Latest / The David Rubenstein Show / Dan Doctoroff

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Dan Doctoroff · The David Rubenstein Show

0:03
Speaker 1: Dan doctor Off is a former Deputy Mayor of New
0:05
Speaker 1: York City and a former CEO of Bloomberg. I came
0:08
Speaker 1: to know Dan reasonably well a few years ago when
0:10
Speaker 1: he created Target a l S, which was designed to
0:13
Speaker 1: raise funding to help cure A l S, a disease
0:16
Speaker 1: which killed his father and his uncle. Recently, sadly, Dan
0:20
Speaker 1: was also diagnosed with a l S. I sat down
0:22
Speaker 1: with Dan at Bloomberg recently and talked about his life, philanthropy,
0:26
Speaker 1: and his desire to now do what he can help
0:28
Speaker 1: cure a l S. Dan recently, about a year ago,
0:32
Speaker 1: you were diagnosed with a l S, which is a
0:34
Speaker 1: very sad tragic disease. What was your reaction when you
0:38
Speaker 1: heard about this. Well, I was actually shocked, despite the
0:42
Speaker 1: fact that my father and uncle died of the disease,
0:47
Speaker 1: and I didn't expect it at all. Um. I really
0:51
Speaker 1: hadn't felt many symptoms. Um. But I went away on
0:56
Speaker 1: a trip to Iceland with my wife, and I had
1:00
Speaker 1: breathing problems and I couldn't climb rocks. I got exhausted
1:06
Speaker 1: climbing hills, which is really weird because I was in
1:08
Speaker 1: pretty good shape, and so I decided to go see
1:11
Speaker 1: a doctor not thinking it was a l S, and
1:15
Speaker 1: he noticed my muscles twitching and brought in the head
1:19
Speaker 1: of neurology um at the hospital that I went to,
1:24
Speaker 1: and he almost immediately declared I probably had a L
1:28
Speaker 1: S given my family history. So then I reached out
1:31
Speaker 1: to other doctors who I knew in the A L
1:35
Speaker 1: S field, and they basically confirmed it with a series
1:40
Speaker 1: of tests. But your father who died of a LS
1:44
Speaker 1: and your uncle who died of LS, they had a
1:46
Speaker 1: gene which is kind of an A L S gene.
1:49
Speaker 1: You had earlier been tested for that gene years ago
1:52
Speaker 1: and we were told you didn't have it. No, I
1:54
Speaker 1: had never been tested. I never wanted to be tested
1:58
Speaker 1: because I didn't want to have to tell my kids
2:01
Speaker 1: if I tested positive. So everyone sort of assumed I
2:06
Speaker 1: had a LS based on my results and my family history.
2:11
Speaker 1: But when the genetic testing came back, I did not
2:14
Speaker 1: have the same genetic mutation that my dad and my uncle,
2:19
Speaker 1: and by the way, their first cousin had, so it's
2:22
Speaker 1: throughout my family. But I didn't have the gene, which
2:26
Speaker 1: has happened like A five times in history. So for
2:31
Speaker 1: people who were not familiar with a l S. It
2:33
Speaker 1: first became well known to the public when lou Garic,
2:36
Speaker 1: the famous baseball player, contracted it and died relatively quickly thereafter.
2:41
Speaker 1: He was in his thirties. I believe at the time
2:43
Speaker 1: since that time, since the nineteen thirties, have we made
2:46
Speaker 1: that much progress in diagnosing or treating a LS. So
2:50
Speaker 1: there had been virtually no progress for a hundred and
2:55
Speaker 1: forty years from the time it was discovered in eighteen seventy.
