Latest / Money And Wealth With John Hope Bryant / Strive Masiyiwa on Building a Billion Dollar Legacy in Africa and Beyond

Transcript

Strive Masiyiwa on Building a Billion Dollar Legacy in Africa and Beyond · Money And Wealth With John Hope Bryant

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome The Money and Wealth with John Hobryant, a production
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: of the Black Effect Podcast Network and iHeartRadio. Hey, Hey, everybody,
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  Speaker 1: it is John Hope Bryant and this is the Money
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: and Wealth podcast series on the Black Effect Network on iHeartRadio,
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: Season three. Thank you for making this podcast top one
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  Speaker 1: percent in the world. Thank you for making it one
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: of the top seventy entrepreneurship podcasts in the world on
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: each continent. And the book Capitalism for All my new
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: best selling book. Thanks for making it number one in
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: several categories going on five months now. It's proving that
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  Speaker 1: we do one aspirational success. Do read. We do want
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  Speaker 1: to succeed, and we do want to and can take
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  Speaker 1: the levers of capitalism and free enterprise, the honest ones,
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  Speaker 1: the integrity rich ones, and we can build something on
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  Speaker 1: our own that has real value. You know my story.
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  Speaker 1: Otherwise you wouldn't be here. You know that I mostly
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  Speaker 1: do this podcast on my own for forty five minutes,
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: riffing on a topic of I think importance. When I
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  Speaker 1: bring a guest on, you know they are top of
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  Speaker 1: the mark in their area, our sector. I've had Michael
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  Speaker 1: Milkin at this mic. I've had the really the creator
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  Speaker 1: of modern alternative finance, the guy who financed Reginald Lewis,
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  Speaker 1: the part of the King Junior of Wall Street, we
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  Speaker 1: call him. First billion dollar deal on Wall Street in
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  Speaker 1: the eighties, that was Michael Milkin. If we've had Reid Hoffman,
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  Speaker 1: the creator of Lincoln and so many other things on
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  Speaker 1: this mic, and it goes on and on heroes and
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  Speaker 1: she ros. We've got that today because I've got a guest,
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  Speaker 1: and it's a first on many levels. We're talking about
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  Speaker 1: the African century. Buckle up, lock in, pull out your
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  Speaker 1: pen and paper, your mic close to your ear for listening.
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  Speaker 1: You're going to learn something today. You're gonna be inspired
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  Speaker 1: by this man. I'm gonna stop it and say the
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  Speaker 1: name Strive Masaya. What if I told you you could
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  Speaker 1: build a billion dollar business in Africa and then take
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  Speaker 1: it around the world, building billion dollar businesses, creating wealth
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  Speaker 1: and changing a continent and its aspirations. This is not
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  Speaker 1: a conversation, this is a master class. Let me tell
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  Speaker 1: you a little bit about him. One of the ten
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  Speaker 1: wealthiest men on the African continent. Probably makes them a
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  Speaker 1: little uncomfortable for someone to talk to about in this way,
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  Speaker 1: but people understand numbers. He's a billionaire, not in African currencies,
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  Speaker 1: in US currency. Stride Massa is one of the wealthiest
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  Speaker 1: and most successful entrepreneurs ever to come out of Africa.
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  Speaker 1: One of the most respected philanthropists and thought leaders. In
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  Speaker 1: one of the comments leading voices on business leadership, technology
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  Speaker 1: and economic development, we call that silver rights, as you know,
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  Speaker 1: from civil rights to silver rights, from the streets to
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  Speaker 1: the suites. Follow Stride by the Way on his Facebook
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  Speaker 1: page in particular rights, very compelling pieces. One of the
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  Speaker 1: most read people I know, by the way, He's always
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  Speaker 1: sending me every week a book example of what I
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  Speaker 1: should read. He sends them faster and I can read them,
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  Speaker 1: so it's amazing. And he reads faster than speed. He's
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  Speaker 1: taught me to speed read. Also born in Zimbabwe, trained
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  Speaker 1: as an engineer, he built his success by taking on
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  Speaker 1: and ultimately defeating a government to telecommunications monopoly in one
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  Speaker 1: of the landmark business and constitutional legal battles in modern
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  Speaker 1: African history. Yes, this is literally a history maker. The victory, though,
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  Speaker 1: didn't just simply create a company. It helped to liberalize
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  Speaker 1: and lip it and to liberate telecommunications across most much
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  Speaker 1: much of Africa. He really was the first mobile technology
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  Speaker 1: pioneer in Nigeria as an example. We'll talk about about
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  Speaker 1: that today. He's a founder and chief executive of Equaltech
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  Speaker 1: b COO T N E T. Equal Net'm sorry E
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  Speaker 1: COO N E T Equalnet Group, a multi national telecommunications
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  Speaker 1: and technology company with a operations and investment spanning Africa, Europe,
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  Speaker 1: Asia and beyond. He's here in the US as well.
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  Speaker 1: His business interest is extend well beyond telecommunications where it started,
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  Speaker 1: so mobile technology, digital infrastructure, financial technology, renewable energy, education.
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  Speaker 1: He's a foundation, we're going to talk about that. His
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  Speaker 1: wife helps to run that is with his children, health care,
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  Speaker 1: impact investing. He's got a beautiful resort or resorts in
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  Speaker 1: I think it's Zimbabwe at the falls. He said, offered
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  Speaker 1: to let me stay there once, but when I tried
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  Speaker 1: to stay, it was all booked out. Too many guests.
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  Speaker 1: They want to bomm a freebie like me coming around.
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  Speaker 1: They're like, John may love you, but we're all sold out.
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  Speaker 1: And I mean it's beautiful. And I think his daughter
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  Speaker 1: runs that. And his influence extends even further alongside his wife,
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  Speaker 1: who is amazing, I might add, and through the higher
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  Speaker 1: Life Foundation. He's helped to improve, provide scholarships, educational opportunities,
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  Speaker 1: health initiatives, and leadership development to hundreds of thousands of
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  Speaker 1: young Africans. He has advised presidents, he has worked alongside
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  Speaker 1: Global CEO, still does to this day. He has served
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  Speaker 1: on numerous international boards and advisory council. I believe he's
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  Speaker 1: on the board of Netflix, also the Bank of America
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  Speaker 1: Global Advisory Council. I met actually the person who's president
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  Speaker 1: of the Bank of American International at his house or
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  Speaker 1: one of his events, a black man by the way,
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  Speaker 1: of course, I didn't know that until I met him
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  Speaker 1: through Strive and has become one of the world's most
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  Speaker 1: respected advocates for ethical leadership and entrepreneurship. My kind of
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  Speaker 1: person good capitalists for me, though. What makes Strive remarkable
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  Speaker 1: isn't simply what he's built. It's how he's built it
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  Speaker 1: and how God has built him. He takes God with
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  Speaker 1: him everywhere he goes. If you don't like that, you
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  Speaker 1: don't like him. In fact, it's a great way for
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  Speaker 1: him to separate himself. Who wants to do business with him?
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  Speaker 1: If you don't know God, he doesn't want to know you.
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  Speaker 1: I met strive through my mentor my absolute hero, civil
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  Speaker 1: rights icon Ambassador Andrew J. Young, who I believe is
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  Speaker 1: the Nelson Mandela of this time, and our friendship has
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  Speaker 1: done nothing but blossom. So integrity, faith, long term thinking, service,
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  Speaker 1: a belief that capitalism works best when it creates opportunity
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  Speaker 1: for everyone, not just wealth for a few. That's my book,
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  Speaker 1: Capitalism for All. That's why I'm excited about today's conversation.
