamping them aaa and rating them that way. they were doing what was legal, ok? and it all blew up. and when it blew up, the collateral damage has been devastating. michael: people just didn't want to pay attention. the big mortgage crisis came about when the banks took mortgages, put them all together and sold the package. they were sold to professionals, the trustees of pension funds, the managers of mutual funds and hedge funds, the treasurers of corporations. these are sophisticated people, supposedly, and if they are not, then they should have never had those jobs. they looked at those and knew

exactly what was in these packages. it was all disclosed. they looked at them and said, oh, the ratings are aaa. they are only aaa if everything did not go wrong at the same time. but they bought these things and when they had higher yields, they had to stop and think -- this must be high-yield because it is riskier. but nobody wants to blame themselves for -- oh i took a risk. >> the famous charles prince quote who was running citibank at the time, and he said when the music is playing, you need to get up and dance. so when every other major bank is doing this and earning incredible quarterly profits, that the shareholders are celebrating and the board of directors is applauding, if you're the guy that stands up and says, no, i will behave sustainably and we will not do that, that becomes professionally risky. we got into a very short-term loop.

there were banks that did the right thin jpmorgan did not get anywhere near as caught up as other banks. and at the time, no doubt their ceo was looked at as being stodgy. >> could we have foreseen it? yeah, there were a lot of people that saw it. but who is going to stop making money because you're going to make too much money and you will collapse. stop selling your product. sell your house for a lower price because if you sell at a higher price, the next person has more leverage built in and it is more dangerous. we wanted everybody to have a mortgage, whether they could afford it or not. michael: so freddie mac and sallie mae and companies like this, the quasi-government organizations, they encouraged everybody, encouraged the banks -- make the loan, regardless. the argument was if you do not make the loan to people who cannot afford it, you are discriminating against people. and all of us are guilty.

we wanted to help everybody. but there are no quick simple answers and we tried to create one. and you create a bubble and then the bubble collapses. warren: we have had bubbles throughout history and they manifest themselves in various ways, whatever it may. and we will have them in the future. human beings, we get smarter about a lot of things in terms of how to produce things and become more productive. we do not get rid of the basic human emotions. and greed and fear will always operate the same way. thomas: you are dealing with a balance of greed and fear, greed and fear, greed and fear. and every decade or so, greed gets out of context and eventually leads to enough fear and something blows up, and we all just say, how could we have been so stupid? >> to go back and revise history and say i did not know, you are a professional, you should of known. the information was there and

common sense says if you are earning more, you are taking more risk. michael: i think if you look back at bob steel and people like that that went to treasury, saved the country because the rewriting of history says you should not have bailed out the companies. to not bail out the biggest companies and banks is ridiculous. you have no choice but to do that. were they overleveraged? yes. but everybody wanted them to be overleveraged and congress was as guilty as everybody else. and we live in a world where somebody else has to be guilty, it can't be you, it has to be somebody else. so we go after the bankers, which we have always done. hardly without sin, the worst thing they did was none of the documentation and those kinds of things. but they were part of something that everybody wanted. we wanted the world to keep expanding and the good times to keep rolling. until one day they don't. ♪ >> if you look at 2008 and the

institutions that failed or came close to failure. if you take aig and citigroup and washington mutual and freddie mac and fannie mae, the stockholders of those companies lost hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars. citigroup did not go under, but when the stock holders lose 90% of their value, it really does not make much difference if you have $1000 invested and you end up with $100 or not. so there in my view, there has been no moral hazard created for stockholders by the fact that the government came in and rescued those institutions. the moral hazard exists i think with the top executives who walked away with hundreds of millions of dollars and really did not pay the price for their failure. we had bigger and bigger financial institutions that had all kinds of activities where their problems became other people's problems. and then we had improper

incentives, we had people running the huge institutions whose upside was lots of money and glory, and the downside was still a lot of money and no glory. >> one of the points my teacher makes, when you're in a world that is a flat and technically interconnected, it is also ethically interdependent. thomas: because when greek bankers basically were going nuts, giving mortgages to greeks to build their third vacation home or their second swimming pool, whatever they're doing -- [chanting] thomas: when it suddenly blew up and you discovered your portfolio was down 5% because people were worried whether greece could default or pay back all of these sovereign debts they had accumulated, you said, wait a minute. i'm not technically interconnected with them, i am ethically interdependent. that can really affect your 401(k) and your happiness, not

