>> they started the company in a windowless phone closet in a warehouse in san francisco. 12 years later along with their third cofounder julia and kevin hart have turned event bright into a global business that powers millions of event in one -- 180 countries around the world. for the first 10 years kevin served as ceo. now julia is in the chief executive office and driving the company toward an ipo.

you founded a company. why did you decide to do it? julia: it was part of a two-year long evolution of getting to know each other and understanding how we might work together. we had come from entry skills and so when you find yourself in that situation you realize that you could be a powerful duo, i think it is a shame if you do not go for it. >> you were a tech investor, you invested in a cow, you found that a company -- founded a company. i love technology, i had a front row seat to happen -- see what happened to paypal. so finding the right partner to do this and we cannot leave out our third cofounder.

it felt very natural. we were not sure how it would work out, it is 10 years later and we are. groundrules,t down who does what, what happens if we fight? julia: as we started to work together, we had this agreement that we would divide and conquer and that we would also always check in. i was the customer support marketing and finance department, kevin was the hottest department and he was the third and we boosted the company, we were the founders for two or three years. think events and ticketing was a problem that needed to be solved or had to much potential? addressing this market that had been left to itself and what is exciting about event bright is we were

enabling all these creators to come together and host these events that they could not do before. with many different geographies and events it was a greenfield opportunity. kevin wasu disagreed, ceo. how did that get resolved? which we own had the pact that the ceo is the final say. i could provide a divergent opinion, others on the team would provide their opinions and kevin would make a decision. out of that we benefited from coming at problems from different angles. kevin may look at a problem from a product angle, i may look at it from a customer angle that we meet in the middle. that economy, i have the support of kevin and the board. kevin is the chairman and my notutive team that i have

only recruited and developed but i have been in the trenches with them, some of them up to seven years. >> when you started raising ofey for it was the middle the financial crisis, not a good time. kevin: we had said let's strap this company, let's not take outside funding, we will build an efficient, profitable business. >> is that something you learned , the challenges of dealing with investors? kevin: seen in the trivia cycle washe crash of 2001 it dangerous to be reliant on capital and we have seen that consistently through this cyclical time, we are any 10 year expansion. everything is up into the right. we like to be the masters of our own destinies. >> you need to raise money. >> we chose the worst time to go out. going out in late 2008 was a special experience. it taught us a lot.

with 27 for denture capital firms and we were turned down by all of them. that experience teaches you a lot, going into the room and having to answer critical questions about your business model. sometimes it takes a down market question that critical asking moment and if we had gone out during another time we would not have based -- face that. and i attribute this to you is we lost everyone with our annual plan. we just came back toward the end of 2009 and showed the results. -- showed results. it was not easy but i think that people were surprised by how much traction we had in such a difficult market.

excited to work him, has worked with us and he has been fantastic. >> most people we talked to say i cannot imagine working with my spouse. we would kill each other.

>> you step down in part due to health issues. how are you feeling? kevin: i am feeling great, 100%. was a great transition.

we had a founder in the building in julia that had this great insight about the business, really great perspectives and she stepped up during an incredibly tough time personally. she was taking care of me at took thet but also baton and has been fantastic. you, a was a moment for vacuum of leadership. you had this personal situation that you had to deal with. julia: it is hard for me not to get emotional, it is like i am back there again. it was difficult. was the difficult part notion that we would not be sitting side-by-side every day. have desks next to each other

by a decade. and so that was the scariest part. most people that we talk to they say i cannot imagine working with my spouse, we would kill each other. that is what we hear all the time. that was the normal. terrified of what it would .o to us as a partnership when we did not work together every day, it was the opposite. that is what i was afraid of and i have to say that now most two years into this new normal we have found our stride is being cooperating in this new construct. >> and want to talk about how you became ceo. it was not automatic. you had to propose this idea. for usit was important

to be objective. and to rely on our board to make the right call. but i did need to tell kevin that i was ready and it was scary. i know you never know what is on the other side of that and -- we were on an airplane and i had wine and i said you know, i think might be ready, i think this is something i would like to propose to the wine andu know, i think might be ready, i think this is something i would like to propose to the board but i wanted the board to know that they had the space to make the decision if they wanted to run a process, if they wanted to, you know, take time. >> how did you react? that she went to be ceo? >> if i it was an ideal situation not just because she is extremely a talented but when you have the ceo transitions the first job of the new ceo is to explain how horrible the past ceo was area because we live

together she could not get away with that. this is how you unload to the board all these challenges. she was restricted from doing that. julia: i was also there are so any mistake we made or less and we have learned is something that i was a part of. >> you are one of a few female ceos and rounders and i know you took the job, there were nervous about whether people would take you seriously, how did you overcome that? >> i put my head down and focused on what we needed to do as a business, this has been a tremendous growth time at i had to get to work and so i let all of that fall away and i just focused on building the right team for the future on executing and making sure that the cult's her which is global, right am a the world,se all of

everyone understood we would be ok, because the big moments of transition can be unnerving, it can create uncertainty even if there is nothing wrong, and so i needed them to know that i was aware of that and that we were all in this together. the helm, i take felt the difference of being ceo, that made me really respect some of the founder ceos that i , the women i have watched grow their companies? it is like when you have your first baby and you go back to work and you have immense respect for the women who have children and work? i felt the same way about taking the reins as ceo. is pretty solid when it comes to gender diversity. how did you do that? julia: we are almost 50-50 despite we have acquired some companies that have different gender ratios, we have always

