♪ emily: they're twin brothers who grew up in wartime iran, teaching themselves how to code on a commodore 64. then, after perhaps a life-saving break from the u.s. immigration system, they landed perhaps what is the american dream. getting degrees from harvard and silicon valley, eventually striking startup gold with companies that sold to microsoft and myspace. with their financial future secure, hadi and ali partovi

became angel investors, backing companies like uber and dropbox and focused on democratizing the opportunity that gave them success with code.org. they kicked off a campaign that went to number one on youtube with some of tech's most iconic faces. joining me on studio 1.0, founders of code.org, hadi and ali partovi. i'm used to interviewing you guys separately, but it is a pleasure to have you together. i'm curious, what was it like growing up as the brothers partovi? >> it's just really wonderful to be a twin. i always felt that there was something amazing that not everybody else had. because i had someone i could trust with everything and look up to. and try to be as good as him. emily: and you are identical right? >> [in unison] yes. emily: how are you similar and different? >> we are both competitive and driven. our veterans are similar. we're both harvard computer science majors.

we're the only set of twins to both sell companies to microsoft. a lot of the things we have done are similar. i think i'm more of a stress case. my brother is more easy-going comparatively. emily: you were born in tehran. you were six years old when the iran-iraq war broke out. what was living through that like? >> it was pretty horrific. my childhood, i remember feeling scared most of the time. either scared of my neighborhood being bombed, which is certainly was, and i also remember always being worried about something bad would happen to my parents. that i would come home from school and i wouldn't have my parents there anymore. there was a period during the bombardment when we would spend overnights in the basement holding our ears, because our neighborhood was actually being bombed. so it was pretty rough. i will say though, having gotten out of that, it is certainly something that makes me feel much stronger, because i feel like i can take on anything. and you know, if you can survive that, it makes day-to-day problems today seem much easier

to deal with. emily: how did your parents communicate to you what was going on? >> one of the things i remember is my dad, he tried to make it seem like the bombardment wasn't actually our neighborhood. he'd say that these planes are breaking the sound barrier so you can hear them from miles away. he would wake up in the morning to go see whose homes were still standing. emily: what did your parents do? >> my dad was a professor of a university of technology called sharif university. my mother was a systems analyst. once the revolution happened, it was hard to keep a job. women were just so i pressed at the time. emily: and in the midst of this, is that when you learn how to code? >> yes, we were nine years old. my dad had gone to a physics conference and brought back a commodore 64. this was 1981 or so? no games, no software, just a

couple books on how to program in basic. and he spent maybe the first hour or two with us, getting us started. and then we read the books and basically taught each other how to do it. and he spent a lot of time then giving us ideas on what we could create. a big part of learning computer programming is the imagination part, imagining what you might do, and then kind of feeling the confidence that it's possible and then going out and attacking it. emily: was there a moment when you thought, this is what i want to do? or did that come later? hadi: well, one great thing about computer programming in iran during the war, it was an escape. all of our family had left iran to come to the united states. when you are programming a computer, you can close that all out and create whatever you want. emily: you moved to the united

states when you were 11? >> yes, leaving a country like iran for starters, it's not that easy. especially during the war. it took a lot of time to get the paperwork done and so on, to get it out. so first of all we moved to europe, then we were traveling around for a whole summer, trying to find a u.s. amber's the that would grant us visas to be able to enter the united states. we had reached the point where, one more rejection, it would be like, you can never come to the u.s. i remember that we rented an apartment in italy, we were there, and the phone rang. my mom picked it up, thank god was our mom, and not our dad. so, our mom picked it up, and it was a woman on the other end of the line informing her that we have been rejected. so my mom, who is -- like many other iranian women, fiery and fearless, i mean she started sobbing, saying that this is not fair, that if we had to go back

her sons would probably die in the war. she asked the woman, can you please tell the head of the consulates to give us another chance? and the woman on the other side said, actually, i am ahead of the consulate. so they had some sort of connection come and she asked the state department to make a special exception for us. and so, we found out a few days later that we had been accepted, so we were this close to never coming here. i would say, ever since then, i have always felt that the world would be a much happier place if there were more women in leadership positions. emily: if you want something done, get a mother on it. she will get it done. iran was on a list of travel ban countries. what was it like being an iranian in the age of donald trump? >> it was difficult, but at least we made it. it would have been completely impossible today. we wouldn't even have applied. we would've been banned. i think, being an immigrant from any country is difficult, in a time when one group is being pulled out. so much of what america what it is is that we are a land of

immigrants, especially for our selves, knowing how it would be for us, especially right now, it is quite difficult. emily: your family is quite successful. the ceo of uber is your cousin, one of your cousins also funded an ai company that was purchased by intel. should that be a lesson to president trump? adi: there's a lot of iranians and immigrants who are very successful in tech. our family of well, but as many others as well. immigrants have created a lot of companies, they have created the largest number of jobs in this country. and part of why i started code.org was to show an immigrant can give an opportunity in a country that seems like it is lacking it. emily: you both ended up at harvard studying computer science. how did you get there, and what happened next? >> we both worked really hard to get the grades to be accepted into harvard. we were lucky they provided financial aid.