to mention retirement here. so, we all have to think much more globally. warren: trust makes the world function better. commerce without trust is very awkward and we saw that in september 2008, 30 million americans in a time of a week lost trust in the money market funds and the government had to come in and essentially guarantee those funds. but, if you have 30 million americans that believe something to be the case in august and in september where their money was, they don't believe in it anymore, the train comes to a halt pretty darn fast. so a functioning, trustworthy economic system worldwide is a huge plus and it is even more of a plus for those countries who have not had it. we are used to it in the united states. terre: do you believe that international financial stability is essential to world peace?

michael: we will never have perfect international financial stability. people will continue to make the mistakes they've made in the past, with small variations. you know what mark twain said, history does not repeat itself, but it rhymes. that is ver much the nature of financial history. terre: as warren buffett says, we will never have perfect international financial stability. that is the history of markets. but can individuals create a financial future that improves on that history? can investors, governments and political leaders transform their values to mitigate the pain of future crises? that is next on "big problems, big thinkers." ♪ >> do we really have to pass a law that tells bankers, you cannot give a loan to someone who cannot pay it back? >> i have 20 iq points over him and he is getting rich and i'm not. that drives people crazy and it will continue to drive people crazy 100 years from now and 500 years from now.

>> as soon as you had two cavemen with caves, one of them looked at the other and said, why does is his cave look bigger? why does he have shrubs it, and we don't? i compare you to me. ♪

♪ terre: welcome back to "big problems, big thinkers." i am terre blair. after the near collapse of global markets, alan greenspan said "no two crises have anything in common except human nature." and that is where we pick up with pulitzer prize-winning journalist thomas friedman. what part did we as individuals play in what went wrong, what can we do better?

thomas: when someone comes to you, selling you a home mortgage, and telling you the only thing they need to do is check if you can fog up a knife, and not show your income statement, that is a pretty good sign that it sounds too good to be true. it usually is. also, should we really have to pass a law that tells bankers you cannot give a loan to someone who cannot pay it back? i mean, do we need to pass a law to do that? ♪ thomas: so people were doing such manifestly unsustainable things because they always thought, what i call ipg or ypg, i will be gone or you will gone. i will do this mortgage, because i will be gone. i will package this into 1000 bonds, i will sell it to somebody and i will be gone. they pawn it off to another investment bank in france and they will be gone. you cannot pay for your house? now that the money is actually

due, no problem. just sell it, because we know that house prices only go up. then you will be gone. so we are all practicing ibg and ybg values basically. it was an epidemic of that. warren: the people that got big institutions into huge trouble, which is sent not ripples, but tsunamis around the world, they got away with a lot of money. that should not have happened. we need a greater balance of incentives. if they are running a bank or some other large institution, so important that the government needs to save it because it needs to save the economy generally, those people in my view should be bankrupt if they screw things up. and that has not happened. ♪ terre: even though we will have bubbles and we have always had bubbles, do you believe people have the ability to transform their values? michael: i would be fairly pessimistic about people learning to control greed and

fear any better in the future than they have in the past, but what gets them in trouble is the fact that a fellow goes home at night and a neighbor is making money easily and his wife reminds him that that man is dumber than he is and he is making more money on dotcom stocks or he has been financing more than he can handle, but nevertheless -- looking at that guy and thinking, i have 20 iq points over him and he is getting richer and i'm not, that drives people crazy and will continue to drive people crazy 100 years from now and 500 years from now. >> i think it will be very difficult to unwind our materialistic impulses, partly because it is tied to something very basic. as soon as you have two cavemen with caves, one of them looked at the other and said, why is his cave bigger? why does he have shrubs and we don't? i look at you and i compare you to me. >> people who make a lot of