been focused on trying to build a company that looks like our community and our community of creators is global? diversity has to be embedded in what we do. so me being a female ceo certainly provides a great embedded role model but inclusion is entirely a choice. you can have great diversity and really not great inclusion. avin: just as a -- there is technology or advance -- or damage, there is a recruiting advantage and all that companies have come up with recruiting advantages. we saw this unfortunate bro culture here and saw all this

talent available. hiring moms and looking broader at people that don't look like ourselves is how we did that. there the stereotype of the twentysomething male engineer and you have these incredibly talented women in the bay area that may be had children and they may be unconsciously get written off and i saw that as our competitive advantage. ofia: you have this moment is action and there varying degree of which company -- which company supports people and do not get me started, this is a great subject to pontificate upon, it is curious to me that especially in the u.s. corporate culture, we

basically penalize people for procreating. medical condition. despite anybody's rod religious are supposed to be procreating on some level as humans so i think that is curious, when you look at it and say this is not only a moment where somebody is going through a major life transition and this is for men and women but they are fearful of what their life is going to look like. are their careers going to go on are their peers going to think of them differently, are they not going to juggle whereas i like to say put the jigsaw puzzle together. a life of balancing kits and career. all of our sort of, you know,

policies around that are great? so it is about how we shop for each other so part of that is identifying that really talented candidate especially in competitive rockets may be reflecting on what they are -- what their experience is that their own company during that leave time. >> what are the biggest risks to the is this? we hear about things like scalping or the fact that you cannot get it ticket to "hamilton." kevin: you just look at the blockchain, you have a means of assigning ownership and having clarity with who owns a ticket and being up to transfer that have it end upt in the hands of a scalper that then the artist does not benefit , it is a third-party taking a big cut.

. there is a lot of ways technology can address that. to go or lose to a competitor. it is on our shoulders so that means continuing with investing. >> you have been straightforward about going public, and will it happen? julia: when i think about what we have accomplished in the last decade, we have an excess of $10 billion of ticket sales flow through and we are just getting started so if you are sitting in my seat and you are looking out over the horizon you are thinking about how do i build this for the long-term? and we have never shied away from saying that when the timing is right, it is the type of company that can be a successful public company, we are going to go for it. kevin: we are an environment where it used to be, it was john

doerr that said after six quarters of revenue growth it was time to go public. that was the sentiment of tech now have strong the other direction where companies are [indiscernible] and i can have a detrimental effect. sunshine ofave the the markets to shine in. and a lot of bad things can happen. i see personally a lot of benefits to going public. the company is ready when julia is ready to make that call. paypal andsted in pinterest, pretty good record. what is your secret? ♪

>> and want to talk about your investing career, when you stepped down as ceo, you became a partner at founders fund and you have been investing for a long time starting with paypal. seen: i have maybe investment as a selfish endeavor in one sense, i love to learn bright, talented founders to give me a new perspective. what i love about it is helping paying it forward. >> you did this on the side. kevin: instead of going to some type of club or playing golf, it was working with young founders and companies. i could pattern match and learn a lot. >> you invested in paypal, youtube, pinterest.

kevin: paypal, airbnb, pinterest. >> a good hit record. what is your secret? for, at talented people that look at the world in are soays and impassioned about what they do and have a positive impact on the world. >> you met with 900 companies. kevin: 951 companies. >> wow. that is dedication. kevin: we did not fund most of those companies but what is exciting about this time is the wide variety, whether it is synthetic proteins or space in theor something biotech space. this is an incredible time to

build and impact society. >> how did you go with founders fund which is one of the more controversial funds. peter teal is known for his support of donald trump but investing in out of this world ideas. wasn: i knew peter while i an undergrad, this is where i stanford of the amocrats and peter was staunchly conservative libertarian. i loved the diversity of opinion that existed there. while i did not agree with a lot keen to hear i was his perspectives. they are insightful. it is unfortunately -- unfortunate there is a little bit of groupthink happening in or valley now that muffles

dems other perspectives. that we could be a little more open-minded to. -- thisnd reason is the is a partnership of a group of dreamers truly investing in world changing ideas. whether it was mutual investment in facebook or eating the first institutional backers of spacex and elon musk. it is great to see thinkers that take risks. founders fund has been dragged into that. what has it been like to whether that behind the scene? kevin: i try not to get caught up in the drama of the headlines. -- >> never a distraction? >> perhaps here and there.

i would not over exaggerate it. >> peter is moving to l.a. because of this group think. what does that mean for founders fund? kevin: that is peter's choice. it is viewed as peter but it is made up of a diverse set of investors. and we will continue and work along with peter. teamhere are other great members whether it is scott or lori and or ryan or cyan. this is a partnership and not around one person. >> what it -- is it like being married to a venture capitalist? you -- evenimes

despite him meeting somehow 951 companies he is a 50-50 partner at home. we co-raise our children together. just how involved he is. i do have to say i know i don't know where you find time but it has been great to watch him? to what julias has done at eventbrite in how andcompany has grown expanded. >> think you for joining us. -- thank you for joining us. ♪

