we dared to ask. him on the welcome to worlds apart as the great american boxer muhammad ali once said he who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life and from being a key member of the mit blackjack team to investing in promising migrant

interpreters risk averse is one thing that my guest today absolutely is not but what is a risk and how do you know if it's worth taking well to discuss that i'm now joined by. a russian american investor a businessman turned and calculated risk taker so good to see you thank you very much for coming over thanks for having me now as i was preparing for this conversation reading the articles about you listening to some of your previous interviews i caught myself humming. face to face our then behaved hang tough saying hungry. have you ever associated yourself with that song eye of the tiger. or thought of the 1st. reason i imagine it is because it was 1st of all number one single indian ited states for 6 consecutive weeks soon after your move to the united states or your parents read more broadly i thought that it kind of depicts.

how you relate to risk and adversity this rule of defied the kick that you seem to get out of uncertainty am i wrong here it has always been the case with you or did you have to foster it i don't think i've ever been a thrill seeker i think i'm a grown up with them as you blocked him probably helped me available at the risk part of pretty quantitatively enough to actually do a challenge of building things i like things kind of difficult but it's not the only like risk for the sake of for us going the way that let's say a war correspondent conflict and then sure. it's an interesting observation that you just made because you were introduced to reese earlier on not as some blind you know dark i'm sick or i'm no one but actually calculate to go probability that many people especially in this country tend to fear risk more they tend to fear they fear more and they risk it represents

a threat how do you think it should be dealt with well i mean that's not always easy if your emotions with them to calculate everything right but certainly in what i do professionally and making investments i think something actually got in the way and. will for this to be us to make time for the information that you have. according to act logically now i know that you are not the. big fan of talking about your experience on the mit blackjack team but let me ask a few questions the whole thing was depicted in in a famous movie 21 and it's shown there as. adjective was it really as dramatic as it is a trait in the movie it has some dramatic moments but no nothing like about the movie that movie was based on the story it wasn't the actual story itself there's another movie on the history channel that tells the story but even there i think they turned that into a little bit of a plot you know with

a plot curve in reality we got kicked out all the time and we came back and that was just the nature of what it was and such a story that's didn't want to. feel alive you had that was done when people were asking you about that because i mean you found that you had accomplished many other things but when you look back at those year is what is it in terms of life experience that you tube from. early years is there something that stayed with you there were many former important things that i learned while writing this blog to it was my 1st start up. the graduate program and i teach to do it and it was also my 1st fund you know we were paid taxes we made returns for investors we were all souls in the stores and learned lots of stuff about how to run an organization that can really trust everyone. valid probabilities and opportunities and how to repeat well how to trust your intuition and how they synergy not so much about intuition i would say intuition and terms of working with your team mates and building

a culture within the organization probably yes what we did in the casino involved no into this it was just pure numbers like following a exact script writing down everything that happened and modeling it and those 4 hours talking about it actually i've always been there transparent about the story i'm happy to talk about it there was just a period of time when that was in the news a lot before this movie actually came out where i it's not that i felt like i didn't want to talk about it it's that i was actually frustrated because it wasn't fact at the time the most interesting thing that i have to say and the full of it are much driven to become more you quit playing because you started. your own company down after a few attempts to start your own companies you move to investing what's so interesting what's thrilling about investing for you well i guess i felt like i had to run my own business. i started a software company in 97 the old in 2000 and even before sold a few i did

a few in child sex as and then jhelum the thing. and what i liked about it i think was actually the mentoring got a little bit mentored by older entrepreneurs around boston when i had my start up there was a group of people young founders hold a mentor and after i sold my company i was invited to come back to the group as a mentor even though i was much younger than other mentors. and really enjoyed it a little something maybe i missed out on the little when i was younger but i also realized operate over business i didn't have the patience to do one thing in the 15 years to build a big company i just didn't have it and i didn't have the purpose within the company that you need to have but i loved. helping founders and i viewed them as my customers and so i started investing it to be involved in lots of different businesses which suited me but b. to really learn to become a better mentor or better advisor to make an impact on these people's lives because the one thing about black to not satisfying to me was that the i made money didn't

scale wasn't huge amounts of money but i made a few $1000000.00 but never really had any customers no one think that it was just money for the sake of money in your recent interviews you are pretty open about not being motivated by making money and this is pretty unusual for an american because you are an american right now it's their highly materialistic society you call me still being its biggest what sat you free from war shipping it. well that's a little question let me 1st on this i have an american passport and there's many things i like about the country from identity to know it's a complicated thing and identity and i never really felt like i was an american i certainly don't feel like i'm a russian i feel like i'm russian and some ways but not a russian right i also feel in some ways like a jew it's part of the identity of the american part might be a little stronger than those other 2 but what i've discovered more recently is what i really am as an immigrant as the son of parents that moved from one place to