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  Speaker 1: I just spoke to two people in the last couple
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  Speaker 1: of days that are making groundbreaking change in Africa. My friend,
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  Speaker 1: none other than Oprah Winfrey number one on the Forbes
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  Speaker 1: two fifty Self Made List, and Strive Today Strive Massiewa.
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  Speaker 1: They are cut from the same cloth. He isn't simply
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  Speaker 1: about one extraordinary entrepreneurship story. He really is about the
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  Speaker 1: future of Africa, using that story as a catalyst, the
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  Speaker 1: future of technology, the future of capitalism, in the future
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  Speaker 1: of opportunity itself. Because Africa is home to the youngest
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  Speaker 1: population of strivers in the world, I believe it's Nigeria
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  Speaker 1: has that designation. Ladies and gentlemen. If this introduction has
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  Speaker 1: been longer than normal, it's intentional because I love this war.
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  Speaker 1: I'll tosuse you the man before the billions, my brothers
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  Speaker 1: drived my ciga woo.
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  Speaker 2: Hi, John, thank you for but amazing introduction. I'm truly
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  Speaker 2: humbled to hear that from you, fan to fan. You know,
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  Speaker 2: I'm a great fan of yours and I love what
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  Speaker 2: you do and what you represent. You are very much
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  Speaker 2: the future of the American Promise. You you are that
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  Speaker 2: light that just reminds us what the American Promise was
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  Speaker 2: always about. Thanks for being who you are, John, Great. Well,
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  Speaker 2: let's let's let's let's talk. I'm here to listen and
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  Speaker 2: learn from you and as we exchange.
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  Speaker 1: Yes, and I also I'm a little thank you striving
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  Speaker 1: your kind words. I'm a little hesitant to say which
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  Speaker 1: company because I think you've got your hands in so
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  Speaker 1: many public and private entities. I want to talk about
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  Speaker 1: where your backstory, where you came from, where these values
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  Speaker 1: came from and growing up. I want to get into that.
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  Speaker 1: But tell the audience you're you know, the top three
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  Speaker 1: entities of yours that they can search in you know research.
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  Speaker 1: I know you have an AI company that's separate from
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  Speaker 1: your telecommunications company, and you've got you know, to tell
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  Speaker 1: us the audience, the two or three entities and make
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  Speaker 1: up your conglomerate.
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  Speaker 2: Thanks John. I'm very much a technology guy.
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  Speaker 1: I'm not in.
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  Speaker 2: Resources, I'm not in mining. I probably would have made
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  Speaker 2: a lot more money if I'd gone into resources and
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  Speaker 2: stuff like that. But I've always been about technology and innovation.
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  Speaker 2: So the top of my group is what we call
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  Speaker 2: a connect group.
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  Speaker 1: Yep, that's what I mentioned.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, the one you mentioned, which is a privately
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  Speaker 2: held group through which we invest in what your Americans
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  Speaker 2: call mobile communications.
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  Speaker 1: Yep.
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  Speaker 2: We've always been a builder of networks, so you got
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  Speaker 2: to You've got to see us like a Verizon in Africa.
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  Speaker 1: It's basically the Bill Gates of Africa in this regard,
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  Speaker 1: and he's on Bill Gates board, I believe.
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  Speaker 2: By the way, yes I'm on the foundation board, but
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  Speaker 2: I build them. We built the first mobile communications businesses
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  Speaker 2: right at the beginning. We're going back to the early nineties.
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  Speaker 2: So I was blessed to be young, a young entrepreneur
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  Speaker 2: as that revolution broke out. I spotted it primarily because
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  Speaker 2: I read a lot, so you know, by the time
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  Speaker 2: stuff gets out into the newspapers. Remember, there are people
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  Speaker 2: who've always been following something for five years. It reminds
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  Speaker 2: me of this. I was in South Africa in twenty
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  Speaker 2: sixteen doing a fireside chat with a guy called James
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  Speaker 2: Manka from Google and we started talking about artificial intelligence.
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  Speaker 2: It was just what are you guys talking about? We said,
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  Speaker 2: just wait and see five years later it breaks out.
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  Speaker 2: But by that time I have a business in artificial intelligence.
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  Speaker 2: So you've got to get in early.
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  Speaker 1: And that's right.
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  Speaker 2: That's first lesson, stay in your passion. So my passion
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  Speaker 2: has always been engineering. So I got in early in
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  Speaker 2: the communications revolution, but was at a time when all
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  Speaker 2: the communications was controlled by governments. You remember those days
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  Speaker 2: when I married ATNT. Yes, well Africa had that too,
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  Speaker 2: and they were stayed on telephone company and the idea
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  Speaker 2: of the young entrepreneurs pitching up out in my thirties
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  Speaker 2: and saying, hey, I'm going to build a telephone company.
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  Speaker 1: It was extraordinary.
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  Speaker 2: It was just you know, they couldn't decide whether it
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  Speaker 2: put me in jail or the local sanitarium or both.
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  Speaker 1: Or both both. I mean, tribe was a threat doing
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  Speaker 1: different than people thought. I wanted to run for mayor
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  Speaker 1: or something for the city of La I was young,
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  Speaker 1: and visible and raising money, giving speeches, all this stuff,
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  Speaker 1: and they polities are with a threat and when an entrepreneur,
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  Speaker 1: I'm just a builder that Strive in a much bigger
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  Speaker 1: way was a threat. And I had to leave LA
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  Speaker 1: because I Los Angeles, because people just were getting in
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  Speaker 1: my way. They thought I wanted to be a politician
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  Speaker 1: and I didn't. And Strive was a threat to certain
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  Speaker 1: folks who preceed him as a threat in his own
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  Speaker 1: home country because they thought he had some aspirations he
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  Speaker 1: really didn't have. But he was just such a force
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  Speaker 1: of nature that everybody, everybody's so used to anybody who
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  Speaker 1: wants to do something in Africa or in community coming
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  Speaker 1: through politics that they just couldn't get out of head
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  Speaker 1: that there's no way that this guy doesn't want to
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  Speaker 1: be a politician. So he became i'll see it a
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  Speaker 1: threat to certain people, and he just ignored it and
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  Speaker 1: stayed focused, ignored the noise, and stayed focused on building.
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  Speaker 1: And he's now the biggest entrepreneur in the country he
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  Speaker 1: doesn't live in.
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  Speaker 2: When I approached the government of Zimbabwe and I said
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  Speaker 2: I wanted to set up a mobile business, basically, they
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  Speaker 2: the president was so spooked he went to national television
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  Speaker 2: and he said that I was a security threat. Wow,
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  Speaker 2: and you know that wasn't nice.
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  Speaker 1: No, and that's a big deal in Africa.
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  Speaker 2: Got because I was soon picked up and interrogated and
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  Speaker 2: given a pretty rush time. But I kind of stuck
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  Speaker 2: at it, and to their credit, they eventually once the
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  Speaker 2: court ruled that I was correct because our constitutional court,
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  Speaker 2: the Supreme Court, ruled that I had a right. So
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  Speaker 2: I went old, you imagine going to your supreme court
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  Speaker 2: right equivalent? Yes, and nine judges in my country voted
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  Speaker 2: nine to zero that I had a constitutional right to
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  Speaker 2: set up such a business.
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  Speaker 1: Oh, I love it, in spite of the political pressure. Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: So yeah, so I was licensed by a court, by
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  Speaker 2: the Supreme Court, not by the state. Really yeah, only
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: license in the world issued by a supreme court. Our
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: constitution was such that it said that they could issue
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  Speaker 2: a writ they called it, and they said to the
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  Speaker 2: government his license. You just got to give them the spectrum,
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  Speaker 2: and the governments is fine. And they gave me the spectrum.