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emily: it is the underdog in the race for ride-hailing domination, but that race is far from over. john zimmer started sharing his car in college, and that casual carpool business lit the spark that has become lyft. zimmer and co-founder logan green now find themselves in one of the most competitive and sometimes dirty tech battles in history, but uber's struggles have only kicked lyft into overdrive. lyft says it has 50% share in some markets and working on the rest. joining me today on "bloomberg studio 1.0," lyft cofounder and president john zimmer. ♪

emily: growing up john zimmer. you grew up in greenwich, connecticut, which always sounds quintessential. what kind of kid were you? tell me about your upbringing? john: i loved playing sports, mostly soccer. i wanted to be a magician when i was a kid. i love making people happy with surprise and delight, but my first job was in a hotel. i worked in a hyatt. i was a phone operator. i convinced the general manager. he said we can't give you a job because you are under 18. i said i am interested and passionate about hospitality, so he put me far behind the front desk in this oversized suit answering the phone. i saw as a phone operator that i could impact someone's day in a meaningful way. so if someone had a light in the room that was broken, i would talk to engineering, have it fixed, follow-up, and if i hear kids in the background, send milk and cookies to turn it into a positive experience.

i loved that. it ended up with me going to study hospitality at cornell. emily: what did you learn about the customer from that experience? often when you are getting the call someone is not happy. john: i learned to put myself in the shoes of the customer, be genuinely empathetic. to understand where they are coming from. this person paid a lot of money to have this relaxing time with their family, so people for the most part are reasonable and rational, so when you show and demonstrate you are listening and do something about it, you can make a meaningful difference. emily: you are majoring in hospitality at cornell and offering rides home to your friends. john: yes, even freshman year, in my college dorm. it was so ridiculous to me that there was not an easy way to find everyone else going to new york or connecticut to go home, so i would talk to people and try to fill the seats. emily: for money? john: sometimes. mostly one person would drive sometimes and the other person

would drive the other. eventually when we first turned the product into a business we would charge for those seats. it just seemed so obvious. someone had to pay for gas. 20 or more people were driving to the same location. it could be more fun to meet new people, talk to your friends, and cheaper for everyone. emily: now you did not dive right in, because you became an analyst at lehman brothers. you left three months before lehman brothers disappeared, essentially. why did you leave? john: i wanted to save some money to make it easier to take a risk with no salary for many years, which is what we ended up doing. i went to manhattan, worked at lehman brothers in real estate, and had a two-year education in more than just finance. actually in company culture, the good and bad, company success, the good and bad, and i saw it going from being successful when

i entered to disappearing. that was a powerful lesson for me, to never be sure that something is a sure thing. actually when i was leaving, my best friend's mother who worked in the building said how could you leave like a sure thing like lehman brothers to start a silly carpool start up? that was my message on the way out and a reminder that nothing is a sure thing. emily: lyft was founded in 2006 while you are at lehman brothers at the time. how did that start? john: i was on facebook and a mutual friend was connecting logan and i. basically, logan posted he was starting to build a website after he's -- he did get her to zimbabwe and saw people sharing rides out of necessity. i reached out through the mutual friend, and logan came to new york, and we were both extremely passionate about this idea of building a new form of transportation that would change the way we lived in our cities. emily: walk me through the early days. this was before uber, before

this was a thing. john: we started working in an office on university avenue actually in palo alto that was not earthquake safe, so we got really cheap rent and they suggested we wear hardhats. we did not do that, although we should have, and it was like a closet, but we were feeling so excited. there was two of us. we hired our first engineer, so we were three, and we were building university carpooling software. we ended up selling that to universities for annual subscription. we eventually moved into an apartment which we called our apart-fice, then i upgraded to one of my friends' parents house. and in i looked at logan and 2012 said, how are we doing? our mission is to improve people's lives with the best transportation. we are only scratching the surface with this university carpooling program. we said, what if we could get people using those cars they only use 4% of the time, have an

earning opportunity, and to save others money versus car ownership? that was the impetus for what we've were first thinking of, called zimride instant, and luckily we changed it to lyft. emily: by this point uber did exist. john: yep. emily: i'm curious what opportunity you saw uber was not going after. you started off with a different culture. pink mustache, the fist bump, the "we are all friends here." how does that come about? john: uber launches in 2010, and their tagline was "everybody's private driver." they were doing limousines and black cars. this served 1% of the population for a luxury need. that wasn't interesting to us. we wanted to create an alternative to car ownership, a service that empowered people to earn money and also empowered people to get around at scale, but back then unless the car was yellow or black, people were not

getting into it because as a society it was normal to get into those color cars. but there wasn't a regulatory framework or societal acceptance around getting into someone's personal vehicle, so by saying lyft is your friend with the car, suggesting people sit up front, we had to change behavior. that was a behavior people were used to in college. you are riding with your friend with a car. emily: i still remember you and logan coming on the show in the early days and bringing the pink mustache and putting the pink mustache on the table. when you think about that, is it like, oh my god, i can't believe i wore birkenstocks in high school? or is there a soft spot there? john: we embrace our past. i didn't ever wear birkenstocks. there was this fun, rebellious tone to what we were doing. but doing it in a way that we always believed we were on the right side of history, and we were doing it with safety first. we actually established the

regulatory framework internally before the regulations. those ended up being adopted by california, but we had more strict criminal background checks -- still do -- criminal background checks than taxis or limousines. we have a mentor program where we would meet, logan and i would in the early days meet every single driver, and so we were taking public safety extremely seriously, while at the same time having to change behavior and introduce something new. we said, let's have fun with it. the pink mustache was designed to be a tactic to get people to smile, set the tone, and it lasted for a year and a half. emily: talk to me about how your relationship with logan has evolved, and how you as leaders have divided responsibilities. i understand you still carpool to work together every day? why? john: well, logan is my best friend. a lot of times entrepreneurs are friends and start working together.