another the change. in my life from the part in russia to the part of america actually became the defining moment and if anything i think my people of the other people who have gone through that from a new country to any other country i just have more in common with them than i do with with americans as a whole the russians as a whole now if i may dwell on the issue of investing a little bit longer i heard you say that you are now trying to invest for the purpose of making change rather than money and as somebody who has covered a number of. well american lot wars. i shiver at kohls of making the world a better place because that alone is responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths that simply didn't have to be how do you go about. understanding defining what kind of change you want to see in the world and again for some reason you're packing a little something with a question in this case the function that's going to stop me.

doing what i do know to change the world enough to make money so that's not strictly speaking correct. i do it from reading i may be wrong i mean phrasing phrase it in your own way and what i do today after many many years of angel investing at some point did become primarily not to change the world but to help particular founders because i enjoyed helping people i enjoyed the gratitude i got back from work in the selfish way after years of and running another accelerator started a new venture fund the fund is not a philanthropic organization yes we invest in companies started 1000000 immigrants we do have a mission around impacting the world in particular way we believe that the the financial success of our fund will actually. show it will point out the fact that people who move from one place to another to create value to create jobs create companies to just consume services because the fund is structured as

a purely for profit vehicle we have this mission right but the only way for us to achieve the impact you want to achieve is to build very large funds with partners in many countries that will take a couple of decades the rest of my professional life and the only possible path to that is through outsized venture returns to my limited partners and to myself right now so the actual path towards our mission is one of pure moneymaking and we use the fact that we are an organization which helps our marketing it helps our thinking it gets gains us the respect of this founders and ultimately hopefully get them to deals that are very competitive where money alone doesn't get you have to actually provide value. people like us the phone like the idea that there is a fund especially for immigrant founders and that puts your. current president of the united states president trump i know you dislike very strongly as he does like the leader of this country which we're going to talk about later but speaking of president trump he seems to be somebody who is not timid.

who is not afraid of breaking the socially politically imposed dogmas here freely goes against the tide to achieve what he passionately believes in. daunte you respect the result of going not just against the tide but against the opprobrium i like that part i do respect the decent he's successful in terms of achieving the results he is sad for himself i think he has achieved some positive things. for the open about the fact that i do dislike a style i dislike personality but. many things. i think oprah very positive for the economy lowering taxes corporations many other things while on the subject of immigrants and ration i think we probably have some more left and some disagreements for it i think you'll probably agree that he probably doesn't want the kind of i'm going to be investing and to come to the us i know that you wrote an open letter to president trump delineating the contribution of immigrant

interpreters to the economy and i thought it was a very eloquent ladder but it was also a very misplaced argument because president trump is not arguing for closing the use borders completely what he's asking for is pre-selecting who comes in then this is what you do in all your investing ventures being very selective about who you share your resources your time your reports light or $1000.00 applied to immigration and that's what i just agree with trump i think trump agree with me that the kind of immigrants we're investing in are in fact positive for america or have some other disagreements about some of the folks i mean i don't like his methods i can tell you what i don't like at all but what i really dislike. feel like he is. building a populist appeal to groups of people the middle left behind by globalization by the in the but acknowledging and helping them find scapegoats and giving them some

of the blame for their problems that bothers me but you know other politicians do as well it's not just i mean why why do you think it's just political slogan because i mean if you. actually look at the figures on the trunk the united states accepted roughly the same amount of immigrants of roughly a 1000000 each year that's very comparable. i don't think it's just a political school going to look let me say for the 3rd time i agree with president trump on the fact that the kind of highly educated immigrants that come to the us to take. qualified jobs and to build businesses i think ought to come to the country more and more occasionally in the implementation of. i think in addition to slowing down migration for for migrants for an educated workers they have also made it hard to get certain kinds of professional these i mean this is something that all countries still developed countries in the world practice canada australia new zealand you know all these champions of human rights they're

extremely selective about who they take and they have the benefit of the geography as a buffer against those who don't want to take so i guess what i'm saying is that i think the president probably has the same attentions to to let more of those kinds of people in practically speaking i think what i see is that it's gotten harder for those people to go around but this i do believe in figures don't support that last year the united states accepted more legal immigrants in 2014 a particular examples but but they are i think you're looking for the disagreements in the area of disagreement is that i believe the qualified workers should also be allowed another people invest them but people like we war i heard you say that you are for open borders you don't think that immigration should be controlled at all but there are a couple of interviews i can side where you stand out and i just don't understand how you square that with property rights reach depan degree deal on some notion of jurisdiction how do you square that with private property. that's an excellent