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  Speaker 1: Prescribed stribe what a spectrum is for the audience.
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  Speaker 2: Oh true, this is with mobile phones. You are communicating
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  Speaker 2: like a television, like radio. Right, So you've got to
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  Speaker 2: be given your frequency and we transubmitting. So I hope
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  Speaker 2: that although they allowed us to operate, the political attacks
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  Speaker 2: became very intense. John So, about twenty six years ago
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  Speaker 2: I moved to South Africa and I never went back.
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  Speaker 2: And from South Africa. One of the main reasons I
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  Speaker 2: went to South Africa was, of course South Africa guys
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  Speaker 2: an outsized capital pool for Africa. All the companies in
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  Speaker 2: Africa are in South Africa, and I was looking for capital.
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  Speaker 1: And so strive just to be clear. So South Africa
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  Speaker 1: is or could be what I'm hearing you the London.
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  Speaker 1: What London is to the European continent, or what the
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  Speaker 1: UAE it wants to be to the Middle East, or
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: what New York is to America? Is a source? Is
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: the capital for capital? Is that right? Hong Kong for
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  Speaker 1: China and so on and so forth.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, of the industrial capacity sits in South Africa, of
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  Speaker 2: the content.
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  Speaker 1: For the continent. Yeah. By the way, Ayboudy, fifty plus
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  Speaker 1: countries in Africa. I've got on my chest. I'm wearing
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  Speaker 1: this rough colored shirt in honor of Mother Africa. I'm
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: wearing my Mandela bracelet, which is the prison number for
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: Nelson Mandela on my wrists African bracelet. I've got my
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  Speaker 1: African crushed carbon fiber necklace on. This is intentional to
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  Speaker 1: honor my brother strave Manco. So fifty four countries. I
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  Speaker 1: believe in Africa. You can fit most of the world's continents,
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  Speaker 1: major continents inside of the African continent that people of
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  Speaker 1: geographers have historians have over the years made on maps.
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  Speaker 1: Africa smaller, much smaller than it is actually is quite
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  Speaker 1: large on a legitimate map, and you can fit America
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  Speaker 1: and other places inside of African continents. So what he says,
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  Speaker 1: forty percent of the capacity for the continent is in
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  Speaker 1: South Africa. It's a big deal.
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  Speaker 2: It's big. Just talk about African numbers a little bit, John, now,
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  Speaker 2: because people's houstin they don't think of Africa as a big,
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  Speaker 2: as a serious economy. Yeah, if I said to you,
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  Speaker 2: the African economy is twice the size of the Russian economy. Okay,
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  Speaker 2: we're much bigger than a Russian economy. Yes, we're three
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  Speaker 2: and a half trillion dollars of GDP one point four
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  Speaker 2: billion people. Our population is about almost the same size
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  Speaker 2: as India.
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  Speaker 1: Yes, just behind China, and you're just behind China.
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  Speaker 2: No, I think we're ahead of China.
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  Speaker 1: Are you. Oh yeah, yeah, wow.
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  Speaker 2: It's India first, now Africa then China. Okay, but our
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  Speaker 2: population is growing much quicker. Yes, China is in reverse
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  Speaker 2: Guia now.
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  Speaker 1: That's right there, one child policy reversed.
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  Speaker 2: But so when you kind of look, although we are
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  Speaker 2: fifty fourth countries, they are independent countries a bit like
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: South America. You know, if you think of Africa, South
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: Africa is what Brazil is to South America. Yes, okay,
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  Speaker 2: so a good way of kind of looking at it.
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  Speaker 2: We probably come from a country that's medium size. But anyhow,
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: I moved to South Africa, both my headquarters to South Africa,
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  Speaker 2: and began to invest in mobile communications across Africa. So
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  Speaker 2: I built the economic brand investing in different African countries.
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  Speaker 2: Of course, the big one is Nigeria. And then back
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  Speaker 2: in two thousand and one, John, Nigeria had just come
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  Speaker 2: out of military rule. Yes, and nobody wanted to go there,
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  Speaker 2: and they didn't have mobile communications, and they were the
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  Speaker 2: largest country by population on the continent. Will give you
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  Speaker 2: a statistic, twenty percent of all black people in the
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  Speaker 2: world are Nigerians. Twenty and I said, that's the place
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  Speaker 2: I want to go.
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  Speaker 1: I I want to say this a given the audience
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  Speaker 1: will slow it down. Since post two thousand or in
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: early two thousand, there were no mobile phones in Nigeria
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: two thousand, the year two thousand, If I heard you right, yep,
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: so people who were listening to this were alive. Then
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  Speaker 1: most people there were no mobile phones. Now mobile phones
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: are everywhere. People have mobile phones when they don't have
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: a car. They have mobihones when they don't have keys
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  Speaker 1: to their house. They have mobile phones when they have
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  Speaker 1: And this man, this man here, did that. Now talk
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  Speaker 1: about origin and grit okay, and you think you've got
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: problems and challenges. This man is an engineer's brain, very precise.
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  Speaker 1: He literally re engineered, with God's grace and his talent
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: and grit, re engineered rainbows after storms. He literally turned
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  Speaker 1: a negative into a positive, run out of his own country,
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  Speaker 1: exiled in two thousand, built an empire from outside the country,
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  Speaker 1: again based in South Africa, and then went to another country.
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  Speaker 1: He really had no currency in if you will, no
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  Speaker 1: cultural currency Nigeria, and made it work. You're talking about
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  Speaker 1: living history here, continued strive.
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  Speaker 2: No thank you, Thank you. John Yah Nigeria was fun
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: president of Barsanjo, had just come out of prison, he
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  Speaker 2: had won an election. He was looking for something exciting
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  Speaker 2: to really get his people around. And he sent for
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: me and he said, I hear you're the only black
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: guy in this industry and I said I am. He says, yeah,
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  Speaker 2: that's what my people tell me. I want you to
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: build a mobile business in Nigeria. He says, but it'll
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: be a competition. You'll have to win the license. And
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: I said, no, I can do that. And I put
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: a consultium together. And the interesting that I did John,
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: that the people don't often understand, is I built my
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: consortium in Nigeria.
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: I tried. I'd say, what's a consortium?
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: So people understood I needed the funding John. The license
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: was going to cost three hundred million US dollars in
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: two thousand and one, and from two thousand for a
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: whole year, I had a bank, one of the largest
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: banks in the world, did in due diligence on the
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: wealthiest Nigerians to see who would join me to form
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: a consultium. So a consortium with twenty investors, it's kind
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: of like you're going out find investors like you would
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: do in a series AB or whatever. But this was
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: just to buy the license, and we were one of
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: three licenses issued and we paid two hundred and eighty
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: five million dollars. Well, right for the right, just for
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: the right.
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: You're not even in business yet, this is just for
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: the rights.
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: Not in business. And my investors said strive. They all
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: had one condition. You will live in Nigeria until you
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: make it work and you will run it otherwise we
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: lose our money. I said fine. So I lived in Legos, Nigeria.
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: I got stories about Legos, my area. Brother. I got
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: stories good and bad.
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: We had a lot of fun. So we got that
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: going and the so I had a playbook. Now I
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: was doing this in different African countries and then I said,
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: why do Africa? And in fact I got a call John,
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: I haven't never shared this publicly. I got a call
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: from a bunch of guys in New Zealand and they
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: were Maori's and this said to me, we read about you.