we did not know each other when we started working together. and i think, like any relationship, we had to work at it. our communication styles are very different. i am in next over it. he's an introvert. logan likes to focus on the product and the technology. i like to focus on the hospitality and humanity part of the business, and that is a perfect and needed complement to what we are trying to build, so we lived near each other. he was the best man at my wedding. and we have conflicts, but those are healthy and allow us to see different perspectives. ♪ john: there are $2 trillion spent every year in the u.s. alone on car ownership. i believe that will fundamentally shift to transportation as a service. ♪

♪ emily: lyft is now valued at $11 billion. you have raised more than $4 billion. you surpassed 500 million rides.

where are you in terms of growth? john: last year we did 400 million rides, grew 2.3x, or we brought our market share from low teens to a third of the a market that lyft has. we have markets with over 50% market share for the first time in history, so there is an incredible amount of momentum behind what we are doing at lyft. at the same time i would say we are just getting started. lyft and uber combined do half of 1% of miles traveled in the united states. i believe over the next 5-10 years that this .5% will grow significantly to the point where eventually the majority of miles traveled in the united states will be on a network like lyft, and you will be subscribing to a lyft transportation plan, similar to how you have a music subsciption plan, maybe spotify, or a minutes plan like you have on at&t or verizon. emily: the last years have been very transformational for lyft

and we have a shift in the balance of power between lyft and uber. in 2016, when maybe it felt like uber would be the dominant ridesharing company forever, what did that feel like? and what does it feel like today? john: i take it back 3-4 years now. uber raises $3 billion. we have what i believe is a lot of money, $100 million in the bank. they have 30 times the capital as us and they are trying to destroy our business using that money, and that was, to be blunt, it was scary. someone attacking the business, incentivizing drivers not to drive on our platform, while the team had such drive and such passion, and we were smart about the tactics we used that were asymmetrical, and we rose up and that was the time we had maybe even single-digit market share,

and we've raise the capital and built an incredible team. by coming up as the underdog, but with the vision, i would say the leaders on vision, we have been able to build a team that is not just doing it for a monetary reason, and not doing it just to win, although we intend to win, and something that drives us to be competitive, but a team that is values based and mission driven. ultimately, that is why we will win. emily: i often look at it like a male and female perspective, and female-led companies get 2% of overall funding, but there are often other biases that exist as well. john: yeah, i think for a while investors and others looked at us like, oh, you guys are nice. we said, ok. we believe it is important to treat people well, not just because it is the right thing to do, but it is great for business, and now we are seeing that play out. emily: being nice was to your detriment? john: in the early days people

misunderstood it as a weakness. we are aggressive, but in our own way. we are aggressively working to treat people right, highly competitive, taking market share from competitors, so that is working. i think what is happening in silicon valley and more broadly is positive in that they are looking for other models of success and other factors, not just an outgoing form of overconfidence. emily: do you think silicon valley has rewarded the wrong kind of confidence, the wrong kind of arrogance? john: i would say more broadly, not just pointing at silicon valley, but across the country, historically, yes, absolutely. emily: 2017 was very transformational for lyft in part because of what happened at uber. we saw the delete uber campaign, susan fowler's blog post that went viral, ultimately travis kalanick the ceo was ousted.

how did that particular sequence of events impact your company? john: yeah, i mean, it definitely impacted us, but we have had so many moments as a company, both competitively and internally, that have been difficult over the five years of running lyft, and the muscle we have developed is to focus on our drivers and our passengers, because we can't control things that are happening outside of lyft, so that muscle that again took years to develop, and in the early days we were more distracted by the competition, paid off, because we put our heads down and said we need to continue to serve our drivers and passengers better than anyone else, and let's move to offense. the delete uber movement you talked about, the ability to have enough drivers at a moment when demand increases is difficult to do market by market, so our team did a fantastic job during those moments, but we had been working

hard with our heads down for a while. emily: any way to quantify how many drivers and riders you gained as a result of anti-uber sentiment? john: i think there was a 20% rise in the business. in one week alone. so, that was real. we held onto that and continue to take market share throughout the year. emily: as i understand the market share in the u.s. is 25% lyft and 75% uber. what do you think it is? john: we have good reason to believe it is about 33% or 34% lyft. the goal is to get over 50%. we do have markets with over 50%. we do have a playbook. we know how to get there. if you just focus on the west coast, we have in some cases over 40% market share as a whole, and so we just need a little bit more time. emily: now that uber has new leadership, are customers going

back to uber that had chosen lyft? john: we are not seeing that. emily: lyft says it is available in 95% of the united states, but there are rural areas for you can't get a car even though you are technically available. explain that. john: 95% availability means you open the app and we have an option for you. in some rural areas that may be a scheduled ride option. if you open the app and there is not a driver within a few minutes of you, we will fall back and say, hey, do want to schedule a ride 30 minutes, 45 minutes, one hour from now? emily: you launched in your first international city last year, toronto. how is that going? john: it is going well. it was a big undertaking for the team to be ready for toronto. new currency implications. and we are happy with the launch and will continue to scale out in canada. emily: uber expanded to china, india, russia, and europe. why has it taken you so long? john: focus.

as the underdog, focus is extremely important. now we are on offense, so we are starting to look at international opportunities, but we don't need to build a massive international business to have one of the largest companies in history. there is $2 trillion spent every year in the u.s. alone on car ownership. i believe that will fundamentally shift to transportation as a service, so by focusing on not just the u.s., but personal transportation, not food or logistics and other things, by focusing on what i believe to be the largest market opportunity in the world right now, we can build a fantastic business. ♪ john: we need to replace car ownership. whether or not it costs a lot to do the r&d, it is ultimately where the business is going and will ultimately provide a net positive benefit to society.