money in our country tend to trade in some of their money for other kinds of rewards, including the rewards of honor that come from being recognized as a great philanthropist. but there is a muddle that comes when there is a conflict between doing the thing that will bring you honor and the thing that will bring you money. in many cases. and i have a name for this, the bernie madoff problem. he was an american financer, a man that invest money for other people. and he was incredibly honored and all the time he was cheating people. he was someone that was getting money and honor for doing something profoundly antisocial and dishonorable, then he was caught fortunately. kwame: you want to create a world which encourages people to be successful and do things that are worth doing. and finance is necessary and worth doing. but you want them to see that

money is not the way to measure, measure your life. warren: there is always tension between the market system and unleashing it while at the same time not causing it to go to excess. we learn certain things need to be controlled and we will learn that other systems will unleash potential of humans. and different societies will come at it in different ways. the chinese are coming at it somewhat differently than the u.s. you will see that around the world. but i think overall, we will learn more from others and their successes as time goes by. and humanity as a whole will be living better 50, 100, 200 years from now. the world is not a zero-sum game. if somebody scovers penicillin in the united kingdom, it crosses borders and does me some good.

so we want the rest of the world to prosper. we should want it anyway as human beings, beyond that there is a utilitarian aspect to wishing the world well. because you do not want the united states to be an island of 300 million people doing magnificently well, 6 billion people are sitting there, envious of us. ♪ >> money is a powerful force. i would argue it is more powerful than nature in some ways, just because of the economic forces. we do a bad job often in attributing an accurate value to something and the economic crisis is a perfect example. somebody created fake value out of something that did not really have value. and eventually it was going to crash, which is what it did. >> the dow had its biggest drop ever, falling a little more than 777 points.

michael: we do not want to have banks that are too big to fail. we want gigantic banks, because that is the only way to compete in the world and fund companies that will create the jobs you want and a better life for all americans and people around the world. so instead of keeping the banks from being able to make money and with that money make loans and take risks, what you have to do is find ways to protect the banks from going under. have an insurance policy in case they do. but not keep them, not try to change them so that they can't possibly go under, because then they can't do their function. terre: right. michael: they are a very important part of the function, and unless somebody finances development, there is no development. there is no way to create jobs and wealth and good lives and good education systems and good governments that depend on tax revenue in the future. >> one thing we know about

growth is it is not everything, but it is the source of all good things. in the sense that you have a growing economy, people are more relaxed and open to new ideas and open to cooperation. they are dividing a growing pie. when you do not have growth, people are competing over a shrinking pie. and they will get more snarly, angry and probably racist, more homophobic -- people will use whatever emotional hooks they can to get their piece of a shrinking pie. so growth is very important to the underlying climate of the whole discussion. >> i think we need to think more about growth with equality, rather than the inequality based growth that we have seemed to have been good at creating in the last few years. thinking about anything that makes a radical change in how we live our lives, faces you with this problem, that there are

going to be winners and losers. kwame: and the people that are currently winning risk becoming losers if we change the game. so that they have an interest in keeping things the way they are. >> i am concerned that we are burdening society with so many rules to protect ourselves from every eventuality that it does not work. the real world is full of risk. and if you want to prevent all risk, then you do not have anything. ♪ warren: i send out a letter every two years or so to the managers at berkshires, and i basically say, do what is legal obviously, but also do not do anything you would not be happy to have written on the front page of the newspaper. and i tell them one other thing, look if the reason you are doing

it, if the reason you give me why you are doing it is, everybody else is doing it. that is not good enoug if that is the best you can come up with, there is something wrong with what you are doing. it is not can we do it? it is should we do it? it is important in all aspects of life. i've heard more dumb things rationalized by the fact that the other guy is doing it and i tell them, if it is close to the line, it is over the line. nobody can see the line that well. i'm 80 years old and my eyes are going bad, so do not do anything close to the line. it makes me nervous. terre: the post crisis response has included lines upon lines of new laws and regulations, including increased capital and liquidity positions for financial firms. and yet, the question remains, after the financial equivalent of a near-death experience for global markets, are individuals around the world -- enough individuals, close to being able

to say when enough is enough? the answer to that question may determine how many are hurt when, not if, the next crisis comes. i am terre blair and thank you for watching. ♪

narrator: our world today is wealthier than ever. but not everyone shares in this wealth. today's young business leaders are challenging this. changing the way we think about money -- its power and its purpose. this is a new generation. this is the new philanthropy. ♪ alexandre mars knows what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur.