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: We would like you to come to New Zealand and
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: help us do the same. We actually went. I went
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: with these Maori guys in New Zealand government and we
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: said listen, the indigenous people of this country would like
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: to get into this business. And the government said, yeah, sure,
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: will you help them? And they issued us a license
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: and I built.
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: But there's a company in New Zealand that I said.
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: It's still running. It's little business, it's still running. I
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: made it. I wouldn't call it a tonne of money,
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: but I did very well with it. Sold it.
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: By the way, audience, That means it was just a
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: few hundred million dollars. Not a ton of money. What
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: do you mean? That's my brother's thrive.
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: But then really we get into the mid We're now
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: into sort of mid two thousands, and I we begin
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: to see a very different trend. And I said to
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: my people around about two thousand and four, I'm not
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: going to do any more mobile. I said what we said, No,
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: we're going to keep what we have, but sell out.
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: What we want.
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: Some of our assets we need to build for the internet. Wow,
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: that's where everything's going to happen.
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: Now, that's when you put out down fiber optic cables
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: or across Africa. Right.
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: I started to build fiber optic. So I set up
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: a business called Liquid Liquid Telecommunications, which was Basically what
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: we saw was if we the Internet wasn't going to
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: work unless we put in cables, cables at sea, cables
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: on land. We had to get satellite communications going. So
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: I set up a satellite division and basically worked on
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: on getting helping to get cables landed onto the African
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: continent and then distribute from these landing stations because most
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: of these countries are landlocked countries that they're not at sea.
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah like Rwanda, Yeah, like Rwanda, great country.
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: That's how I've got it to resident. Yeah, yeah there too.
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: In fact, he called me and said, we're selling our
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: telephone company. Don't come and fight me. I'm selling the
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: telephone company. Well, the government is not going to be
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: in telethones. We've got a public auction. Will you come
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: and bid.
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: I love that. That's those reputation and so much credibility
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: that the president of a country says, please come and
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: bid for participation in my country. They want your brand,
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: not just your business acumen, not just your capital, They
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: want your brand associated with their countries. Everybody listening to this,
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: this is what you want. You want the kind of
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: reputation that is not just I just told miss Winfrey
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: this it's not about your money anymore. It's about your
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: brand association, and people want to be associated with your brand.
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: It's a halo effect. With how she walks into a room,
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: it says something about somebody standing next to her. It
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: says something about them. What she endorsing a book. You're
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: the same thing. You're just in a different sector. When
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: you walk into a room, when you associate, when you
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: align with somebody, it says something about them. And that's
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: what Kagami, President Kagami saw in you in Rwanda. That's
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: what New Zealanders saw in you. That's what Nigeria saw
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: in you. That's what the folks in Netflix and Bill
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: Gates and others still see. And yes's what Ambassador Young
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: sees in you is you are a walking brand. I
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: don't want to get you off track at all, but
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: when I first met you, you're the definition of a
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: quiet storm. You speak without words. When people first meet you,
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: you're checking me out. So you'd heard good things from
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: Ambassador Young, but you Ambassador Young is a softy. He
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: is a soft heart. He has a soft he's a
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: warm soul. You're a hard nosed businessman and you're not
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: let anybody separate you from your wallet easily. So you
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: check me out. You looked at me up and down.
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: You quietly assess me. You're a man of few words.
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: You wait for me to trip up and blow it,
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: say something stupid. Talk. You know, people have verbal diarrhea,
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: so you give them enough chance, they'll talk themselves into incompetence.
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: It's better to be quiet and be thought a fool
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: and open your mouth and release all doubt. And most
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: people will just open their mouth and release all doubt.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: And so once you figured out this guy is real,
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: we instantly became dear friends. But I remember, I remember
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: what you're wearing. It was a beautiful African black shirt.
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: I mean it was just smooth. You just smooth. And
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: I'm like, man, this guy is making smart sexy. This
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: is my brother. Okay, back to the story. So now
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: Kagami calls you, and you're doing this deal in Rwanda.
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: Maybe go ahead.
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: I literally on Rwanda. It does almost like we're passing through.
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: My system is simple. If they call me, I always say,
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: it's got to be a public corkship. I don't want
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: be behind scenes deals of participating in a public bid.
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: If I win, I win If I don't win, that's good.
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: I'll be cheering from the sidelines and I'll.
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: Move ladies and gentlemen. That means you cannot call him
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: up for corruption. You cannot suggest that he was doing
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: something inappropriate. If it's all out in the public, then
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: fair change, no robbery. I'm just translating. Go ahead.
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So anyhow, so it became really from most of
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: you know, from about two thousand and four, John, people
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: barely heard of me because I was busy digging trenches
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: across Africa. We built about one hundred and fifty thousand
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: miles of trenches. My favorite build, by a long long way,
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: was that when we took a call from the leaders
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: of Angola, and the President of Angola invited me to
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: go there, and he said he had a map, and
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: he said to me, what's wrong with this map?
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: Strive?
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: Yes, he says, why isn't my country connected to all
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: these other neighboring countries by fiber? Because all fiber, he says,
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: can you connect us to all our neighboring countries? Why
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: don't you connect us from the west coast of Africa
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: to the east coast. That's because there's the forest. Mister president.
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: It's the world's second largest rainforest after the Amazon, the Amazon,
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: and he says, you know, there are people who live
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: in the Congo Forest. They need to be connected as well.
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: So we met with the President of the Democratic Republic
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: of Congo and he set up the meeting. We met,
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: we discussed, and I still keep you to it. It
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: took us three and a half years. We trenched from
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: the east from the west to the east coast, connecting
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: the African continent east to west for the first time.
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: And now we've crossed its three places east to west.
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: So we have a route that goes through the through
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: the north near Egypt, across the Sudan into Nigeria, and
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: parts of it through the Sahara Tahara. Oh yeah, that
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: was an easy building.
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: Oh my god.
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: The hard build was the one that we went through
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: the Congo Forest. Really, that was really difficult cause.
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: You're not just battling the forest, you're battling militants, you're
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: battling the locals in all these different factions, and it's
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: like you're battling poverty.
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: Really yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't even go there.
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah no, that's a hope, that's a whole podcast, which
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: issued under decree and confidentiality agreement.
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: But the thing is, we have incredible people. You know,
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: it's not about me. I've got we employ about just
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: under ten thousand people across our group. John so and
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: I have leaders in the group that I've been with
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: me thirty years. So I don't really do the work.
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: You know, we almost telepathically talk now, you know. Okay,
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: we granted each other and everybody knows what.
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: It's called culture. Everybody. When you build a culture, eat
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: strategy every day of the week. When you build a
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: culture that is the ethos, the operating plan for how
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: you your value system, then you can wink at each
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: other and get it. I have members of my senior
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: team that operate. I basically work like strive on my
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: companies more than in my companies because that the operations
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: are led now by yes, really smart people, but they
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: have a culture that they've embedded. That's what he's talking about.
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Sure, And basically we've followed the trends. So by
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: the time we get to twenty sixteen, we realize that
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: the big thing now is going to be data centers.
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: This is before AI. We're beginning to see that the
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: demanding the amount of data flowing through our networks for
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: our customers. And our customers, by the way, are all
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: of Africa's mobile networks. We do it for them. We
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: built for Microsoft, were built for Google and these guys.
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: So we began to shift our focus to building data
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: centers in places like Kenya, Post Nigeria, Egypt, these places
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: West Africa. So yeah, so with different companies. We have
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: Data Center Group, we have our people in the Satellite
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: Communications Group. We have your cash Eco Cash. We started
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: doing a bit of the mobile money stuff they call
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: it then. But we also make acquisitions John so and
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: sometimes our acquisitions are kind of to fill in gaps.