♪ ♪

emily: there is a war for talent, but also a war for drivers. i'm curious what your value proposition is to drivers when there's another company out there that is aggressive about recruiting? john: we have historically, and need to continue, to treat drivers better than any other company. that is not a feature or action. that is a collection of features or actions. examples being, we launched with tips. it took our competitor many years to add that. emily: two drivers earn more using lyft? john: there was a study that not only showed that lyft drivers are more happy with lyft than uber drivers, but they say they earn more. emily: you are also pushing into

driverless cars. when did you start researching autonomous cars, and how did you decide this is something that you wanted to pursue? john: it was several years ago that we decided. we knew this is where things were headed, and the most important thing to customers -- if i am spending $9,000 a year owning and operating a vehicle, how can i spend $7,000, $8,000, $6,000 to get a better service? that is what we are working towards. two ways to bring down costs right now, shared rights, which is what we call lyft line, multiple people going the same way. the other is autonomous. we are at .5% of miles traveled on lyft and uber, so there is a lot of scaling and change to come. emily: there are two reasons not to build driverless cars. one, it is expensive, and two, it can alienate drivers who worry that their jobs will be

replaced, so why pursue this? john: we want to design our cities around people, not cars . we need to replace car ownership. whether it costs a lot to do the r&d, it is ultimately where the business is going. and it will ultimately provide a net positive to society. on the driver side, i don't believe there will be less opportunities for drivers on our platform as we continue to scale. emily: why not? john: 0.5% of miles are traveled today and you scale to 80% of miles traveled on lyft and uber in the future, and just 5% of those 80% are in human driven cars, you have, what is that? 4%, which is eight times the number of drivers we would need today. emily: ok, five years from now, 10 years from now, what do the roads look like? john: let's say 10 plus years from now, i believe cities will start to divide where certain forms of transportation travel within a city, and so pedestrians, bikes, they should

have a very safe, separate area to get around in the city than say autonomous and human-driven vehicles. that is how i believe our cities will function in the future. it will make our cities more walkable and enjoyable. it will change real estate values. you will get parking lots that turn into parks or housing, so the changes we see in 10 years will be the largest physical infrastructure changes we have witnessed in our life. emily: when it comes to lyft building its own driverless technology, you are clearly behind. what will it take to make that happen? john: we are honest with the team and ourselves that we are coming from behind. but just as we did with the original business and taking market share from uber, we are making up ground every day. there is also not just the data advantage we have, but starting now, sometimes in certain industries there is a second mover advantage. there are a lot of technologies that did not exist five years ago when others were starting their autonomous efforts that

exist today that allow us to leapfrog. emily: we know over time during the lifecycle, you considered selling the company. i am curious when did you most seriously consider selling the company? john: as we said, lyft is never for sale. if someone comes in with an offer, we have a responsibility to our board to look at it. emily: do you think lyft will remain an independent business? john: our plan is to build an independent business that is eventually a public company. emily: you said you were on track to be profitable this year, are you still on track this year? john: we are moving towards profitability, but given how much money we have raised, our focus is on growth. we would actually be doing a disservice to investors if we were not using the capital efficiently to build the largest long-term business. emily: so does that mean you won't be profitable this year? john: not the focus right now. emily: uber set a goal of going public by 2019. how does that compare to your goals?

john: the advantage is that we are not talking about our timing. if that is their timing, great, helpful to know, but we have the flexibility given the capital we have and that we have not made any commitments publicly or to our investors that we will do it at the right time for the business. emily: is lyft a public company some day? john: i believe so. emily: what is your advice for the founders of tomorrow? john: i think every company is a tech company. what technology does is it allows you to have a big impact, and with that comes a big responsibility. and what i am so proud of and so happy about is that we are able to build and scale what can be one of the biggest businesses ever built with a positive impact on society. we are out to prove that, that you can take care of people, make our cities better places to live in, and you can build a big business, and i think future entrepreneurs wilin

do that. ♪ emily: all right, john zimmer co-founder of lyft and president, thank you for joining us today. ♪

♪ emily: she grew up melinda french in dallas, texas, a young girl who loved computers. in 1987, she landed her first job at a newly-public company called "microsoft," where she met the man who would later become her husband, cofounder, bill gates. over the last three decades, bill and melinda gates have become two of the world's most prolific philanthropists and business leaders. now, melinda is investing her money and her might on empowering women everywhere, especially in technology. joining me today on bloomberg "studio 1.0," melinda gates, cofounder of the bill and

melinda gates foundation. we are in texas, which is where you are from. you were born in dallas. the second of four children. and i'm curious what it was like growing up melinda french. melinda: i was very lucky, because my parents told all four of us, "you will be college-going, and we think that is important." they explained why -- because of the opportunities. and they said, not only that, even though we could tell it was not going to be easy for my parents to put us through college, we will figure out a way as a family. so they said to me, "you can choose any college in the nation that you can get into, and we will figure out a way to pay for it." emily: your father was an aerospace engineer. you also studied computers. how did you discover computers as a young girl? melinda: yeah, so i was fortunate. so i went to an all-girls catholic high school. and one of the teachers there, the math teacher who i really admired a lot and worked with a lot, she went to a conference. and she saw these apple ii's had