alexandre: three letters. try. try. fail, try again. there is no other way to do something. narrator: the french businessmen has founded and run five technology companies on both sides of the atlantic. selling them has made him a millionaire many times over. huy: he is very, very driven, which is one of the reasons why he has been so successful in startups. so he definitely knows what he wants and he definitely would move mountains to get what he wants. narrator: he is just 40 years old, and now, after traveling to some of the poorest, most remote areas of the world, he is ready to achieve his lifelong goal. t.g.: what alex is trying to achieve is he is trying to change children's lives all over the world -- it's that simple. narrator: because all he has ever wanted to do with his money

is give it away. alexandre: we are nonprofit, we have no business model, we are not looking to have any in the future. the goal is only to change kid'' lives, not to make money. ♪ alexandre: i am alexandre mars. i live in new york, u.s.a., grew up between europe and the u.s. i am an entrepreneur, a serial entrepreneur. now, i have just launched my new start up. my 6th start up. i do believe nothing can be done if you are not a hard worker. that is what i am trying to explain and to teach my kids. if you want to do, you need to work hard. that is the principle of being a do-er. and after, it's luck. i started my first venture when i was 17 years old.

i was in the music industry. that was the first. i was promoting concerts. my second venture was one of the first web agencies in eupe, and it was so hard. and i learned so much, because it was hard to do anything. i was 22, ponytail, beard. third, i started my venture firm. at the time, i was 24. mostly here in the u.s., between europe and the u.s. during the bubble. when the bubble burst, i moved back to europe, and when i was in europe, i decided to start my fourth venture. and i did my market research, i tried to understand what could be the next big wave after the internet, and i realized that mobile would become pretty big one day. so we were building apps, mobile sites, whatever you have now on your phone. at some point, we decided to sell the business to a bigger

group called publicis group. i started my fifth startup, a social media platform for big media and corporations to help them to really manage correctly their social media strategy. it ended up being very successful, and we sold the startup to a bigger group called blackberry in 2013. ♪ the last 15 years, you had three different waves of technology -- the internet, mobile, social media. and i was there and said, "oh, i will try to do something." and i tried to adapt myself. we made mistakes, it was so hard. but we ended up being successful. i am good at watching the waves, the big wave coming, and being able to just go and ride the waves. ♪

arnaud: my name is arnaud de puyfontaine, and i am the ceo of the vivendi company. we met, alexandre and i, something like 15 years ago? at the time, we were living in paris. we had dinner together -- and you know how it is in france, at dinner, you share a lot of things. and we spent part of the night discussing and our friendship started then. he is a great entrepreneur. he is very often anticipating what is going to be the next wave. he "works like hell," should i say? never stops. always doing different things at the same time. if you have a strong combination between the creative side of the french, and you combine it with the kind of the can-do culture of the english-speaking world, it is very powerful. so i guess that both characteristics are really part of who alex is. ♪

huy: i am huy nguyen trieu, and i am a merchandiser for an international bank in london. i used to be ceo of a tech startup before. that is where i met alex. with alex, we immediately clicked. we spent quite a lot of all nighters together. i still remember it, 15 or 20 years ago. all of those nights. we were sharing about our dreams and our visions. and our dreams were very similar. our dreams were to change the world and to have anmpact on society. for us, the best way to do that was to have enough financial success so that we could give back. the startups we were working on were a means to an end, that was really the objective. alexandre: when i was in my

early 20's, i said, "how can i have this impact? how can we change things?" and i realized pretty early that if you really want to have an impact, it is better to have leverage. how can we get -- how can we have leverage? you can have leverage if you have money. but the goal here was really to say at some point in my life, i will be able to change and to switch to something different. the something different will be just nonprofit. huy: he could have kept going on and become a very good serial entrepreneur in technology. but he then he just decided to stop and dedicate his time to philanthropy. so i think that is quite impressive. [speaking french] alexandre: because of those different successes i mentioned, i was able to earn enough money to be able to do only things i

wanted to do. i am just finally running my sixth startup. epic foundation is everything i wanted to build since a young adult. ♪