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: So we in the Middle East, so we have people
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: in place like Abu Dhabi. We have people in Israel,
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: with people India. So and then of course in twenty
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: ten I moved to London. That gave me a very
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: different perspective because I now wanted to really be ready
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: to do things that are more global. Yes, okay, so
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: we made we made a couple of acquisitions. Some of
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: our acquisitions to Custo South America, so we.
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: Have I mean, we bought companies everybody. Most people come
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: in the country and buy some furniture. They buy a
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: coffee maker, they buy it. They go buy a cure machine.
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: My brother went into a country and bought some companies.
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we just you know, we're closing on a very
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: interesting deal in the US at the moment. So, uh,
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: we have our people in in the US. We're really
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: trying to get closer to where the action is. So
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: we have now an office in Palo Alto.
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: By the way, audience, I don't let Strive come to
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: my house. Strive can't come to my house because if
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: tribe likes my compound, I may find that, uh, my
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: grand deed has been transferred brought out by by Strive Enterprises.
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: So Strive can't come to my house. You may Strive
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: ain't playing.
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: We can always turn your house into a nice business.
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: John, I got acres. Brother, I got acres.
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: Look, the principles are the same, John, They're all and
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: there's nothing. There's nothing exotic about Africa. There's not nothing
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: exotic about business. We just got to know the principles
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: of the game. In my game, innovation, My people must
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: be innovative, okay, and we must be in innovation, but
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: in a very narrow space.
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: So Strive you were talking about values, your value uh
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: and and how innovation. And again this is not scripted, everybody,
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: we're not. I don't have a script. I don't have
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: an outline. Strive doesn't have outline. We're just brothers talking
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: here about how to build. And he's giving you some
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: some jewels already, one of which is negotiating from a
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: tight place of expertise, know more and more about less
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: and less. Pick something that you can be really good at.
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: His area is technology. He's acknowledged that you can do
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: well in all these other areas, but he has really
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: rooted everything he's done out of technology and as an engineer.
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: And it's why he's passionate about this. This is he
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: wakes up in the morning passionate about if you wanted
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: to pay him to do it, and then he's used
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: that as a catalyst to get in these different businesses
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: and industries, which he does. When he competes you, he's
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: in broad daylight, in the open space. No one can
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: accuse him of being untoward inappropriate, which is brilliant. Now
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: he didn't say that, I'm saying it because I can
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: translate what he's saying for public consumption. I didn't ask.
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: I'm now asking Strive about values. What's driving these these businesses?
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: These businesses needs to sity what are the values, the
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: core values that make up the great stride Master? YEA,
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: one you mentioned was innovation. As I recall so.
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: On my wall in my office, I always had two
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: equations because I'm an engineer, so I had to turn
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: things into equations. And I most lots of people around
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: me oss engineer. So I say to them, Okay, here's
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: the equation number one. Innovation plus marketing minus cost equals profit. Okay,
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: it comes from something Peter Draker once said, but I
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: just made He didn't put it into any equation. I
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: made it any equation. So always say to my people, so,
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: where's the innovation? How do we have? If there's no
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: innovation there, we're not We're not moving and we've got
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: to be able to move quickly in developing products and
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: so forth. Then my second equation is what I call
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: the three p's people.
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: Mm hmm.
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: You've got to have a product, you've got to have
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: people product, and process. Scale is process. If you want
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: to be the guy who is signing the checks, then
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: you don't have process. I don't know where the check. Okase,
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: I haven't seen one in thirty years. I don't know
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: who signs that. Okay. There are people who run our
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: businesses in different countries that I have never met and
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: probably won't. Okay, we have a way to select people.
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: It's about people, their talent, their values. How do we
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: select our people. You can be really smart, yet we
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: don't want you. At the same time, we want really
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: smart people because sometimes you can be really smart, but
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: your values don't fit into ours, into our business.
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: Yes, so we.
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: People. It's about talent. Whether you're going to call it
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: people talent number one, it's people number two. You got
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: to have a product. Okay, it could be a service
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: you're selling, but you can be very clear about what
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: is the product. How quickly are we innovating on this product.
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: Now it doesn't have to be all made invented here,
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: but we still got to be in the innovation game
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: around what's going on. So we invest a lot in process,
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: the technology that makes us efficient, the productivity tools. We've
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: got to be best in class. You come to our business,
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: you know we're deploying everything, whether it's AI, whether it's cloud,
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: whether it's cybersecurity. We spend hundreds of millions on technology
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: and processes for our own businesses. Yes, okay, because that's
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: what gives you scale. Yes, okay. So but we're also
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: very diverse, John, of course, we come from a continent
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: of inherent diversity.
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: People, Some of our countries have seventy or eighty languages.
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: Wow, wow, one country.
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: This is just small ones, I mean wow, lots of languages.
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: You have people from different regions, different tribal groups, different races.
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: You know, Africa isn't black people.
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: That's right, that's right, that's right. You have Indians, you
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: have you have the white of European.
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: Blond people from from South Africa and Morocco and Arabs
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: and all sorts of people. And they will work in
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: my group. I have them all, okay. And they have
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: to feel inside this organization that they are welcome, they
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: have a contribution to make, they will be respected their
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: values at play, and that's that's a really important thing
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: for us. Also as you go from one country to another.
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: Even Africa is not a country, okay here, and you
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: know how diverse America is. I think of that at
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: a continental scheme. So we raised to be respectful of
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: diversity from day one, otherwise you are so for me,
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: it's about turning that diversity into a strength. We don't
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: have I need engineers. If I try and get all
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: the engineers I need from one region of Africa, even
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: if I took all the engineers, it wouldn't be enough.
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: So I got to make sure that engineers can walk
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: into our organization from India, from the US, from anywhere
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: and feel just as at home as there were in
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: any multinational company. Yes, okay, have we got it perfected yet?
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: Not quite? Never you you you don't get there, but
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: it's you're working at it every day. So yes. So
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: then of course, at the as you said at the beginning, John,
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: I'm very proud and open about my faith.
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: Yes, that's value which is.
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: At the core of my values and the although we
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: have people from every religious background and people who don't
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: believe and so forth, but they you've got to live
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: your values. Yes, okay. In the end, it was I
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: think Francis of Assisi who said, preach the gospel, but
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: if you must use.
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: Words, some of you may have replied the tape to
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: get that.
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, which means the only way you can ever get
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: the values out is to live them.
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: You can't preach your way to the world. You have
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: to live it to the best that you can. That's
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: how I look at it.
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: People don't realize that most I'm not trying to turn
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: this into a religious conversation at all, but people don't
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: realize that most of the prophets, the leaders of Jesus
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: were business people. The majority of them they owned fisheries,
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: and they were fisher They weren't just fishermen, they are
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: fishers of men. They had infrastructure, they knew how to operate,
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: had systems and management structure. They were organized, think or
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: their builders. And the Bible mentions money more than mentions
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: anything else, more than two thousand mentioned. So we've got
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: to stop separating belief from good business. You can do
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: well and do good at the same time. I'd argue,
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: you need to do well and do good at the
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: same time. You can't help anybody if you're poor, you
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: can't even help yourself. But Strive is employing more than
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: ten thousand people. That is feeding the poor, that is
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: lifting up foundlies. He mentioned. If you're an engineer and
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: and you're properly trained, you can get a job anywhere
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: and you can work for his companies. Well, if you're
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: working for his companies and he's paying you what I
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: think he's paying you, you're one of the highest paid
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: people in the country. That in Africa or the US,
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: wherever that exists there where you're buying cars, you're buying houses,
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: You're paying for kids to go to college, You're going
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: on vacations, you're going to restaurants. That's driving the economy.