just come out. and she was so excited about them. she came to the principal, who happened to be a nun, and said, we have to get these for the girls. so she got several of the girls who were in math class and asked us if we wanted to sign up for her "new" computer class she was going to start. and that's how i got hooked. emily: you went on to duke. you got a bachelors in computer science. you got an mba at duke as well. and this is when women were better-represented among computer science students. what was your experience like? melinda: it was exciting. i mean, i loved going into it. but i did notice that after i got past the freshman class, there were just fewer and fewer and fewer women. and that was just how it was. i learned to just program with the guys. emily: you went on to microsoft. that is where you got your first job in 1987. paint the picture of the early years at microsoft. melinda: i was so excited when i got this job, because i knew they were on the forefront, and i believed in what they were doing. because i had this technology

background, i could move up on the business side quickly to manage whole teams of coders, people in user education, marketers, program managers. i had a decision to make though, a few months after i was at the company, because it was tough. i was used to working in very all-male environments in college, but it was abrasive and combative. i thought for a while maybe i will just quit and go somewhere else. i can get a great job anywhere else. i wasn't worried about that. but, i thought, maybe there was something about me that doesn't fit. and it took me a while to realize, no, it is this culture, that i don't want to be like that. so i tried on being myself. and actually ended up being very successful for me. emily: you met bill at microsoft. you got married in 1994. you left microsoft in 1996. and you have since become one of the world's most active and generous philanthropists. and a core part of that work involves empowering women and girls. were there specific experiences or people who helped shape your thinking on women's issues in particular?

melinda: well, i have been lucky enough to travel for over 17 years in philanthropy. and i travel all over the world. i am in the developing world a lot, i'm in asia, i'm in africa. and who shaped my views were the women who i talked to on the ground. what i was hearing in their conversations at the local village level, sitting in the dirt on a mat, was the same thing i was hearing when i would hear the news in the united states about ceo underrepresentation on boards, right? of women on boards, or women ceo's. and when i initially went into philanthropy, i thought, i am going to stay away from this women's issue. women in health, women's issues, because maybe those are the soft issues. but what i have since learned, is that those are actually the fundamental and the hard issues. and if we don't solve those, we will not get major change for the world. so my aspirations and bill's aspirations, whether it is health, whether it is decision-making, whether it is economic opportunity, we will not get there as a world if we

don't make the right investments in women. emily: in computer science, women hit their peak, earning 37% of degrees in 1984. that has since plummeted to 18% and has been flat for the last decade. similar numbers when it comes to the number of jobs that women are holding in this industry. you lived this. what went wrong? melinda: it looks like when the gaming industry turned, when the games became more male games, more shoot 'em up. when you think about the early games that i played, pac-man, the adventure games, the atari games, breakout -- they were pretty gender-neutral. when you got into these very combative games that were male centered, and more and more men got into the industry, to women it just started to feel unwelcoming. it feels unwelcoming to women, so they might join it, but if they don't see other people around them -- we know that people look for role models, but if they don't find them, they say, well i want to get out

--and we think that is probably what went wrong in the computer industry. emily: how did you encounter bias throughout your career? melinda: you know, it is interesting. i encountered it far more in industry than i did inside of microsoft. microsoft was growing by leaps and bounds when i got there. i felt like i had every opportunity open to me if i did well, if i performed well as a female. but in industry, i ran into it all the time. i would go present, and you could tell, like i would show up at a user group that is 95% male, and it would be like, this woman is going to present to us? what does she, what could she possibly know about this product? as soon as i opened my mouth, it was clear i knew the product in depth, because i wasn't just there to sell it, i was managing the developers who were writing the code, for pete's sake. i knew what was in that code. so i would see it on people's faces. i would bump up against it. i just would learn to push through it. emily: james damore, an engineer, was recently fired at google for writing a memo in which he claimed that men are more biologically suited to computers than women. do you think that mistaken

assumption or toxic assumption is part of the problem? melinda: i think we all have bias. i think that we need to get under the hood and figure out, how do you create change by designing it out of the system? and yes, i think if you are in one culture that looks a particular way, where it looks like only a white male can get ahead, who went to an ivy league university, you are going to bake more bias into the system. whereas if we design a system where there are different pathways in, we look at the environment, how to design it out. you look at how do you spawn innovation for women and women of color, you will start to actually change the system. emily: in the last few years, you have really recommitted to being a champion for women in technology, in particular. is there a specific moment or reason when you realized someone had to speak up for women in tech, and that that person could be you? melinda: yes, i think just a few years ago, i had been disappointed for quite some time

about numbers going down in the terms of computer science degrees for women, and i kept thinking that there would be a woman to speak out, or women who would speak out more, and there are women speaking out. but i hadn't honestly put together my background to realizing, well, i was in that space. i have always cared about computer and tech. but wow, maybe i should use my voice behind this. because if there are places in the united states where we are bumping up against barriers and we are not getting far enough, that also has repercussions for the world. so we have to make sure low-income countries, middle-income countries, and high-income countries all become equal for women. and i realize that this is a place where i had something that i really wanted to say. the other thing i will say about tech is i see, i not only believe, i see how tech is transforming our society. i see the changes that are happening now and that are coming. and if we don't have women and underrepresented people of color at the table, we will bake into those systems bias, particularly

