emily: they are twin brothers who grew up in wartime iraq, teaching themselves how to code on a commodore 64. after a life-saving break from the u.s. immigration system, they landed degrees from harvard and silicon valley, eventually striking start of gold with companies that sold to microsoft and myspace. with their financial securities -- financial future secure, they backed companies like uber and dropbox and focused on democratizing the opportunity

that gave them success with coding.org. they kicked off a campaign that went to number one on youtube with some of tech's most iconic faces. 1.0,ng me on studio founders of code.org. i am used to interview and you guys separately, but it is a pleasure to have you together. what was it like growing up as brothers? >> it was wonderful to be a twin . i felt i had something amazing that someone else didn't have, because i had someone i could trust with everything and look up to. emily: and you are identical twins. how are you similar and different? >> we are both competitive and driven. our veterans are similar. we are both harvard computer science majors. we are the only set of twins to both cell companies to microsoft. a lot of the things we have done

are similar. i think i am more of a stress case. my brother is more unique comparatively. emily: you were born in tehran. you were six years old when the iran-iraq war broke out. what was that like? >> it was horrific. i was scared all the time of our neighborhood be involved, which it frequently -- being bombed, which he frequently was. there was a period during the bombardment when we would spend nights holding our ears. that was pretty rough. i will say having gotten out of makes me feel much stronger, because i feel i can take on anything. if you can survive that, it

makes day-to-day problems seem .uch easier to deal with >> my dad tried to make it seem like the board amended -- the bombardment wasn't our neighborhood. he would wake up in the morning to go see whose homes were still standing. emily: what did your parents do? >> my dad was the head of a university of technology in the company. my mother was a systems analyst. once the revolution happened, it was hard to keep a job. women were so impressed at the time. emily: when you learned to code, you were nine years old? >> my dad had gone to a physics conference and brought back a commodore 64. this was 1981 or so? no software, just a

couple books on how to program in basic. he got us started. basicallye books and taught each other how to do it. he spent a lot of time giving us ideas for what we could create. a big part of computer programming is the imagination feeling on the confidence end that it is possible. emily: is this what you felt you wanted to do, or did it come later? >> the thing about programming in the iraq war was it was an escape. when you are programming a computer, you can close that all out. emily: you moved to the united states when you were 11 years old. >> leaving a country like iran

is not easy for starters, especially during a war. it took a lot of work to get the paperwork done to get out. we first moved to europe. we were traveling around for a whole summer trying to find a u.s. embassy who would grant us visas to be able to enter the united states. it got to the point where it was like, one more rejection and you can never enter the u.s. we were in italy in a parking lot, and the phone rang, and thank god it was our mom and not our dad. it was a woman on the other end of the line informing us we had been rejected. other iranian women, she started sobbing, saying this was not fair, if we could not go back, her sons

would die in the war. can i speak to the head of the consulate? the woman on the other side sai d, i am actually be head -- the head of the consulate, and they made an exception for us, and we found out the next day we were accepted. we were this close to not coming here. since that the world would be a better place if there were more women in leadership positions. emily: iran was on a list of travel ban countries. what was it like being an iranian in the age of donald trump? >> it wouldn't have been possible today. we would have been banned. being an immigrant from any country is difficult when any group is being singled out. we are a land of immigrants.

especially knowing how different our lives would have been. emily: your family is quite successful, the ceo of uber, one of your cousins also founded the systems,any nirvana which was founded by intel. should that be a lesson to president trump? >> there are many successful iranian immigrants, the founder of ebay. immigrants have created the largest number of jobs in this country. the reason i started code.org was to show an immigrant can give an opportunity in a country that seems is lacking. emily: you both studied computer science at harvard. >> we both worked really hard to get the grades to be accepted into harvard. we were lucky they provided

financial aid. we spent all of our summers working as computer programmers to pay for college. graduating in 1994 at the dawn of the internet was such a wonderful time to be in tech and already fully knowledgeable. this was a time when companies were getting started. so much of our career got shaved by - -shaped by being at the right place at the right time. emily: you started working at microsoft, and he started working at oracle. boom was at the dotcom hitting a fever pitch. >> within two years of graduation, i left oracle and joined a startup that was fairly didn't. meanwhile, he joined the microsoft browser team, one of