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: That's good capitalism. You're paying taxes. So Strive literally is
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: lifting up a whole generation through good capitalism and good values.
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: Stribe you here's one I tell people. You make money
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: during the day, you build wealth in your sleep. This
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: is the value I got from my friend Tony Wrestler,
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: who is a sub two hundred richest man in the
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: world and one of the nicest people I've ever met.
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: Business partner, mine and friend. You literally live this like.
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: You still have a majority of ownership in your companies,
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: but you're most focused on ownership than revenue. Why it's
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: ownership important?
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: I don't want to lose two threads with you.
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: John.
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: First of all, let's just go back to Ambassador Andrew Young. Yes,
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: I met him when President Clinton was elected and he
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: came to South Africa in nineteen ninety four and I
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: was thirty three and I was living in Zimbabwe at
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: the time. And he came to Zimbabwe and he was
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: at the home of the US ambassador to Zimbabwe and
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: he wanted to address all the business leaders. And so
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: they had all these guys there and he got up
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: and he said, President Clinton wants to set up a
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: special fund for entrepreneurs.
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, the South African Development Fund.
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: Yes, he says, And I'm going to be chairing the board,
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: but I'm going around the region. It was to cover
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: nine countries. I'm going around the region and I need
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: to I need it's going to be half the board
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: is going to be Americans and the other half is
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: going to be Africans. And I need you guys in
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: this room to identify somebody from your country to come
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: and serve on my board. And I mean I was
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: the youngest guy in the room. If I went home,
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: you know, So what happened there, I said, well, you know,
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: I love to be on that board. I think I'll
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: actually pray about it because it just sounds like the
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: thing that I would love to do and for sure
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: believe it or not. I see if a call from
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: him a couple of weeks later, and he says, strive.
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: They all decided that you should be the one that
• 48:47
  Speaker 2: sits on that board with me.
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: Wow. Wow.
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: And you know he had had people like Reverend Sullivan.
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: Sullivan he's only gone home to be with the Lord,
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: but I mean was the man. He was the man
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: and they and I had a chance to work with
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: him every day for almost ten years.
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: And you worked with andrewa.
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: Oh, I traveled over Africa and everything. And of course
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: that year when when you and I met, you came
• 49:24
  Speaker 2: with him to Spain to Madrid. Yeah, and he said
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: to him, he called me some I'm going to Madrid.
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: I've got some young people with me that I really
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: want you to meet. I it was so difficult. It
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: seemed to be everything I needed to do. But I said, Lord,
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: if I'm going to be somewhere, I got to be
• 49:46
  Speaker 2: at this meeting.
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: He was getting the award, the highest award from the King
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: of getting.
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: This extraordinary award from the King of Spain. I said,
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: how can I not be there? And I went and
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: it was you were part of the bless sing. You know,
• 50:00
  Speaker 2: beating you there. But you know, kind of coming back
• 50:05
  Speaker 2: to the values.
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: You know you.
• 50:11
  Speaker 2: Sometimes the greatest opportunities to for our values to come
• 50:18
  Speaker 2: through is through crisis. Yes, as I was fighting that
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: battle that I told you about, those big legal battles,
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: we had a crisis on the African continent, which was
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: the HIV pandemic. And I had my business at the
• 50:36
  Speaker 2: time at about seven hundred employees, and I was mostly
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: doing engineering construction because I still had not had not
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: yet started in the mobile business. But I realized that
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: a lot of my men were dying, my workers of AIDS. Yeah,
• 50:58
  Speaker 2: they were dying of AIDS. Every single week, we were
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: burying five ten people. And I then thought to myself,
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: you know, how can I how can we really do
• 51:13
  Speaker 2: something for these people. There was no cure at the time,
• 51:18
  Speaker 2: but my wife and I sat down and we thought,
• 51:21
  Speaker 2: you know, probably the best thing for us to do
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: issues just send their kids to school and teading people.
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: We didn't have pensions and things like you have in
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: the US, so I set up a small fund. It
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: because usually when the the our employee died, not soon
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: after the wife would die and they would leave kids.
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: So we just said we will adopt these kids. Basically,
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: we will send them to school. They can look to
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: us for school fees, for four uniforms, anything. And you know,
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: one day my wife woked and she says, drive you
• 52:01
  Speaker 2: know the fund we now as one hundred kids that
• 52:06
  Speaker 2: we're looking after. We've got to get some order to this.
• 52:11
  Speaker 2: Let's see what do you have in mind? Said, well,
• 52:13
  Speaker 2: first of all, I'm going to quit my job. And
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: your wife was working, Yes, she worked for the United Nations.
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: Tell let's give your wife some full credit here. Let's
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: let's say her name out loud.
• 52:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, my wife's sits. You know, she says, look, I'll
• 52:28
  Speaker 2: quit my job, I'll run this and we should open
• 52:33
  Speaker 2: it to any HIVY often. I said, but we don't
• 52:39
  Speaker 2: have the money. She says, no, God bless us. And
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: we just got to believe. We'll push as hard as
• 52:44
  Speaker 2: we can. And we pushed it. At one time we
• 52:50
  Speaker 2: would have as many as forty thousand kids. How many
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: forty thousand that we're paying school fees.
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: For forty thousand?
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, at any given time?
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: Why are you so blessed?
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: We've put in half a million through school now and
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: credit to my wife.
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: Who's fabulous. My wife loves your wife.
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: One that did all ourselves, John.
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: We can be broke everybody.
• 53:17
  Speaker 2: Ever ever reached out to anybody, even to this day
• 53:22
  Speaker 2: in our foundation, we don't raise money from third parties.
• 53:29
  Speaker 2: When people come to us and they even partners, whether
• 53:33
  Speaker 2: Gates or whoever, we say, okay, we can co finance,
• 53:39
  Speaker 2: we can co create, we can do things together. But
• 53:42
  Speaker 2: people must know that we as Africans will stand up
• 53:47
  Speaker 2: and we will put our own money behind these things.
• 53:50
  Speaker 2: So today our work has expanded from education, we do
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: public health. We you know, we do livelihoods, entrepreneurship training,
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: and we respond to disasters. So that work that I
• 54:11
  Speaker 2: did on the pandemic. Of course, as the HIV pandemic
• 54:15
  Speaker 2: developed led to people got to know about it. And
• 54:23
  Speaker 2: when we had the Bola crisis, President Barack Obama was
• 54:28
  Speaker 2: in office and there was a Bola in two very
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: small African countries. One of them happened to be librarian.
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: And of course I had met Barack Obama when he
• 54:41
  Speaker 2: was Senator Obama when he came to Africa. So and
• 54:44
  Speaker 2: now he was in the Oval office. So I reached
• 54:48
  Speaker 2: out to him and I said, can I come and
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: see you? So he says yeah, come and see me.
• 54:55
  Speaker 2: So he go to the White House. So I told
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: this story Jo. I get into the Oval Office and
• 55:01
  Speaker 2: I stand in the middle of the old office and
• 55:03
  Speaker 2: I said, oh wow. And he comes round from that
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: amazing desk and he comes towards me. He said, have
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: you never been here before? I said, no, not since
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: the last black president.
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: By the way, I would have been Bill Clinton, the first.
• 55:20
  Speaker 2: Black, but I didn't get to I didn't get to
• 55:24
  Speaker 2: do it with Bill Clinton. So but anyhow, anyway, so
• 55:28
  Speaker 2: we ended up sitting in the Rose Garden and I
• 55:33
  Speaker 2: said to him, you know, do you realize my barrier
• 55:37
  Speaker 2: was fleet was free black slaves, black American slaves.