artificial intelligence. it is going to be such a reality the next decade and beyond. and if we bake the bias in now, trying to undo it will be too hard. i thought, my gosh, when i saw what was going on at ai, there are no women at the table. i can name two. i said, this is a problem and we have got to do something about it. emily: why is it important to have more female engineers, female entrepreneurs, female venture capitalists? melinda: well because if they have a seat at the table and if they are writing the code and doing the designing, they are, first of all, they are representing all of society. so they see different problems and opportunities, quite frankly, in society. and then they say, when we create a voice for an ai system, it shouldn't just sound like a young male's voice. it should be able to recognize an african-american voice. it should be able to recognize a hispanic voice, an asian voice. they see society differently, because of where they grew up and the experiences they have of people in their own networks. so, they will help us design those products to make sure they

are ones that represent all of us and that are not biased. that work for everybody, not just a segment of the population. ♪ melinda: what i am seeing with the #metoo movement is we are still at the point of reckoning. there is still more to come out. ♪ emily: you founded pivotal

ventures in 2015. when you started pivotal ventures, what is the mission that you set out to achieve? melinda: it was really to figure out what are the issues that american women face where there are still barriers, and how could we go about knocking some of those down? so i am not finished saying yet

the places that we are going to make investments. there are places where i feel there are some societal needs, where government might not fix it, or private sector might not fix it on their own. emily: so pivotal ventures invests in venture capital firms. and is essentially a limited partner or fund to fund, where you know these are the funds that invest in the people who are investing in the people creating the future, right? so, when did you first believe that limited partners, or the investors that fund venture capital firms, have a role to play here? melinda: we don't have enough women founder ceo's who are getting funding. so basically, let's than 2% of vc funds go to women. less than 1% go to women of color. so in this innovation space, i said to myself, what is the best way to use capital to move things for women? and that is when i started to say, ok, i actually need to move some money into the venture capital space. and i want to do it smartly. the first goal is to make money. i'm not putting my money out as

a social impact. i am putting it out to make money. but i wanted to go behind funds, like aspect ventures that is run by teresa gao, and women who are looking at opportunities and they have a thesis around, my gosh, there are so many opportunities there. if we go towards funding some of these women's businesses. emily: you mentioned that you care about returns. you are not doing this to have an impact. or it is not a handout, certainly. some lp's have said to me, all we care about is returns. some of the best investors may not be the best people, but they have the best returns. what do you have to say to those people? melinda: i have to say you are investing in what you know. so you need to look at what trends are coming in the nation and how you're going to address them. women are 85% of consumer dollars spent. women control 70% of financial decisions in the house. so if you are not investing in products that go towards females or women-led companies, you are missing an opportunity. because you just don't see it. and i would say the same thing

about underrepresented minorities. because after about 2044, this country, what we think of minorities today, when you add up all those groups, they will be the majority. so, you are leaving money on the table. you are not in the deal flow. so good luck 10 years from now. emily: how much of an impact can lp's have and should lp's have in galvanizing change? melinda: i think we definitely need lp's to start to make those investments. and i think they not only need to make investments, they need to open their networks. because, if you look at a woman, she often doesn't have the same network into the deal flow, right, or into the levels of the funders. same thing for underrepresented people of color. they don't have a seat at the table. or when they go in, people don't understand their products. so it is being willing to take a risk a few times. emily: i interviewed ed williams, the cofounder of twitter for my book, and i asked, do you think online harassment and trolling would be such a problem today if women had been present at the beginning of this company? and he said, you know what, i don't think it would be such a

problem. we weren't thinking about how our products could be used to send rape threats or death threats. we were thinking about amazing things that could be done with twitter. how different do you think the world or the internet might be, if women had been present when some of these early platforms were created? melinda: i think if there was a woman there at the table, and it would take several, right, who had a real voice and real power, they would say, have we thought about this? have we thought about the rape scenario? because, if you look at the number of women who have faced violence, even in the united states, or some form of sexual harassment, it is huge. so it is very hard for me to imagine, if there was a woman of the table who really had power, that she would not bring those issues up. emily: do you worry that the #metoo movement could backfire? melinda: sure. i think there are places where it is already backfiring. we have to be very careful. when you separate -- if men's and women's groups decide to separate in terms of when they have meetings or men will not take a meeting alone with a woman because they are afraid of being accused of something, yeah, that is not good.

and so we have to have the real dialogue about what could create change. and what i am seeing with the #metoo movement is we are still at a point of reckoning. there is more to come out. because what you are seeing is, it is industry by industry by industry. and so, that reckoning has to happen, and then i think we will start to get the, ok, what do we do about it? we are still in that reckoning, recognizing phase. and then we will come to what are the responsibilities and the solutions? emily: so you think there will be more stories? melinda: oh, yes. i think, undoubtedly. i mean, you are seeing it. it is still playing out industry by industry. we have not rolled through all of the industries yet. but when i see something like "time's up," i am optimistic whether you are a farm worker or restaurant worker, working in the hotel industry, any of them. you actually have a place to go where you can get help, not just bemoan the fact that this has happened to you or a close friend, but you can actually go for legal help to have recourse. that will make a difference. emily: how do you root out bad behavior in a way that is not draconian? melinda: i do not think there is

one solution that fits all. i think we are putting a lot on a sole woman in a tech team or in a tech culture to make change. it is too much. it needs to be part of management and has to be part of the board-level conversation. and then it has to be measured all throughout the company. how are we actually doing on these factors? and i think that is really the only way you are going to get change. emily: do you think silicon valley can fix this? the problem of not having enough women at the table? melinda: i know silicon valley can fix this. they just have to decide they want to. but they have, they are one of the most innovative, amazing places. look at the technology that has come out of there that did not exist before. so they put their brains to this problem, and they get serious about it, and they put their money behind it, yeah, they can absolutely change it. ♪ melinda: the president, no matter who he or she is, has a responsibility to be a moral authority in the country and to be a role model. emily: your name, bill's name have been floated as vice presidential candidates. do either of you have political