3:01
Speaker 1: My uncle died in two thousand and ten, and in
3:05
Speaker 1: two thousand and ten I decided, you know, look in
3:08
Speaker 1: my family, it's hereditary. My dad had died in two
3:10
Speaker 1: thousand and two. I gotta do something, and so I
3:15
Speaker 1: hired a team of scientists to understand why there was
3:19
Speaker 1: so little progress made in the disease, and we came
3:23
Speaker 1: up with a set of theories and created an organization
3:28
Speaker 1: around those theories. Um that included, you know, funding of consortia,
3:35
Speaker 1: funding of core scientific resources that anyone in the world
3:40
Speaker 1: could draw on, bringing in biotech and pharma into the process,
3:47
Speaker 1: and there's been an explosion of progress over the last
3:50
Speaker 1: ten years. I'm really proud that Data Organization Target a
3:55
Speaker 1: LS has has played a major role in catalyzing the
3:59
Speaker 1: product dress. Now, when you were told recently you have
4:03
Speaker 1: about a year ago a LS, you didn't say I'm
4:05
Speaker 1: now gonna just take life very easy. You decided you're
4:08
Speaker 1: gonna go raise another two fifty million dollars for target
4:11
Speaker 1: a LS. Why did you say you wanted to put
4:14
Speaker 1: the energy and effort into that, knowing it probably really
4:17
Speaker 1: wouldn't help you. Because first of all, this affects my family. UM.
4:24
Speaker 1: You know, even though I don't have the same genetic
4:27
Speaker 1: mutation that my dad and uncle did, I may have
4:31
Speaker 1: another genetic mutation that has not been discovered yet. UM,
4:37
Speaker 1: and my cousins, my brothers might have a l S.
4:43
Speaker 1: So it's very personal for me. But the other thing is,
4:47
Speaker 1: and most people don't recognize this, one in four hundred
4:51
Speaker 1: people who are alive today will die of ALS if
4:56
Speaker 1: we don't come up with treatments. And so target ALS
5:01
Speaker 1: has been amazingly successful over the last ten years, and
5:04
Speaker 1: I thought there was nothing more important that I could
5:08
Speaker 1: do than to scale up target ALS and hopefully see
5:14
Speaker 1: real treatments that saved people's lives within the next five
5:19
Speaker 1: to ten years. And hopefully we'll be at a point
5:22
Speaker 1: within ten years that we can see a day when
5:27
Speaker 1: everybody's lives get extended and saved. A number of years ago,
5:32
Speaker 1: there was so called ice bucket Challenge and where I
5:35
Speaker 1: think people were having water dumped on their heads and uh,
5:40
Speaker 1: it was designed to raise money for a LS. I
5:43
Speaker 1: think it did raise a fair amount of money, over
5:44
Speaker 1: a hundred million dollars, but that was not for research.
5:48
Speaker 1: That was for care of those who already have a
5:50
Speaker 1: l S. Is that right. Some of it went to research,
5:53
Speaker 1: but most of it went to patient care, which is important.
5:56
Speaker 1: I mean, this is a devastating disease. UM. You know
6:00
Speaker 1: what happens in a LS is the signals that get
6:04
Speaker 1: sent from the brain to the muscles to move die
6:09
Speaker 1: and when that happens, people get paralyzed, and it's just
6:13
Speaker 1: a progressive disease where you lose more and more control UM.
6:19
Speaker 1: So patient care is really important. We have to always
6:24
Speaker 1: find the right balance between patient care and research because
6:29
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, the thing that is
6:31
Speaker 1: going to save the lives of those one in four
6:34
Speaker 1: people UM is treatments, and we need a lot of
6:40
Speaker 1: effort to actually come up with effective treatments. Now today
6:45
Speaker 1: we still do not know what causes a LS. Is
6:47
Speaker 1: it a genetic thing completely or is it environmental or
6:50
Speaker 1: is there some combination. What do we really know about
6:53
Speaker 1: what causes a LS? Well, there are certain genetic causes
6:57
Speaker 1: that we know our respond table for a l S,
7:02
Speaker 1: but that's only about ten of the cases. The other
7:07
Speaker 1: we don't really know. We know now what the biological
7:10
Speaker 1: pathways are UM, so we have a much better understanding
7:15
Speaker 1: of the science and that is leading to UM potential treatments,
7:23
Speaker 1: But the really understanding the cause, I think we're still
7:29
Speaker 1: got a long way to go. We to talk about
7:31
Speaker 1: a little bit more about a l S in a moment.
7:33
Speaker 1: Let me talk about your background. Where are you from?
7:37
Speaker 1: I grew up in Birmingham, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit, Okay.
7:41
Speaker 1: And your father was My father was a lawyer who
7:45
Speaker 1: became the chief judge of the Michigan Court of Appeal.