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: History.
• 55:43
  Speaker 2: Yes, I said, this is your problem as much as
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: it is mine. And he said, you're trying to teach
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: me history. I'm a professor. I said, well, you know,
• 55:53
  Speaker 2: let's do this one together.
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: And we did.
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: We came up with a program which I then went
• 56:04
  Speaker 2: back to the African Union and it's one of the
• 56:09
  Speaker 2: most successful joint operations between the US and Africa ever
• 56:14
  Speaker 2: that nobody ever talks about.
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we we provided all the nurses and the doctors
• 56:22
  Speaker 2: from African militaries. So I actually went to the different
• 56:28
  Speaker 2: military units of Nigeria Ethiopia.
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: So I remember this, Yes, what.
• 56:35
  Speaker 2: Did we call the campaign?
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: We called it It's done. How much stayed the whole?
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: But I remember this.
• 56:44
  Speaker 2: I remember we did that campaign in the US provided
• 56:48
  Speaker 2: the logistics. I said, I don't want you to send people,
• 56:52
  Speaker 2: I want you to provide logistical support.
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: And Tride was not paid to do this. He did
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: this was out of the goodness of his heart.
• 56:58
  Speaker 2: Oh man, I ran a So that was Ebola. Then,
• 57:03
  Speaker 2: of course came the big one, which was the COVID. Yeah,
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: and there I got a call from the President of
• 57:11
  Speaker 2: South Africa, who was then the chair of the African Union,
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: and he said, listen, we're going to have one person
• 57:22
  Speaker 2: coordinate everything, and we think that you're just the right
• 57:27
  Speaker 2: person for this because you did Ebola and so now
• 57:33
  Speaker 2: you're doing it for the African continent. So I reported
• 57:38
  Speaker 2: to fifteen African Heads of State, which he chaired, and
• 57:44
  Speaker 2: I was the Special Envoy or ZAR, and I negotiated
• 57:49
  Speaker 2: acquisition of ppe medicines, hospital equipment, you name it, vaccines.
• 57:57
  Speaker 2: We did the lot. I supported by an extraordinary team
• 58:03
  Speaker 2: uh one, one of whom was actually secondent to US.
• 58:07
  Speaker 2: By the US Center for Disease Control doctor John Kinga
• 58:12
  Speaker 2: Song who was an American of African descent from Cameroon.
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: Yes, that's the long country in my DNA, Cameroon, Cameroon.
• 58:19
  Speaker 2: That's you, so your your brother from there. You also
• 58:23
  Speaker 2: that's also the country of Killian Buppe. So we could
• 58:27
  Speaker 2: also call Youpe you know, the football player.
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: Yes, so so you know, and you made me one
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: of your honorary brothers at your daughter's wedding.
• 58:38
  Speaker 2: But yeah, we give you some Southern African dn DNA.
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: Look, look, we did something that that is impossible. We
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: covered an hour and no ground at all in your story.
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: Because I was telling one of my producers here other
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: Pink Deer, that I could do a whole series with
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: you because you're living. You're literally, in my opinion, the
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: Bill Gates of Africa, but so much. But it's times
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: plus you're you've got so many elements of you, insides
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: of you, and you're still in the midst of your dream.
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: It's not like you're retired or something. It's like you're
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: off in some hinterland and you're sitting on the mountain
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: on high You're in the battle right now, building and
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: we didn't even talk about Cassava. I think it's called Cassava,
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: your AI company. We didn't talk about uh. We didn't
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: get into the details of your businesses. We just sort
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: and we and we Before we go, I want to
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: cover the backstory you grow your last question of you.
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: You're telling me where these values came from, you know,
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: growing up in your childhood. And what do you tell
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: a young entrepreneur with no capital, big dreams in a
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: place that doesn't want them. What's the values and the
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: suggestions you have with them to succeed? Because people feel
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: even here in the US, they're up against the wall.
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: But I want you to promise me you're going to
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: come back to do part two of this, maybe in
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: part three. I think there's so much for us to unpack,
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: to teach people in a series of masterclasses about entrepreneurship
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: as a way forward, good capitalism as a way forward,
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: of how this democratizes and play and lay and flattens
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: an uneven playing field in a class based world. So
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: I want you to come back, but please tell the
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: audience your backstory and then the front visions front story
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: for a young entrepreneur.
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 2: My home country, Zimbabwe, was called Southern Rhodesia.
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: When I was born.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 2: It was a country at the time of maybe three
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 2: four I don't know, five million people and there was
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 2: a white supremacist group of two hundred thousand white people
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 2: talk about apartheid. We you know, when I was born
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 2: in my country, there was the most brutal form of apartheid.
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: So people don't know the story of Zimbabwe. A bunch
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: of zimbabwe are shown the sculpture guard here the house,
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: a couple hundred pieces. They don't know there just one
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: of huge piece in our front entrance. They don't know
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: the story of Rhodesia before that was I think it
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: was rhodes as in the guy who founded ultimately the
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: rhodes Scholars. That guy was a brutal segregationist.
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 2: You know, so our country was run by a minority
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 2: group of under two hundred thousand of their height. We
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: couldn't go into this, we could, you know, when my
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 2: mother was young. They only they could only buy through
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 2: a window. They weren't allowed into the shops. They weren't
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 2: even allowed the back of the bus because they weren't
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 2: allowed on the bus, never mind getting the back of
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 2: the bus. It was it's and of course our people
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 2: rebelled against it. My parents were at the heart of
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 2: that rebellion as young people, and they fled to the
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: neighboring country of Zambia, which had become black ruled. But
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 2: within a few years we were in the middle of
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 2: a civil war, brutal guerrilla war. So that was the
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 2: cauldron in which you know, I grew up as a child.
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 2: But my family when they settled in Zambia and they
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 2: couldn't get jobs, so they became entrepreneurs, and my mother
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 2: was actually the key entrepreneur. The most African countries have
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 2: women like my mother. They're called market women. You know,
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 2: they marketing. They buy and betrayed. Believe you me, some
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 2: of them become incredibly successful. Well you're Ghanaian doctors, Nigerian doctors,
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 2: professors that you get. Most of them were raised by
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 2: such women who made enough money and they were incredible
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 2: at saving My mother even to this day, she's still alive.
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 2: To get her to spend twenty dollars, you can't make
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 2: that woman spend She just believes in saving. The big principles,
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 2: you're not going to get very far if you can't save.
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 2: If you believe in instant gratification consumption. I've got to
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 2: buy this. I've got to buy you are not going
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 2: to succeed. You have to be able to deny self,
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 2: immediate self. You've got to always think. It's even in
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 2: my business, we are always raising build capital because want
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 2: to do more. Never we are satisfied with where we are. Yes, okay,
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 2: But I was raised in that kind of family, as
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 2: an entrepreneurial family.
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: So your mother with a market woman, your dad did what.
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 2: He worked in the minds, minds against minds, so so
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 2: in the so coming from there, I always thought I
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 2: was just going to work as a professional engineer, working
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 2: for the state and so forth. But of course they
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 2: didn't work out that way, thank God had. But so
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 2: for me, what my concept of risk is very different
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 2: from what most people see as risk. I am very
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 2: comfortable as an entrepreneur. I see people in politics, goodness,
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 2: that is so risky, you and me both, by the way,
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 2: there you are after five years. I mean, how can
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 2: you take such a risk that's right.
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: And you've got no control over whatsoever anything that's right.
