haslinda: it is 9:00 in singapore. here are the first word headlines. president trump expressed support for treasury secretary steven mnuchin and after questions about why he discussed bank liquidity when it did not seem to be a problem. the president said stephen mnuchin is talented and appeared to roll back his criticism of jerome powell. but he is raising rates, is confident policymakers will quote, get it. china has released new regulations promising to treat all companies equally, whether they are state-owned, private, or foreigners. the rules go into effect immediately and complain four bad kinds of business and a

further 147 categories where permits are required. it is one of the main issues for the u.s. in the current trade dispute. the boj has released the minutes from its october meeting with some board members saying policy changers they made in july have had the intended effect on markets. but one policymakers of the federal bank should be examining side effects of the policies while others said more policy coordination with the government is needed. the former executive has left jail after posting bail of more than $6,000. court rejected prosecutor's calls to keep him in detention. the decision has now gone to appeal. she was indicted last month for allegedly misstating a statement. he remains in jail in tokyo. both men deny the charges.

reports from tokyo city government has approved japan's control from the international whaling commission to resume hunts. they imposed a moratorium on commercial whaling in the 1980's due to dwindling stock. japan now says whale numbers have recovered enough to support renewed hunting and accuses the commission of becoming an anti-whaling organization. global news 24 hours a day on air and on tic toc on twitter, powered by more than 2700 journalists and analysts in more than 120 countries. let's do a check of the markets this hour. japan is currently up by 1.6%. also headed higher after slumping 5% yesterday. we have the dollar-yen currently rising 110, heading for its third gain in about nine days. singapore, taiwan, and malaysia have just joined it trading. pretty mixed.

futures pointing to a higher open. the government has said it will do more to support the economy. for now it is not made any relief in the markets. ♪ 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 realized the quintessential 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 prolific angel investors, backing facebook, uber and dropbox, and focused on democratizing the opportunity

that gave them success with code.org. it is a nonprofit that aims to bring coding to students everywhere. they kicked off a campaign that went to number one on youtube with some of tech's most iconic faces. joining me today on bloomberg 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 here together. i'm curious, what was it like growing up as the brothers partovi? >> it's just really wonderful to be a twin. so, i always felt that i had 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] right. emily: how are you similar and different? >> we are similar in being 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.

are think our differences part of what makes us unique. 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 just feeling scared almost 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 the nights in the basement holding our ears, because our neighborhood was actually being bombed. so it was also 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 how these planes are breaking the sound barrier so you can hear them from hundreds of 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. in mom, she had a masters computer science and she was a systems analyst. once the revolution happened, it was hard to keep a job. women were just so oppressed 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 was a physicist so he had gone to a physics conference and brought back a commodore 64. this was 1981 or so? no games, no software, just a

couple of books on how to program in basic. and he spent maybe the first hour or two with us, getting us started. and then we just read the books and basically taught each other how to do it. and he spent a lot of time then giving us ideas for what one 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 just go out and tackle 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 really was an escape. all of our family had left iran to come to the united states. so we were alone without family. 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 a war. so it took a lot of time to get the paperwork done and so on, to be able to get out. so first of all we moved to europe, and then 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. and i think we had reached the point where, one more rejection, it would be like, you can never come to the u.s. and so, i remember we had rented an apartment in italy, we were there, and the phone rang. my mom picked it up, thank god it 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 had been rejected. so my mom, who is, like many 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 consulate to give us another chance? and the woman on the other side said, actually, i am ahead of the consulate. and so somehow they had a connection, 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. and 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 is it like being an iranian immigrant 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 singled out for being bad. so much of what makes america what it is is that we are a land of immigrants, especially for

ourselves, knowing how different 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 the a.i. company nirvana systems which was bought 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, obviously, but there's 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 back opportunity and create 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 grades good enough to be accepted into harvard. we were lucky they provided financial aid. and we also spent all of our summers working in high school as computer programmers 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 is when companies that are all famous today 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 as the dotcom boom hitting a fever pitch. ali: 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 not doing w ell and was doomed. 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, search advertising did not exist. yahoo! was big banner advertising. we tried to convince microsoft the biggest way to monetize search was to have text-based ads that are keyword targeted and to sell them on an auction basis. which is exactly what adwards is today, except we called 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?" hadi: ali 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 really, really