7:49
Speaker 1: And at what age did he contract a LS? Sixty
7:52
Speaker 1: six years old. My mother, who was a psychologist, had
7:57
Speaker 1: just died of a rare net cancer at sixty four,
8:02
Speaker 1: and literally within weeks of her dying, he started to
8:07
Speaker 1: show symptoms UM that would later be diagnosed as a
8:12
Speaker 1: l S. He started a limp. Basically, you weren't what
8:15
Speaker 1: age now and that today I'm sixty four, so about
8:19
Speaker 1: the same age your father, A little bit a little
8:21
Speaker 1: bit less. Where'd you go to college Harvard? And what
8:25
Speaker 1: did you study there? And what did you want to be?
8:27
Speaker 1: I didn't know what I wanted to be. I studied government, um,
8:33
Speaker 1: because I didn't know anything better. Um. But my biggest
8:37
Speaker 1: achievement in college was meeting my wife freshman year. We've
8:42
Speaker 1: now been dating or married forty five years, so that
8:47
Speaker 1: was my biggest achievement. Achievement. So after college? Who went
8:51
Speaker 1: to law school at the Universit Chicago? Before I did that,
8:53
Speaker 1: I was a political pollster for a firm called Market
8:57
Speaker 1: Opinion Research, and I'd be flying all over the country
9:00
Speaker 1: as a twenty two year old advising candidates. And the
9:04
Speaker 1: fact that they listened to me discouraged me so much
9:08
Speaker 1: that I decided to go to law school. The fact
9:10
Speaker 1: that they were listening to a year olds exactly, all right,
9:14
Speaker 1: she went to law school the universe Chicago. And what
9:16
Speaker 1: did you do after you graduated? Um? I went to
9:19
Speaker 1: work for Lehman Brothers. So you were an investment banker?
9:23
Speaker 1: And how long did you do that three years? And
9:26
Speaker 1: then you went into the calling of private equity right
9:29
Speaker 1: to the firm that became partners. Okay, and so you
9:33
Speaker 1: did that for how many years? Fourteen? All right? So
9:37
Speaker 1: how did you become close to or get to know
9:39
Speaker 1: Mike Bloomberg. It's it's actually a funny story. So back,
9:45
Speaker 1: I was sitting in the stands of the World Cup
9:48
Speaker 1: semi final game out at the Meadowlands in New Jersey,
9:52
Speaker 1: was Italy versus Bulgaria. A friend literally dragged me um
9:58
Speaker 1: to the game. I didn't want to go. It was
10:01
Speaker 1: like a hundred degrees. We took the bus. It took forever,
10:05
Speaker 1: but I walked into the stadium that day and I
10:08
Speaker 1: thought it was the most amazing sporting event I had
10:11
Speaker 1: ever seen. Um. Everyone was painted in Bulgarian and Italian colors. Um,
10:19
Speaker 1: you couldn't sit down. So I was standing there through
10:22
Speaker 1: the match thinking to myself, Um, you could play this
10:27
Speaker 1: game in New York with any two countries in the
10:31
Speaker 1: world and it would feel exactly the same. And then
10:36
Speaker 1: I started thinking about the Olympics, which had always been
10:38
Speaker 1: a fan of, and saying, why has the most international
10:42
Speaker 1: city in the world never hosted the most international event.
10:47
Speaker 1: And I left the stadium that day with this vague
10:50
Speaker 1: notion that New York got to host the Olympics. And
10:54
Speaker 1: so I built a plan with advisors about how New
10:59
Speaker 1: York could host the Olympics, and eventually I showed it
11:03
Speaker 1: to Mike Bloomberg. When he was running the company, he
11:06
Speaker 1: wasn't contemplating running for mayor. He gave some money, he
11:10
Speaker 1: went on the board UM, and then when he shockingly
11:14
Speaker 1: won to be mayor, he asked me to join him
11:18
Speaker 1: in City Hall. And what did you do at City Hall?
11:21
Speaker 1: For Mike Bloomberg? In the city so, I was responsible
11:23
Speaker 1: for everything economic and financial. So my title was Deputy
11:29
Speaker 1: Mayor for Economic Development and rebuilding. First task was rebuilding
11:33
Speaker 1: the World Trade Center site. But then we really rethought
11:38
Speaker 1: the future of New York physically and financially UM by
11:43
Speaker 1: having a five borough economic development strategy. Now, after serving
11:48
Speaker 1: as Deputy Mayor of New York for development and other
11:51
Speaker 1: projects dealing with economic development, you left after how many years?