narrator: alexandre mars is an entrepreneur with the golden touch, founding and selling a string of successful tech startups, and riding the waves of social media and technology. but he is no ordinary businessmen. french-born and u.s.-based, he has had a life lived in different places and amongst different cultures. ♪ alexandre: where is home? i think home is not only in paris or new york, it is everywhere. so i've had the chance to travel to so many places. i grew up in paris. my parents moved from paris to the u.s. in their early 20's. and after, they moved back to europe. so that is the story of my family. so it is very hard to answer, if new york feels like home or paris, i think just both places are very close to my heart. it's where i spent five years of

my life, also with my wife -- we went to college together. not too far from here. some place called hec, a great french college school. and after, we went here. the very last floor of this beautiful place. that is really paris. that is the beauty of paris here. we do not have plans for the next 15 years. we know that we will certainly keep moving. where exactly, it could be mumbai or paris or tokyo, i do not know yet. we are so happy and that is what we love doing, we love spending time and living in the present. so it was at the end of the 1990's, i was here in new york. just running a venture firm. my wife was working in india. she was working for an orphanage

for mother teresa. and i was working here, dealing generally with millions of dollars, and then i traveled to visit her, and she was helping those kids in this orphanage. and i, again, realized how life is. it is not good or bad here, we are just saying, "that is life." sometimes it could be three blocks from where we are talking here. you can help people. so like any good entrepreneur, i said, "i should do my market research. i should go and talk to people. i should better understand before launching anything." that was five years ago. so i took my resume with me, my bio, and i started knocking on doors, and i took people just from my industry. so i went to see the gates foundation, the google.org, people from the tech industries, and said, "guys, if you have time for me, i will really appreciate it. because i know i want to do something in that space. but before doing anything, i

need to understand." well, my wife said, "let's do this thing, and let's travel the world. let's do this market research. but not only in the u.s., not only in western europe, but let's go everywhere else." so we took the kids out of school, we homeschooled them, and we traveled the world. going from peru to mongolia, from sydney to moscow. the goal was to sit down with people -- local people, philanthropists, policymakers, ngo's -- and ask them questions. how does it work in your country? how can we have an impact? what should be different in the near-future? and for me, it was very important to understand this global aspect before launching anything. ♪ the reason why you are not

giving more -- really, it is not one reason, it is three reasons. the first one is you do not trust social organizations most of the time. two, you do not have time. the third is your knowledge. so at the end of the year when you have your checkbook with you, and even if you have money, you will say, "you know what? i will give to organizations i really trust." so schools. your kids' schools. your school. i have met so many people, so many people told me, "i want to give more, really, but i do not know where to start. so every year, i will postpone this to next year." i think it is important to use or to adapt the tools that people are using. the traditional philanthropy is more to say, "trust me. and trust my organization. i will give you some information once a year, brochures, some e-mails, and after, i will invite you to a gala."

that is more how traditional philanthropy works now. but we have realized that over the years, that is no longer what people want. people want more. people want, really, to have access to the tools they use every single day. so i will say the problem with philanthropy is more what kinds of issues you have as a donor. so that is more where i see what i can bring to this industry. that is what i have been working on for all of those years. ♪ alexandre: for us, it is all about youth and kids, zero to 24 years old. it is education, it is protection, it is health. and we do this in six regions

around the world -- the u.s., brazil, western europe, east africa, southeast asia, and india. that is what we cover. and in those different regions, we want to find the most amazing social organizations, and we want to bring them to the knowledge of potential donors. now, you can track everything you want, everything. your bank account, your stock portfolio, the grades of your kids, if you have kids, whatever can be tracked. why not social? ♪ huy: if you think of disruption, in general, disruption is really putting an intense focus on an existing industry. trying to see what works. trying to see what could be better. trying to see what could be reinvented. one of the ways that epic

foundation is disrupting philanthro is that it is putting much more transparency in that world. it makes it much easier to understand the impact of what you are doing in philanthropy. so instead of just giving money, people have almost a kind of return of investment on their money. arnaud: to get the feedback and to get the information about the impact that you, as an individual, are having and being able to give to other people will create a much better environment for people to be able to give back. ♪ alexandre: there is no downside. we do the work, we find the organizations, and we present those organizations to you as a potential donor. and we are not asking any money for this. no cut, nothing. and the goal is to bring you

something, because we know you don't have the time. we know you don't have, maybe, the knowledge. but if we do the work for you and if you trust the methodology, you will give more. arnaud: i guess it was eleanor roosevelt who said, "life belongs to those who believe in the reality of their dreams." yes, i think that he truly believes that he will be able to get an impact in changing the world. i wish there will be more and more people like alex to be able to make that right. ♪