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 really 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 that 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.

that was an unbelievable thing to get to see the company at such a stage. a lot of people at the time were saying, why are you even involved in this company? i remember my wife saying at the time, are you trying to get into fraternity parties or something? because facebook at that time was in just about 100 colleges, kind of just a way 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 else i have met. it reminded me of a time i had interacted with bill at microsoft, i remember the level of vision he had and where he wants to take it 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 from having had him as an intern. his name is mac, and we were

trying to recruit to 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 then 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 everybody knows this guy, but he will not join your startup either, because he has his own new 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 unless the technical funder can pass a rigorous technical interview.

and based on his coding skills, we decided 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 in uber 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. and i think there was a culture of no holds barred approach to competitiveness. and i think there are some holds that you should bar, 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 your also happens to be cousin, can turn things around? >> i do. it's still an incredibly healthy business at its core. i mean, 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? drivers not picking up their passengers? dara is just a prince among men. he is just somebody who inherently because of the humility and incredible respect that 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 the way other 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. and 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 evolve, 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 a woman 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 in tech obviously are 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 has completely changed 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 45% girls. so, there are almost 12 million girls coding on code.org. emily: so how did you do that? >> the answer to that really, is teachers. i mean, we did a lot of great things at code.org, 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 were at least likely to have opportunity, they are not going to summer camp or afterschool clubs. we have to reach them in school. entire curriculum and 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 enough computers in the classroom. but that is still 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 a lot of money at google or facebook? >> so, we don't get computer scientists to become teachers, we get teachers to learn computer science. so we are by far one of the largest workforce retraining operators in the country now. emily: and how are you convincing schools who are already resource strapped to add these teachers and these courses? >> the teachers are convincing their schools. emily: so they already work at these 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 a class, and then she decided 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. and i should say 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. so 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 the 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. so, in 1984, the max out, everybody is so excited about studying computer science, schools can't accommodate, so they start turning students away and actually the number of computer science degrees starts dropping.

it happened again in the dotcom boom. 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 three-quarters 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 it cannot teach students 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 becauseting the problem 25 million students are interested in the field and because you are bringing interest 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 the computer in their room. >> not necessarily, it could. carnegie mellon has a similar situation, where there are so many spots for computer science. you can't just elect to choose that major, you have to apply. they have basically, by edict, 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 tilt things in favor 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 is 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. and most americans don't think the school system can change, but we have now 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, the parents usually want to think, what should my kids do? we tell them, what should your school do? emily: let us talk about neo. neo is your new thing. >> yes. emily: 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. so, our aim is to identify future tech leaders as young as sophomores in college. so we identify, include them in the community, and 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 facebook, as well as these amazing people who have created amazing things. so, founders, the woman who founded task rabbit, for example, or the guy who invented

photo tagging, or the guy who created ios, all 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 in the youthful energy and the belief in unlimited possibility. extremely different in that these are not founders with companies. some of them are, and 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 into the community. emily: for the young men and women, boys and girls out there 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 just to 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. and in this day and age, 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 in the tech industry. emily: hadi and ali partovi, thank you so much for joining us on studio 1.0. great to have you guys. ♪

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free shipping too. just go to buyleesa.com today. you need this bed. haslinda: it is 9:30 in singapore, 10:30 in tokyo. here are the first word headlines. reports from beijing say policymakers have room for them the overall rrr cut. we are talking about regulation and control of monetary policy becoming more obvious. the economic information melee says a comprehensive cut in rates would be unlikely. a former pboc official says the bank will use the medium-term lending facility again if it works well. r