11:55
Speaker 1: I was there for six years and then Mike. One day,
11:58
Speaker 1: Mike Bloomberg, we sat in this bullpen in City Hall.
12:03
Speaker 1: It's an open space, UM, and I sat basically behind him.
12:09
Speaker 1: One day, he wheeled around and he UM said, Uh,
12:17
Speaker 1: what would you think about going over and running Bloomberg?
12:21
Speaker 1: And I said to him, what are you talking about? UM,
12:26
Speaker 1: in the six years that we have sat here together,
12:29
Speaker 1: we have discussed the company for one hour total, and
12:36
Speaker 1: he said, no, I think you'd be really good. UM.
12:39
Speaker 1: I'd never run a big company before. UM. I didn't
12:44
Speaker 1: know anything about Bloomberg. When I was in private ectuity,
12:47
Speaker 1: I was a light user of Bloomberg. I knew one
12:51
Speaker 1: person at the company and he said, no, I think
12:54
Speaker 1: you'd be really good. So I said, okay, I'll think
12:57
Speaker 1: about it. So I came back the next day said okay,
13:00
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do it. I'm not going to do it
13:03
Speaker 1: for the same salary I was getting paid in government,
13:05
Speaker 1: which was one dollar UM. And I started UM about
13:12
Speaker 1: six weeks later, and after it was announced publicly that
13:17
Speaker 1: I was going to go run Bloomberg. UM, I said
13:20
Speaker 1: to Mike, Okay, I'm doing it. What do you want
13:23
Speaker 1: me to do? UM? He said, I don't know. I
13:26
Speaker 1: haven't been there for six years. You go figure it out.
13:30
Speaker 1: And I did so. How many years did you run
13:34
Speaker 1: bloom Seven? Seven years? And the company grew pretty nicely
13:37
Speaker 1: during that period. Yeah, I mean we as soon as
13:41
Speaker 1: I got there the financial crisis happened, UM, but we
13:45
Speaker 1: grew from I think five point four billion in revenues
13:49
Speaker 1: UM to nine in the seven years that I was there.
13:53
Speaker 1: After Mike finished his third term as mayor, he came
13:55
Speaker 1: back and being resumed the position of being Shio. You
13:58
Speaker 1: left the company and you still another company called Sidewalk Labs.
14:02
Speaker 1: What was that? That was a company I formed with
14:06
Speaker 1: Larry Page and Google became alphabet UM that was focused
14:13
Speaker 1: on urban innovation. And what we wanted to do was
14:17
Speaker 1: built up the most innovative place in the world. But
14:21
Speaker 1: also by focusing on building a place, UM developed ideas
14:28
Speaker 1: urban innovation ideas that could UM dramatically transform UM the cities.
14:37
Speaker 1: So you're running that company, and then when you got
14:41
Speaker 1: the news that you had a LS, you decided, I'm
14:44
Speaker 1: out of this. I'm gonna go throw myself to target
14:47
Speaker 1: A LS. Is that right, basically? And I still over
14:50
Speaker 1: on the board of a couple of the companies that
14:52
Speaker 1: we created, But yeah, my focus was definitely on a
14:56
Speaker 1: l S. And you know, I also wanted to spend
15:00
Speaker 1: much more time with my family with friends, travel, UM,
15:06
Speaker 1: do things that I had always wanted to do, and UM,
15:12
Speaker 1: it's actually worked out amazingly. Well, you've been around young
15:15
Speaker 1: people for much of your career as well, and you've
15:17
Speaker 1: hired many young people at Bloomberg New York City sidewalk Labs.
15:22
Speaker 1: Somebody says I want to be a person has an
15:25
Speaker 1: impact on society. What would you recommend that somebody do
15:28
Speaker 1: to train themselves and to work their way up to
15:31
Speaker 1: be somebody that's impactful on society. Well, I think the
15:34
Speaker 1: first thing, you've got to believe in something that you
15:39
Speaker 1: really care about. You know, I've been fortunate that over
15:43
Speaker 1: the course of my career, I've come up with things
15:46
Speaker 1: that have mattered to me. UM, and I've pursued them. Um.