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 2: So for me this is the lives I'm an entrepreneur,
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 2: so I've been an entrepreneur John. When I started, I
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 2: was twenty six years old. I am sixty five now.
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: When I started Opportune, Ope, i was twenty six. By
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: the way, I'm deep honor to share everything.
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 2: Oh you know, that's a great year. Enrico Fermi said,
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 2: I haven't had a good idea since I was twenty
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 2: six years old. Yes, he was one of the physicists
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 2: behind the atom bomb, but I would say that's sort
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 2: of my backstory. But I don't like to dwell on backstory.
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 2: I like to think about the future. I've never known
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 2: a more exciting time with the with AI emerging. So
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 2: I want to sind a shock by just talking about
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 2: that work me reaching out to you, John and say, John,
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 2: I'd like to meet Sam Oltman. I'd like to meet
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 2: this you you connected me to Sad Moltman and those guys.
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 2: But uh, and since, of course I've got to meet
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 2: people like Cansen one video and the Google guys are
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 2: just with them this week. And really what I was
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 2: after is fast tracking and understanding of what's happening so
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 2: that I can act. Yes, okay, because it's not good
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 2: just reading and learning, but you've got to we learned
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 2: to do yes, that's why we say works you he
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 2: needs to do you know. And so now my whole focus.
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 2: We've just completed what is called an AI factory, which
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 2: is basically these huge AI data centers where you put
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 2: these gp us, this classic processing unit which provide the
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 2: capacity the compute for you to run your AIM models. Yes,
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 2: so we've just built Africa's first AI sactory in Cape Town,
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 2: South Africa. We completed it a couple of months ago. John,
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 2: It's completely.
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 3: Full already, it was full by the time we put
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 3: we switched it on, it.
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: Was full with These are clients from the West primarily
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: who are renting space and like a storage facility for
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: your no.
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 3: Africans, Africans, African businesses already, wow.
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 2: African governments. So I'm now expanding what I built twenty x.
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 2: So we are hoping to invest about three maybe four
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 2: billion dollars in the next eighteen months US billion. There's
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 2: no other currency we denominate. Okay, we like to be
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 2: paid in US dollars to whatever we can join. It's
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 2: so simple. But yeah, look, so we are building that
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 2: compute now. So we've built Cape Town, We're currently building
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 2: in Egypt, We're building in Nigeria. We're building in Kenya
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 2: these regional centers. So for the first time in a
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 2: new technology. Jensen one, when I went to see him,
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 2: he said, we're all at ground zero.
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: Strive.
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we're Africa is not behind on this.
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: I have twenty everybody, Please listen, Please listen. This is
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: like going from the horse and buggy to the automobile
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: eighteen fifty to nineteen ten. This is not going to
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: be sixty years. There'll be six by twenty thirty. The
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: world will change, but nobody has an advantage on you.
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: Please hear me.
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 2: And by the way, John, look you know me I
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 2: talk called the African nation.
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 2: And the African nation for me is not confined to Africa.
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 2: The African nation is everyone of African descent. Yes, whether
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 2: you've been gone for four hundred years, because you did
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 2: not voluntarily leave, you're still part of the African nation.
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: He's working on passport, a global passport to get people
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: after to said to be able to domicile, get a passport,
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: and I'm going to work with him on that.
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 2: Anyway, go ahead, whether you're from Brazil or from Caribbean
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 2: or from the United States. The we got to get
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 2: in on this. Yes, okay, this is the greatest this
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 2: AI think? Is AI dangerous?
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: Absolutely yes? For me? Transformation absolutely yes.
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, it's up to you.
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: Can it's all answer? Absolutely yes, it started war. Absolutely absolutely.
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: I'm an electrical engineer. When I left university.
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 2: When I was doing my thesis at university, I was
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 2: doing high voltage engineering, and the professor said to me,
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 2: you know, I've chosen you because I think you're just
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 2: the right guy for this. Takes me into this lab
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 2: with five hundred thousand vaults and he says, strive, You're
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 2: going to live and work in this room, and if
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 2: you so much as go near those transformers, they're gonna
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 2: fry you. We're just gonna pick up a few crisps here,
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 2: he says. But this is your room. This where you're
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 2: going to live and work. So I said, why me?
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 2: He says, well, you're the smartest guy in the class.
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 2: You're gonna have to figure out how to master this thing.
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 2: And you know, by the time I left university, it
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 2: was the best place for me to have a good
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 2: night sleep and go.
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: By the way, Bill Gates, you used to do the
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: same thing, he goes, He goes, goes, stay in and
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: sleep over night in the computer center. Anyway, I just
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: don't sit.
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 2: In that place with my sandwiches and sleep. I just
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 2: made sure I never went there. Have him drunk any alcohol,
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 2: because you cannot afford to have been drunk in a
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 2: place like that.
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 2: We've got to pay real attention.
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: Now.
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 2: We have the great opportunity for the African nation to
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 2: mint billionaires like they were going out of fashion.
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: Say it again, say it again.
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, this AI think because kids now can start
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 2: a business. I started my business with seventy five dollars.
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: Wow, you started this is with seventy five dollars.
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 2: Yes, sim fan hustle. Yeah, I was a hustler seventy
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 2: five bucks. Okay, it's not. You don't need forget the billions.
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 2: If you know how to master clawed cowork or Mythos
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 2: or any of these AI models, and you really avoid
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 2: doing having a casual relationship with this. Get on YouTube,
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 2: stay on YouTube, Live on YouTube. Not to listen to
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 2: celebrities and stuff. There's time for all that, but just
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 2: immersing in AI.
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: Be nosy, be nosy there, Okay, talk to it. Treat
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: it as a co creator in your life. Just get
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: comfortable with.
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 2: It correct so because it's only gonna hurt those who
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 2: don't know how to use it. Yes, well, it could
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 2: end up hurting all of us. But better be the
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 2: guy who knows what to do than the guy who
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 2: doesn't gets fried.
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: You don't want to be the guy who gets fried
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: in the computer center drinking alcoholic. Finger in the wrong socket.
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: I want your finger in the right socket and I
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: want you plugged in to strive ma. I want you
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: to listen to him, Rida's writings, do research on him
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: his companies. I want you to come back to this
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: conversation with knowing more as much about Stride Massa as
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: you do. You know about Nelson Mandela or Archbishop Desmond
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: Tou tou are, what my friend Oprah Winfrey is doing
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: on the African continent, or the other billionaires that are
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: in mining in other form like me with real estate
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: in the business, the women who are making a difference there.
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: I want you to know who Strivee Masiu is because
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: he is your role model at least one of them
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: for the future, and online tag him and say to him,
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: Strive please come back. We want to learn from you. Stride.
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 2: Thank you, brother, Thank brother, John, thank you for those
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 2: wonderful remarks. All I can say I'm blessed. You know,
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 2: in the in the Amplified Bible, wherever it says I'm blessed,
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 2: there's a little bracket and it says unmerited favor?
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: Was that an unmerited favor?
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 2: Unmerited save? So you have given me unmerited favor with
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 2: your wonderful remarks. John, Thank you, and thank you to
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 2: all wonderful listeners and to the African nation out there.
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 2: Let's go. This is our century now we can still
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 2: do this. So lift up your chin and let's get going.
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: Heymen, this has been John O'Brien and my guest Strive.
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: MASI youa on Money and Wealth podcast series, Season three
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: on the Black Effect Network on iHeartRadio. Let's go change
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: the world together. Cheers Joe, Thank you, Strive, I love you, brother.
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: Money and Wealth with John O'Brien is a production of
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: the Black Effect Podcast Network. For more podcasts from the
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: Black Effect Podcast Network, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.