and we also spent all of our summers working in high school on computer programs to help us save money to help pay for college. what happened next, graduating in 1994 at the dawn of the internet, it was such a wonderful time to be in tech and already fully knowledgeable. this was when companies were basically getting started, over the next 10 years. so much of our career got shaped by being at the right place at the right time. with a network of people who are now many of the greatest folks in tech. emily: so you started working at microsoft, and you started working at oracle. this was at the dotcom boom hitting a fever pitch. >> hadi's career was already at a higher pitch than mine. within two years of graduation, i left oracle and joined a startup that was fairly didn't. meanwhile, hadi headed joined the microsoft explorer team, the creator of the browser, and it was probably one of the most

exciting jobs in the whole tech industry. emily: and didn't you try to convince microsoft to do search, and they didn't? adi: so at the time, this was 1998, and the top search engines at the time did not exist. we tried to convince microsoft the biggest way to monetize search was to have text-based ads that were keyword targeted and to sell them on an option basis. which is exactly what adwards is today, except, we call it keywords. turned out, it just 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?" >> adi 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 google, they have great potential. it was a very diplomatically

worded email, but very prescient as well. ♪ >> we will invest in something that we think is a bad 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. zappos. how did you get into all those deals? >> i think 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 is, 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 were lucky to get introduced via a number of routes, when facebook was still

eight or nine people. there was a humbling thing to get to see the company at such a stage. a lot of people at the time were saying, why are you involved in this company? i remember my wife saying at the time, are you trying to get into fraternity parties or something? facebook at that time, was in just about 100 colleges, a place for college students to meet each other and flirt. but i remember the very first time i met mark, my immediate reaction was like, this guy is more like bill gates than anyone had met. it reminded me of a time i had interacted with bill gates at microsoft, i remember the level of vision he had was so much more than the fraternity angle. the dropbox story is my favorite, because it captures several parts of what hadi and i brought together to investing. so there was a senior at mit that hadi already knew, having had him as an intern. his name is mac, and we were trying to recruit him into a small startup.

and mac had his eyes set on a bigger company, because he was just graduated from college. we referred for him to go to facebook, which at the time was 200 people or so. hadi asked him, can you tell us who the smartest guys are in your class at mit are? he said, i know this guy, but he will not join your startup either, because he has his own company. with them learned about his startup, which was drop box. it was just a two-person company. at this point, we had them fly out to the west coast and gave them coding tests to assess how good of computer programmers they actually are, and this is something that's part of our routine for all investments. basically, if we're investing in

a company, we won't do it until the technical funder can pass a rigorous technical interview. and based on his skills, the is added to invest in dropbox, and we spent the next several years, even quite recently, helping dropbox recruit engineers. emily: what about uber? >> uber we weren't as early in. in fact, i wish we'd an earlier investors because so many of our network was early in uber. >> getting into later stage investment, not everyone has access. part of what has enabled us to have access to investments like that, it is not just based on who we know, it is because we have developed a reputation for helping companies like facebook or dropbox, with recruiting. emily: when you are watching from the outside at uber, what do you think went wrong there? >> it's really hard to manage hypergrowth. i think there was a culture of a no holds barred approach to competitiveness. and i think there's some lines that you should not cross. it's really hard for a company that large to know, which laws are we paying attention to? which laws are we ok breaking? who gets to decide that?

at that point, you get into this cultural situation where anything kind of goes, and i think things got a little bit out of control. emily: do you think at this late stage, that dara khosrowshahi who have is to be her cousin, can turn things around? >> i do. it's still an incredibly healthy business at its core. when you consider the turmoil that happened, where the entire senior staff was axed. did anyone miss a ride? did we hear any reports about cars stopping, ever is not picking up their passengers? dara is just a prince among men, who inherently because of the humility and personal respect his personal character brings, people want to see him succeed. the sheer goodness of his character is enough to change some of the things. starting with 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's something missing from your stories about the amazing people in your network, and the people you funded, and that is, women. i'm curious how you would describe the role of women in those early days of the dotcom boom, and how you have seen that evolve or not involve, given that the numbers haven't really changed. >> the lack of women in tech i think, bothers everybody, and bothers women and men alike. it's very personal to us. our mom, she had a masters in computer science, so i grew up with a mom who was in tech. a large part of why ali and i started code.org was to help fix the diversity issue, starting with the pipeline. and the diversity problems are

obviously about the promotion path, but also, about the pipeline. if the graduating population is 80% white and asian males, it is hard to have a balanced workforce when the students coming into the field are so imbalanced. what we've done at code.org is completely change the high school and the k-12 picture. we start using code.org materials as early as elementary or kindergarten. the code.org student base now is 25 million students, which is much larger than the software engineering population in the united states. and it's almost 45% girls. there are almost 12 million girls coding on code.org. emily: how did you do that? >> the answer to that really, is teachers. we did a lot of great things with the website, but the key to getting u.s. education to adopt computer science has been the american teacher. if we want to which every student, especially the students who have the least opportunity -- they're not going to