the most exciting jobs in the country. emily: didn't you try to convince microsoft to do search, and they didn't? searchou went to the top engines at the time, it was big advertising. we tried to convince microsoft the biggest way to monetize search was to have text ads that were keyword based. that is the same it is today. it wasn't something microsoft was prepared to invest in at the time. emily: did you ever tell bill gates or steve ballmer "i told you so?" >> i wrote a letter to steve after leaving microsoft, i had a great experience here, but as i leave, you should keep your eyes on this new startup called goog

le, they have great potential. it was a very diplomatically worded email. we will invest in something we a badis a b ideaad -- is idea if we like the person. ♪

emily: you do have possibly the most impressive list of angel investments of anyone, including facebook, airbnb, uber, dropbox. how did you get into all of those deals? >> investing in good people is the most important thing. every investor talks about investing in good people. we take it a lot more seriously. the way i mean that -- we will invest in something we think is a bad idea if we like the person. emily: you also invested in mark zuckerberg. how did that happen? >> we got involved with facebook

when it was a or nine people. -- eight or nine people. at that time, a lot of people were saying, why are you involved in this company? my wife at the time said, are you trying to get into fraternity parties or something? facebook at the time was a way for college students to meet and flirt. i thought mark zuckerberg was more like bill gates than anyone i had met, and i saw the level of vision he had was so much more than the fraternity angle. the dropbox story captures several parts of what hadi and i brought together to investing. there was a senior at mit that hadi already knew, having had him as an intern. we were trying to recruit him

into a small start up. a biggers eyes set on company, because he was just graduating from college. we referred for him to go to facebook, which at the time was 200 people. hadi said, can you say who were the smartest guys are in your class? he was not going to join, because he had a new company. hem fly point, we had t out to the west coast and gave them coding tests to assess how good computer programmers they are. this is routine for all of our investments. we don't invest if the technical founder can't pass a rigorous technical review. we decided to invest in dropbox. we spent the next several years

helping dropbox recruit engineers. emily: what about uber? >> uber we went as early in -- weren't as early in. >> giving into later stage investment, not everyone has access. what enables us to access like that is not based on what we know. watching from the outside at uber, what do you think we nt wrong? richard: it is hard to manage hypergrowth. i think there is some homes you should -- holds you should bar, some lines you should not cross. it is hard for a company at large to know whic lar -- which laws you are paying attention to. you get to this point where

anything goes, and i think things got out of control. emily: do you think at this stage your cousin can turn things around? >> i do. it is still in credibly healthy business at its core. consider the tumult where the entire senior staff was axed. cars notss anything, picking up their passengers? whos a prince among men, inherently because of the humility and personal respect his character brings, people want to see him succeed. the sheer goodness of his character is enough to change some of the things. changing the culture, as hadi mentioned, and changing how people interact with the company. the key to getting u.s.

education to adopt computer science has been the american teacher. ♪

emily: there is something missing from your stories about people that you have funded in the network, and that is women. i am curious about how you would describe the role of women in the early days of the dotcom b oom, and how you have seen that involve or not -- evolve or not evolve. >> the lack of women in tech bothers us. our mom had a masters in computer science, so i grew up with a mom who was in tech. a large region why i started code.org was to fix the diversity issue. the diversity problems are not

only about the promotion path, but the pipeline. if the graduating population is 80% white and asian males, it is hard to have a balanced workforce. what we have done at code.org is completely change the high school and k through 12 picture. we start using code.org materials as early as elementary school. the base is 25 million students, which is much larger than the software engineering population in the united states. there are almost 12 million girls coding on code.org. emily: how did you do that? >> the key to getting u.s. education to adopt computer science has been the american teacher. if we want to reach students who have the least opportunity -- they are not going to after school camps or summer clothes we have tor clubs --

reach them in school. homeworkd assign it as if they don't have enough computers in the classroom, but it is much easier for students to do it if they feel it is a standard part of school. everyone learns fractions whether they like it or not. learning it at school gives it a universality you cannot accomplish at home. emily: how do you recruit teachers when they could be making money at facebook or google? >> we get teachers to learn computer science. we are one of the biggest workforce retraining operators in the country. emily: how do you convince schools who are already resource strapped to add these courses? >> the teachers are already in the schools. the next teacher, -- math