15:51
Speaker 1: You know the best advice I ever got, UM was
15:55
Speaker 1: from Mike Bloomberg, and he said to me at one point,
15:59
Speaker 1: he said, and UM, show me somebody who's never lost,
16:04
Speaker 1: and I'll show you a loser. UM. And I believe
16:08
Speaker 1: that that if you believe in something, go after it.
16:13
Speaker 1: Take risk. Obviously they should be smart risks, but they
16:18
Speaker 1: should be around things that you really care about. So
16:22
Speaker 1: you would see your legacy as being actually target als
16:25
Speaker 1: and helping to moderate the impact of the LS, if
16:28
Speaker 1: not curing it. That's my final legacy. I'm proud of
16:31
Speaker 1: some of the other stuff that I've done as well, Um,
16:35
Speaker 1: you know, the transformation of New York after nine eleven.
16:40
Speaker 1: I'm also incredibly proud of a lot of the companies
16:43
Speaker 1: we created, it Sidewalk, I'm proud of the Chad. I'm
16:46
Speaker 1: proud of a lot. But I feel like i've I've
16:49
Speaker 1: I've done a lot. How do you think New York
16:52
Speaker 1: City is doing today? Mike Bloomberg is no longer mayor.
16:55
Speaker 1: There's been mayor after him, and now we have new
16:57
Speaker 1: Mayor Eric Adams in New York. Um, it's New York
17:00
Speaker 1: as as safe as it was when you were in
17:02
Speaker 1: the government, It's not as safe as it was. Crime
17:05
Speaker 1: is clearly rising. I mean, it's not back to the
17:09
Speaker 1: dark old days of you know, pre Juliani in the
17:13
Speaker 1: not early nineties. But we've got to be careful because
17:17
Speaker 1: safety is a foundation of everything. And so I know
17:23
Speaker 1: the current mayor is committed to reducing crime. Um, but
17:28
Speaker 1: we're gonna have to be incredibly aggressive in making sure
17:31
Speaker 1: that crime does not in you involved any longer in
17:34
Speaker 1: New York City matters or your advice. Theyor and governor
17:37
Speaker 1: actually asked me to co chair a panel or a
17:43
Speaker 1: task force on reviving the commercial districts throughout the city.
17:48
Speaker 1: So I've been in the middle of that well that
17:50
Speaker 1: later this fall will produce the report that hopefully, you know,
17:55
Speaker 1: will be pretty um inspiring here and in other places.
18:01
Speaker 1: One of the other projects you conceived of is the Shed,
18:04
Speaker 1: and you were for a while the chairman of it
18:06
Speaker 1: for a long time. You got it off the ground.
18:08
Speaker 1: What is the Shed? We want to put a cultural
18:10
Speaker 1: institution on the far west side of Manhattan. And so
18:14
Speaker 1: what we decided to do was create a new kind
18:17
Speaker 1: of cultural institution that would be remarkably adaptable. Um. The
18:23
Speaker 1: spaces could be adapted to anything. Um. They could accommodate
18:27
Speaker 1: virtually all forms of artistic expression. UM. There's many different
18:35
Speaker 1: venues in it. The building literally moves back and forth.
18:40
Speaker 1: It is so flexible. It's sort of an architectural marvel. Um.
18:45
Speaker 1: And I'm really proud of it now. Perhaps the most
18:47
Speaker 1: famous person who had a LS was Luke Garrick, where
18:50
Speaker 1: some people still call it glu Garrick's disease. But another
18:53
Speaker 1: famous person had it with Stephen Hawking, and he lived
18:55
Speaker 1: for some thirty plus years with it. How do you
18:58
Speaker 1: explain that sometimes people can live for thirty years plus.