question. let's talk about open borders so i do believe in property rights quite strongly. when i say open borders. i'm talking about the basic notion of human rights i think. the random circumstance of your birth the papers that to happen to receive based on where you were born it's not up to you i think there should be equality of opportunity of people properly absolute time there is so about 10000000 and they're refugees in the world today and you know why should you have a privileged access to your apartment when people are still living on the streets i mean you can make this sort of argument but and because he turns out on the part on the border as an organization the reason is that i believe in private property i don't believe the country is like your partner simon let's take a very short break now we will return to this interesting conversation in just a few moments.

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welcome back to worlds apart to russian american investor and business mentor just before the break we were discussing present. immigration policies and as far as i understand in point in response to your disagreement in 2017 you said your own venture to how foreign born interpreters is the goal to how down there are or is the goal ultimately to introduce them today american market the goal of one of the tricks of the action at the center a maximum return a store a limited partners which i'm the largest one myself we have discovered companies with an immigrant founder in the u.s. in the can and are more likely to grow to be very large the majority of all the so-called going to courts the $1000000000.00 plus valerie some private companies

have an immigrant father 55 percent of them so this is not the kind of population the president trump is actually cutting anyway i'm talking about president trump because i want to talk about another country russia and its leader who are not particularly thrilled about either you left russia 979. when i hear you discuss it right now my jaw literally drops because last year for example you compared moscow to berlin during the 2nd world war when hitler was still in power and you are entitled to your own opinions please explain me why. you seriously believe that russia more than russia is akin to nafta jim. i don't believe this i don't. recall making a comparison. i may have made a mistake in the interview too about. maybe the taking of context i'm not sure if i

made that comparison i think i was exaggerating i don't really feel that way here no i don't i don't find that still pretty critical about the state of affairs in russia and what was the gist of your disagreement with the policies of the direction this country has been taking the experts on russia right i haven't been here in 9 years. about planning to disagree with my point of view and it seems like there's a fairly high level of corruption still in the country today that may be getting a little better. in some ways some it's become a little bit more like like when i left in the seventy's and you know what. the propaganda the nationalism i don't like i don't when there was a conflict with ukraine you know i was i had been travelling i was pretty sympathetic to the ukrainian view of things and. you know there are particular areas of disagreement but i don't think it's fair to say that i like anti russian anyway and. i heard you say maybe again i'm taking you out of context but i heard

you say that you are not particularly keen on supporting russian insurer norris partially because of how bad you think the situation in the country is at the moment the situation of the floor you know economic freedoms media freedoms. russia found in america and canada why not here well we're not really investing in europe at all right we are fairly small organization and we're very focused now returns and so the way we generate higher turnout is by getting to know the founders and so just graphically we invest in areas where we have partners. i didn't have that many russian speaking founders but i would say at this point if anything else i'm learning to sort of use my. core strength and i have another partner no that's russian speaking from lithuania. and i think we'll be investing probably in more not less from russia but as far as people building businesses here it's very far from sure i mean i think it's probably harder to build a big global company in russia and your odds of making the world greater better

place greater if you actually. risk open practive people to break the ground for who they are because it's not only about growing business and i think it was someone who's trying to make the world a better place i you know i don't have such ambitions i don't have such capability but i know how to make money by investing in the real estate startups i've generated 35 percent per year returns for 20 years straight with my own capital around the boston the great financial success and building a venture fund but arbitrage the low valuation of going to founders versus the proportional ability to create very large outcomes and where i do best which is where i live but i'm you know you often talk about making an impact and supporting a startup is not just about growing business it's about stimulating it phenomenal growth and at the hands of the day it's also about changing political environment because. one can argue that this country will never change unless there is an off people who can take responsibility for themselves for other people for the country

and challenge the admittedly paternalistic even authoritarian system and make sure that the heat is on the authorities to treat down with respect gruel or think it's a sure. you can have your own money and. i'm doing what i'm doing i believe that the financial success of the fund will have a positive impact on the world because i think it will demonstrate that having a more open society is better than the immigrants actually are likely to create jobs create the wealth build the economy right i think. there is a global retrenched. towards nationalism in the u.k. and brazil right now to some degree here at the borders more inclusive and i think the world will be better when it's moral put out or for whom because i mean we can see i mean it's not populism when you look at the. you know who benefit globalization the most it's