teacher, english teacher, science teacher, they see our schools should be doing this. the oakland teacher who asked, why isn't oakland doing computer science? she learned on her own and taught a class. she wanted it to be in every school in oakland, so she came to code.org. we trained every district. two years later, every district teaches computer science. emily: what are the challenges that remain? >> funding is hard as well. we are a nonprofit. we are funded by the same tech companies that i believe should be fixing a lot of the gender issues in tech, so we are part of the solution. those same companies should get credit for the work that we do. amazon, facebook, and microsoft are our three largest donors.

when we are bringing 12 million girls into this field, those companies should get credit. emily: eric roberts, longtime professor at stanford, wrote a paper about the liability to handle computer science students. in 1984, everyone is excited about studying computer science. schools can't accommodate, so they start turning students away, and the number of computer science degrees starts declining. he warns we are facing another potential capacity collapse today, because so many are interested, but can't accommodate. >> that is happening now. the university of seattle, washington turns away 3/4 of the students trying to get into computer science. gender,t based on their but it is based on grades. the university system needs to understand if they can't teach

the most important subject students want to learn -- the university either needs to change, or students will go learn some other way. i know code.org is exacerbating the problem, because we are bringing 25 million students interested in this problem. the university faces a problem that is only going to get worse. they need to adapt. emily: my concern is it will hurt women again. if you are treating students based on experience and grades, traditionally -- >> carnegie mellon has a similar situation, where there are so many spots or computer science. you can't just elect to choose that major, you have to apply. by edict, they said they will accept 50% female computer science applicants. they are essentially going to give equal number of spots to men and women. >> that may tilt things toward

women. emily: if you are a parent right now, what should you be doing if you want your kids to have a chance in this field? >> if your kids are in school, make sure the school teaches computer science. most americans don't think the school system can change, but we have shown that a massive scale of tens of thousands of schools that schools can change. if parents ask the teacher, there's usually one teacher that wants to see computer science taught. change happens at the local level. the parents think, what should my kids do? we tell them, what should your school do? emily: neo is your new thing, a community of engineers, there is a venture arm attached to it -- what is it? >> is focused on finding the

tech leaders of tomorrow. our aim is to identify tech leaders as young as sophomores in college. we invest in them. we have brought together this amazing spectrum of people including the cto of microsoft, original cto of google and facebook. the woman who founded past scrap, or the guy who invented photo tagging, the guy who created ios. not all of them are famous, but each has contributed something amazing to the world of technology. we are bringing them together with a pool of young people who have been curated and selected based on talent and promise. is similar in the belief of unlimited possibility. extremely different in that

these are not founders with companies. some of them might become future founders, but we are not incubating business ideas. we are trying to find 10 or 15 of the best computer scientists in the country. emily: for the young men and women who want to make it in silicon valley, be an investor, be an engineer, what is the most important advice? >> believe in yourself. the tech industry is somewhere you can come from humble beginnings and make it based on what is in your heart. learning computer programming is like learning an instrument. anyone can start and become successful. >> even if you don't want to become a coder, and computer science can help out -- learning computer science can help out no matter what you do in tech. it is a lot more fun than people

imagine. it can open doors in any field, but especially the tech industry. partovi,di and ali great to have you on studio 1.0. ♪

trading --arkets, positive news for now. -- as the successor carried shares are currently down. asebook, plummeting in trade user unhappiness and missed quarter results. in hong kong, i am rishaad salamat. up, becomingoming prime minister, the greatest achievement of all. we have the latest from pakistan. this is "bloomberg markets: asia ."

there is always a bit of caution in reno by now what a trade negotiation with president trump involves. have a positive take away from the trump-juncker meeting. amething of a deal that looks step away from a transatlantic trade were carried it looks like the asian regional economy holding up. a bit of resilience. rishaad: -- joining the semiconductor party. many companies have come in at ahead of estimates this reporting season. the chip business is doing well. we are looking at them and what is going on market wise. sophie: asian stocks mixed, but the yen