♪ narrator: as an trepreneur, alexandre mars specialized in identifying and profiting from the latest developments in technology. now he believes people can use these developments to monitor and evaluate their social investments. his latest startup, epic foundation, aims to bring new

technology to the world of philanthropy. alexandre: we are kind of a conduit between two different worlds. we're not really talking to each other. people with money, power, wealth, they want to do more, really. but it is so hard, you know, to find those organizations. so, for us is how can we bring tools to this industry? three sets of tools. the first one is about selection. the second one is about tracking. the third one is about the experience. that's what we do at epic foundation. the first tool is the selection. we have decided to have the same approach as venture capitalists. we have started, really, recruiting applications from around the world. this year, we have received 1400 applications from 85 countries.

and we have spent six months to vet only 20 of them. the second tool, and that's also very important for this generation, is a tracking tool. it is how you, as a donor, can see what is happening with your money. so you will be able to have on your mobile phone, on your tablet, information about the organizations you are funding. it could be just the number of shots in africa in a given today, or the number of kids who are missing in the organization in vietnam. the goal is for you to understand and to really see at the end of every day, every week, every month, depending on what you want to get. information about your money and the fact that your money is really helping the world. the third tool is about the experience. and some people do not want to do this, they don't have time. sometimes, people can be scared to visit organizations. what we are saying is "it's fine. we will send journalists." so what we are doing is bringing journalists and sending journalists all over the planet

to film this. ♪ t.g.: i'm t.g. herrington, a director, producer, and a writer. and most recently helped alex do his world tour with epic, documenting the process. the logistics are insane. you know, honest to god, i cannot even remember how many countries we went to. alexandre: it is great to have skype calls, it is great to have e-mail exchanges, but nothing will replace the fact that i am coming and i will visit you and i will just talk to you and i will ask you to bring me to the places you are working in. that is what we have done. we have vetted 50 organizations during 10 weeks. at the end of it, we narrowed this number down to 20. ♪

alexandre: there are three main factors. how we can define that your organization has a real impact in the life of these kids. the second one is the organization. how the organization does, in terms of the relationsp wi the community. the third is the leadership. how the leadership is, if there is any gaps in their chain of command, everything? that's what we went through. that is why at the very end of it, we have finalized the selection with 20 amazing social organizations that tackle those issues. t.g.: it is a smart play. you know -- give us the money, let us select and go through all of this year-long process of

vetting out and selecting these 20 of the best organizations in the world. and then we will put your money to good use. and along the way, you're going to learn something about giving. you're going to learn what it means to give. you're going to get to intimately know and monitor organizations that you are giving to. ♪ alexandre: the reason why it is really at no cost for the donors is because we are taking all of the cost. as a good entrepreneur, i should be able to find a way. so we already had people coming over, saying, "you know what? we want to help you, we want to help you, even just funding the structure." and we said, "that is not the point here. if you want to fund anything, fund the projects. and fund those organizations." at some point, maybe, we will decide something different. we will do an endowment fund. i will put more and other people

will put more. but for now, i was lucky enough to have and to get just enough successes to be able to fund this for many, many years. ♪ t.g.: they are not only empowering and helping the beneficiaries, the kids out there in the world that need help, but they are actually helping the donors as well. arnaud: alex's approach is currently shaking the environment, and it is providing a new rule of the game, which should trigger a better momentum in what people with influence and with power and with money can do in creating a better world. so, time will tell, but the most important thing is to get the catalyst of change, and alex is

among those who are making that happen. so, hats off. alexandre: i am an entrepreneur. as an entrepreneur, i know how to adapt myself. so maybe in two years or three years, it will be slightly different. but we'll add some. because technology will evolve. people will change, culture can be changing also. but yes, for now, and for the next coming years, that is what we think is -- will be very useful to change the way people give, to change the way people think, to change the way people just act. ♪

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