a very very thin layer of people in the east of the people who are disadvantaged by the quality is a problem and i mean there are some political tensions and dressing up globally as well. to bring everybody along but long term i do believe that the only good the world is an interconnected world i think we're going to be more connected like that's an obvious long term trend or they're not going to get more isolated from each other we're going to get it i think it could go both ways because i mean if you i mean even the big coronavirus suddenly everybody used to be argued that you know lots produce good drugs good medicine wherever you have the best production chains but now many countries not only the united states but many countries in europe including russia i mean russia was among the 1st to start to saying well we better have some production facility in here in case of disaster strikes at the end of the day yes they do well there's more interconnected but it also makes sense to preserve certain production capacity in your own backyard. perhaps in some cases

but i do think in the long term they're going to live better off in a more open more accountable world now and i think countries will eventually lose their usefulness and i think it's not that. it's not the final organization of humanity i think it's it's a layer write this book 1st cities then they had me in a sense and that's good right and i think in order to solve some of the biggest problems i think you know how to have more and more cooperation the global level one day might have a global parliament i don't know. i think you're more idealistic down some of the founders of the soviet union to be honest if you want to be organisational principles to hold the countries together because i mean one of the reasons why marxism failed is because they did not take into account the irrationality of human nature and the you are now you now seem to be so optimistic about the void humans are capable of in terms of cooperation aren't you discounting the darkest side to humanity. just fundamentally enough the most and i'm not making in the short term

for their actions i think they sense aren't going away tomorrow and probably will never entirely go away but i do think that the concept of human rights for instance is a universal one right i think equality of opportunity is an appealing idea universally and there are others but i think people today are about the planet as a whole and i believe in this kind of positive change in the long term i actually want to ask you about that because a few years back you founded the trouble maker a word of warning to reach in 2015 to 20 and i guess the member of the group who spent 4 months in a russian prison for dancing in a balaclava in a church reach the russian core defined as hooliganism by really just hatred why did you feel she should use or the award. actually wasn't correct in the church. and the reason in the world was something i was doing for fun of the time. the

reason you give her the letter of the road while in prison. i think she went on a hunger strike i want to say she was complaining about conditions that are brave the troublemaking in this case was as a prisoner making trouble with the authorities of the prison the way it was presented in her own you know with a young lady in prison and a lot of the road if you look at the impact that hunger strike had on trees and conditions and in russia it's close to nil i mean it's 0 block and many other activists in russia perhaps last slushie who go to prisons on a regular basis who provide legal aid mate who work with the authorities to compile damn abide by the law don't you think that by celebrating somebody like the dash they you're actually celebrating begin make activism rather than painstaking impactful but also a very boring change it's possible it's possible look i didn't have

a will photo. on the lot of research on the formal thing it was $10000.00 prize once a year and i've since you know i did it for a few years but. the idea the purpose of what i had was to change the specific issue like prison conditions in russia all these 7 o 8 the idea was just to send the signal out there and to other people who will take some risk make some trouble for the sake of something positive that's all that's all it was i mean the 1st episode when one of these people have this kind of troublemaker i was just you know some of inspired by people who think the rest i want to give a prize you understand that this is i mean tell me if you disagree with me this is a very american thing the american tradition of having these very noisy activism workers for a country like russia a change is very difficult it takes a lot of perseverance but it takes much less credit i mean people who are really changing this country they're receiving no attention whatsoever and yet they're.

greatest thing i mean given how much criticism and. some connection that you you how for this country 71 to see that as a more prosperous more democratic more transparent. each way we do things about our what is a better role model for the younger generation somebody who dances in a church in a balaclava clothes in a hunger strike in prison for a couple of days or somebody who you know gives 2 years of his or her life to you you know i'm noticeable but meaningful change you know i know i asked myself the question i wasn't concerned with how to find the right role model for chance in russia per se yes i would love to see positive change in russia and elsewhere but you know like i said the purpose of the award was just to do the small philanthropic going to once a year. to somebody who has taken some risk to try to make the world a better place in some way and you know if you believe that i took the wrong. area

of opinion that's a reasonable the problem if not then there are the best possible i know it wasn't the best possible recipient to have very limited time at the project thank you for spending some time but as i appreciate that. thank you and thank you for watching hope to see you again next sunday on the part of. others but it. looks dangerous to start.

repatriation get the rest to 70. percent kaiser or. in the stories that shaped the week greek police clashed with asylum seekers at the frontier with. the refugees deepens he spent the night on the front line a 1000 scramble to reach the e.u. in trying out towards the front in the hope of getting a sense of what's happening as we were trying to fill we were stopped this my cameraman being school teacher. looks like a ministry personnel. bernie sanders now lead the race for the u.s. democratic presidential nomination following the all important super tuesday with the amount of the door spent on is now had from those that have dropped.