19:01
Speaker 1: A couple of people live beyond ten years. One of
19:05
Speaker 1: the decisions that I'm going to face, because my major
19:10
Speaker 1: symptom is respiratory and that's why people ultimately die, is
19:16
Speaker 1: to get a tracheostomy um, which means that you can't
19:24
Speaker 1: breathe independently. You also can't eat, and you also generally
19:28
Speaker 1: cannot talk, so you communicate by looking and spelling out
19:33
Speaker 1: words on a computer screen. And you know a lot
19:37
Speaker 1: of people I don't want to live that way. UM,
19:42
Speaker 1: I think I probably would. UM. I want to see
19:48
Speaker 1: my grandchildren grow up. UM. I still think I could
19:52
Speaker 1: be engaged in things. Again, that's sort of my optimistic nature,
19:57
Speaker 1: that it's not just about believing there's a cure, um,
20:02
Speaker 1: but it's sometimes about believing that the better of too
20:08
Speaker 1: bad alternatives UM is something worth doing. So you know it,
20:14
Speaker 1: faced with that choice, I think that's what I would do,
20:19
Speaker 1: And you know I'll need a lot of help, but
20:22
Speaker 1: fortunately I can afford it. The word progressive is a
20:25
Speaker 1: word used for a l S and other diseases as well.
20:28
Speaker 1: Progressive is a euphanism for it's never going to get better,
20:31
Speaker 1: it's going to get worse. So progressive in the case
20:34
Speaker 1: of a l S means you're going to die much
20:37
Speaker 1: sooner than you would otherwise die absence some sort of
20:41
Speaker 1: miracle progress, which I don't really expect for of a
20:49
Speaker 1: l S. Patients die within three to five years. Many
20:52
Speaker 1: people when they face death and the certainty of death,
20:55
Speaker 1: and everybody's going to die at some point, but people
20:58
Speaker 1: generally think it's way down the road or over the horizon.
21:00
Speaker 1: You know that within three to five years it's more
21:03
Speaker 1: likely than not that you will not be alive. So
21:06
Speaker 1: how do you deal with that every day when you
21:07
Speaker 1: get up? You Know, the interesting thing is I have
21:12
Speaker 1: been in an amazing mood ever since I've been diagnosed.
21:19
Speaker 1: I've had maybe one down hour communatively in the last year.
21:26
Speaker 1: Um and I've got many theories to try and explain it.
21:31
Speaker 1: The biggest one is when I was diagnosed, I stopped
21:37
Speaker 1: thinking about the future. It was not something I tried
21:41
Speaker 1: to do. I think it was sort of my optimistic
21:44
Speaker 1: nature protecting me. And it's not like I'm in denial.
21:48
Speaker 1: I know the statistics. I spend lots of time with
21:51
Speaker 1: a l S patients. I've lived with it with my father,
21:55
Speaker 1: my uncle, my college roommate died of a l s UM.
22:00
Speaker 1: So I know what's going to happen. UM. But I
22:05
Speaker 1: stopped thinking about the future, and that has been just
22:09
Speaker 1: an enormous benefit for me. I have a lot of
22:12
Speaker 1: other theories to explain why I've been so unfazed by
22:17
Speaker 1: the disease, why I've been so happy. UM. That includes
22:23
Speaker 1: I've had a great life. UM. I have a wonderful family,
22:28
Speaker 1: I've got great friends. I've done what I wanted career wise. UM.
22:33
Speaker 1: I've done outside things like the Shed or the Olympics
22:37
Speaker 1: that I wanted to do because I was passionate about them. Um.
22:42
Speaker 1: I've had a great life, and obviously I wanted to continue.
22:46
Speaker 1: But if it doesn't, I'm grateful for the life that
22:49
Speaker 1: I've had. And then you know, I've been bathed in
22:53
Speaker 1: sort of like the love and support of so many people.
22:57
Speaker 1: When I announced that I had a l s UM,
23:02
Speaker 1: I got at thousands of notes, you know, lots of
23:06
Speaker 1: people talking about the impact that I've had on their life, etcetera.
23:10
Speaker 1: I literally felt like I died and witnessed my funeral.
23:15
Speaker 1: But then the last part of it is UM, I
23:19
Speaker 1: feel like I've got purpose. UM with target A ls UM,
23:24
Speaker 1: I feel like I can contribute to saving people's lives,
23:32
Speaker 1: maybe my own, unlikely my kids, my family, but those
23:37
Speaker 1: one in four people, and there's nothing more important than that.
23:41
Speaker 1: So I feel like I'm on my last mission and
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