afterschool clubs. we have to reach them in school. >> the platform is free, it is on the web. in fact, the school could say, they could assign it as homework if they don't have enough time on the schedule or computers in the classroom. it's so much easier for kids to do it, if they feel like it is a standard part of school. everyone learns fractions whether they like it or not. so, when a school teaches it, it gives them a sense of social universality that you cannot accomplish necessarily, at home. emily: how do you recruit teachers when those teachers could be making money at facebook or google? >> so, we don't get computer scientists to become teachers, we get teachers to learn computer science. by far, one of the largest workforce retraining operators in the country now. emily: how are you convincing schools who are already resource strapped to add these courses? >> the teachers are convincing their schools. emily: so they're already working in the schools? >> yes, they're already working

in the school, it's the math teacher, english teacher, science teacher, they see our materials and they realize, our school should be doing this. the teacher in oakland who decided, why isn't oakland doing computer science? the first teacher there, her name is claire, she taught herself computer science on her own and started to teach a class. but she wanted it to be in every school in oakland, so she came to code.org. and we said, but will train one teacher in every school and every district. two years later, every district teaches computer science. emily: so, what are the challenges that still remain? >> changing the school system is hard. >> funding is hard as well. emily: and code.org is a nonprofit? >> 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. i believe. i believe that those same companies should get credit for the work that we do, so amazon, facebook and especially, microsoft, those are our three largest donors.

and when we're bringing 12 million girls into this field, those companies should get credit for funding an operation like this. emily: eric roberts, longtime computer science professor at stanford, wrote a paper where he talked about the capacity of collapse and the ability to handle computer science students. in 1984, the max out, 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 that we are facing another potential capacity collapse today because so many people are interested, but they can't accommodate. >> that's happening now. the university of seattle, washington turns away 3/4 of the students trying to get into computer science. >> it's not based on their gender, but it's based on grades.

which, you know, i think everybody should have a chance to learn. the university system really needs to recognize, that if you cannot teach them the most important subject that students want to learn, then the university system either needs to change, or students will go to learn some other way. this is a really, really big program for our country, and it is a problem which -- i know that code.org is in some ways 25 million students exacerbating the problem, because you are bringing interested in this problem. the university faces a problem that is only going to get worse. and they need to absolutely adapt to that demand. emily: my concern is that will hurt women again. because, if you are filtering students based on their experience and their grades, when traditionally, boys have had more experience -- >> not necessarily, it could. 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. they have basically, by edict, they said they will accept 50% female computer science applicants. so, they are essentially going to give an equal number of spots

to men and women. >> and that might actually chill -- tilt things in favorite of women over time. emily: so, if you are a parent right now, what should you be doing if you want your kids to have a chance in this field? >> the first thing i'd say, make sure that if your kids are in school, make sure that your school teaches computer science, because most schools don't teach 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. and if parents ask the teacher there is usually one teacher at the school who wants to see computer science taught at that school, and that teacher will pick up code.org and start doing it. change happens at the local level. but the difference is, parents are always wondering, what should my kids do? we tell them, what should your school do? emily: let us talk about neo. neo is your new thing. it's a community of engineers, there's a venture arm attached to it -- what is it?

>> it's focused on finding the tech leaders of tomorrow. our aim is to identify future tech leaders as young as sophomores in college. so we identify, include them in the community, and we invest in them? hadi: we have brought together this amazing spectrum of people that includes the cto of microsoft, the original cto of google, the original cto of face book, as well as these amazing people who have created amazing things. founders, the woman who founded task rabbit, for example, or the guy who invented photo tagging, the guy who created ios, all of these people, not all of them are famous, but they have all contributed something amazing to the world of technology. and so we're bringing them together with a pool of young people, who have been curated and selected based on their talent and their promise. emily: so how is it similar or different to something like y combinator? >> i'd say it's similar because of the energy and the belief in

unlimited possibility. extremely different because these are not founders with companies. some of them are, some of them might become future founders, but we're not incubating business ideas. we are just trying to find 10 or 15 of the best computer scientists in the country, and bring them to the community. emily: for the young men and women who want to make it in silicon valley, be an investor, entrepreneur, be an engineer, what is your advice? >> my first and most important thing is to just, believe in yourself. the tech industry is something that even come from very humble beginnings, and make it, based on what is in your head and your heart, and hard work. studying computer programming is like learning a sport or an instrument. anybody can start, and if they put time into it, they can become successful. >> i would add to that and say, even if you don't want to become a coder, learning computer science can help no matter what you want to do in tech. everybody should have at least a basic background of computer

science, it's easy and a lot more fun than people imagine. it can open doors in any field, but especially the tech industry. emily: hadi and ali partovi, thank you so much for joining us on studio 1.0. great to have you guys. ♪

guy: coming up on "bloomberg best," the stories that shaped the week in business around the world. a banquet of news from central banks gives markets plenty of decisions to digest. >> keeping low rates in place for an extended period of time. >> this is the right decision for the economy given the track it is on. >> the plan for rate increases is being further cemented. guy: lots of noise and some ggressive signals around trade and tariffs. >> and they also said they believe in negotiations. >> don't underestimate president trump's determination to push through. i'm just telling you.