aspirations? ♪ emily: as you have said, you

have been focused on gender for many years. what about our children? video games are still incredibly violent. you know, social media has all of these problems? if we don't change this now, what are the dangers? melinda: the dangers are that you will amplify some of the things that go on naturally that used to go on just in the playground or the kid would bump or bully the person in the hall. i think you will end up seeing some of these societal problems because, even though the technology was totally created for good, the kids are finding ways to use it and exploit it that adults never ever see. emily: i understand you have

decided not to allow your kids to have phones until high school. is that true-ish? melinda: well i think you -- as a family you have to always decide. first of all, what are our values around this? what is great about it? but where are some of the places there could be pitfalls? then, you have to set up rules for your family for where you are right now. we have both a daughter who is a senior in college, a son who is a senior in high school, and a daughter who is a freshman in high school. the difference between where the tech is for my freshman in high school, versus my senior in college when she was a freshman, is night and day difference. instagram did not exist. snapchat did not exist. so the rules i have around that are new, because i did not have to create them up here. and you have to decide what you value and say to your kids, i get that our family rules might look differently than that family or that family. but this is what we value. and so this is why you will not come to the dinner table with your phone on the table or in your pocket. we value your sleep. we value your mental health. emily: you mentioned that you

put your phone outside the door at 9:30 p.m. your phone is off. melinda: we all benefit from being off of our devices, and we have to role model that for our children. if we don't role model it, we can't ask them to do something differently. you know, think about looking at yourself first, anytime you point your finger, you have to look at the three fingers pointed at yourself and say, what are the rules i have to put in for myself first and then have that tricky conversation with my kid? and the conversations are not easy, but you got to take them on, because they are too important. emily: how do we make spaces that work for parents and families? melinda: i think we pass really good paid family leave policies, both at the state and the federal level. i think there is sort of this misnomer that we think, people get paid family leave today. the truth is in the private sector, only 15% of people get paid family leave. so we have to have good policies in the private sector. we have to have good state-level policies. there are five states today and washington, dc that have a paid

family leave policy. and then, we need one at the federal level. emily: in the annual letter that you and bill wrote, you said you wish president trump would treat women especially with more respect when he speaks and when he tweets. what does the president's treatment of women say about how we as a society treat women? and, do you think his example could set us back? melinda: i think that the president, no matter who he or she is, has a responsibility to be a moral authority in the country, and to be a role model. and so i think some of the views today coming out on twitter from this president don't represent our views of women in society. i am in the school system a lot, all over the country. and what principals and staff and teachers are teaching the kids is what is important in this country, about not bullying, about treating people equally, having respect. you have got to role model at the top, and he has made their job a lot harder.

emily: your name, bill's name have been floated as vice presidential candidates. do either of you have political aspirations? melinda: zero. [laughter] none. we like where we are. we like the jobs we are doing. we absolutely want to work with whatever administration comes in to that office. we need to. the u.s. government is too important around the world. and our role in the world is too important not to work with them. and so we feel like we can work hand-in-hand with them in partnership through the foundation. emily: you both said you are going to continue working with the administration because you think working together is important, even though in some places, you may disagree. aside from his treatment of women, what are your biggest concerns about this administration? melinda: this administration is making major budget cuts, proposing major budget cuts in foreign aid. the message that sends to the rest of the world about, do we care about others, and our ability to create markets to

help countries move, fulfill their aspirations from moving from low to middle income countries and create markets for ourselves, we are pulling back on that. so that is a big concern of my husband's and i. emily: in the last year, diversity has become part of the national conversation, finally. how do you feel about the conversation we are having? and do you think it will lead to lasting change? melinda: it's about time. so i am relieved to see we are having the conversation. and i think it is going to be up to us as a nation to decide where we take that. but i think the fact that you have that conversation coming up at the same time that you have this reckoning with the #metoo conversation, people are getting their voice. when you look at the fact that over 80 of the candidates running for governor are females this time. we have only had 39 female governors in the history of our country. when you look at over 400 of the candidates for u.s. house of representative's are women. when you see that over 50 candidates for the senate are women, women are coming out in droves. and guess what?

they don't all look the same, which i think is fantastic. emily: i like to think success is when a woman engineer or a woman ceo is normal. or a woman running for president, or being president is normal. will that happen in our lifetime? melinda: yes. absolutely it will. and i completely agree with you. when you have women at the top, and the reason it is so important, is they role model. other little girls can look up and go, i can be like her who is president. i can be like that movie producer. i can be like that director. i can be like that person who is creating amazing content. and so those role models are important, but you are starting -- you are really seeing it happen. the sparks are all there. and we need to help keep it going. emily: and a woman president, too? do you think that will happen? melinda: in my lifetime, definitely, i think that will happen. emily: melinda gates, thank you so much for joining us on bloomberg "studio 1.0." it has been great to have you. ♪

♪ emily: they are brothers from rural ireland who came to america to pursue the entrepreneur dream. together, they created a company called stripe in 2010, making it debt simple for small, young companies to accept payments from all over the world. it has grown into a giant, valued at $9.2 billion. half of all americans who bought something online in the last year did so, without knowing, via stripe. the company now works with customers as big as lyft, facebook, and amazon, processing billions of dollars of transactions for a small fee.