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Desh Deshpande: Boston is Blessed With Problem Solvers (Audio) · Bloomberg Intelligence

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  Speaker 1: Ah. You're listening to Taking Stock with Bim Box and
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  Speaker 1: Kathleen Hayes on Bluebird Radio. We are broadcasting live from
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  Speaker 1: the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center before tonight's Greater Boston
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  Speaker 1: Chamber of Commerce twenty sixteen Annual Meeting. I'm Pim Fox
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  Speaker 1: my co host Kathleen Hayes. I'd like to introduce now
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  Speaker 1: the president and the chairman of the Sparta Group. He
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  Speaker 1: is also a trustee at the foundation that bears his name,
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  Speaker 1: Desh Despondent. Thank you very much for being here, sir,
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  Speaker 1: thank you now and just looking a little bit into
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  Speaker 1: your background, you are what they might call a serial entrepreneur.
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  Speaker 1: You just can't keep still. Can you give us a
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  Speaker 1: little capsule of your journey to helping found some of
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  Speaker 1: the most well known technology companies in the world and
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  Speaker 1: how you came to be here in Boston. Well, you know,
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  Speaker 1: I grew up in India, Kim Canada, did my master's,
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  Speaker 1: taught for a year, got a PhD, worked in Toronto
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  Speaker 1: for a little bit, and then came division Division of Motorola,
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  Speaker 1: and then came to Boston, mostly because I wanted to
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  Speaker 1: do startups and those days, the only two places where
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  Speaker 1: he could do startups, where Boston and California only two
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  Speaker 1: places where they had venture capital. And so it's kind
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  Speaker 1: of naive, you know, a young couple moving into Boston
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  Speaker 1: not knowing a single soul and say, maybe I'll do
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  Speaker 1: a company. But that's what entrepreneurship is all about. It's
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  Speaker 1: a little bit of naivety, a little bit of optimism.
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  Speaker 1: And Boston has been fantastic to us. And did a
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  Speaker 1: company called Cascade Communications Sycamore Networks, and I probably did
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  Speaker 1: about ten of them. And but for the last fifteen years,
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  Speaker 1: it's not so much I doing companies, but making creating
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  Speaker 1: ecosystem so other people can start the companies. And of
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  Speaker 1: course tonight, UH at the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce
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  Speaker 1: twenty sixteen annual meeting, you will be honored. You'll be
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  Speaker 1: taken into the academy of just being distinguished Bostonians along
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  Speaker 1: with two other terrific people. Uh. And in the time
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  Speaker 1: you've been here, how has Boston changed? You know? Biotech?
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  Speaker 1: Is this is really the center now for biotech in
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  Speaker 1: the country. It's not Silicon Valley, it's not anywhere else now,
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  Speaker 1: it's right here. What makes Boston different though, when you
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  Speaker 1: talk about creating that the ecosystem for other countries companies
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  Speaker 1: to develop, how would you compare it to other hotspots. Well,
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  Speaker 1: you know, I think I think Boston has fantastic educational institutions.
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  Speaker 1: We have a lot of them, and and in general,
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  Speaker 1: you know, I think my philosophy and all this is
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  Speaker 1: built into something that is simple. There is three types
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  Speaker 1: of people in this world. Some people are oblivious to everything.
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  Speaker 1: Some people see a problem and get all excited about it.
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  Speaker 1: Some people see a problem and complain about it. And
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  Speaker 1: the only difference between a why brunt community and an
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  Speaker 1: empowerished community is a mix of those people. Boston is
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  Speaker 1: blessed with problem solvers. You know, we've with being the
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  Speaker 1: tradition here for a long time, whether it's politics or
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  Speaker 1: justice or health care, business, technology, science. Every time the
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  Speaker 1: Boston has gotten into a slump, they've reinvented themselves out
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  Speaker 1: of it and showing the world how to do it.
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  Speaker 1: And so I think it's just the just the inner
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  Speaker 1: way you mind. You know, the power of looking at
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  Speaker 1: a problem and finding a way to solve it. How
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  Speaker 1: do you find the resources you You've got the m I.
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  Speaker 1: T Center, they respond a foundation with three centers in India,
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  Speaker 1: in here, in Massachusetts, and also in New Brunswick in Canada.
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  Speaker 1: How do you marshal the money to do that? Well?
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  Speaker 1: You know, the thing that I found is that, you know,
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  Speaker 1: when I did a company, you come here, you come
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  Speaker 1: with nothing, and then if you have a good idea,
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  Speaker 1: it's amazing people actually write you millions, right. I mean
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  Speaker 1: nineteen ninety when a million meant a million, first company,
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  Speaker 1: somebody wrote me a check for three million dollars. I
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  Speaker 1: mean that was a lot of money. So I think
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  Speaker 1: if you have good people, good ideas, and you can
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  Speaker 1: show that you can make a difference when you will
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  Speaker 1: follow all right, just to go back for just to
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  Speaker 1: put it into a little more context, Sycamore Networks went
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  Speaker 1: public in n I think your market cap there was
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  Speaker 1: eighteen billion. You own a little bit more than a
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  Speaker 1: fifth of the company. When you meet young entrepreneurs, now,
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  Speaker 1: what do you wish someone had told you or someone
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  Speaker 1: had guided you when you were building those companies? I
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  Speaker 1: don't know. I have not much really, you know, it's
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  Speaker 1: been such a fun journey. Um. I think you make mistakes,
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  Speaker 1: but that's a part of the deal. I mean, you know,
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  Speaker 1: nobody will make a mistake knowingly right, And the only
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  Speaker 1: mistake you do in life is not to correct it
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  Speaker 1: when you find that it's a mistake, because mistakes can
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  Speaker 1: only be found in hindsight. And fortunately, I've had a
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  Speaker 1: good life. I mean, I can't I can't complain at all.
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  Speaker 1: What do you worry most about the US economy or
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  Speaker 1: about the Massachusetts economy? You've done so much. Is there
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  Speaker 1: one thing in particular you are concerned? They hope may
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  Speaker 1: because it rests as we get culturing election season. Well,
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  Speaker 1: you know, I think the thing that I've sort of
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  Speaker 1: really passionate about for the last ten years has been
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  Speaker 1: social entrepreneurship. And we started a lot of that in India,
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  Speaker 1: but we've brought it back to US. So I'm very
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  Speaker 1: excited about new possibilities for all the Gateway cities because
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  Speaker 1: you know, I think this globalization, technology, all this has
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  Speaker 1: really enabled entrepreneurs just for a few people to do
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  Speaker 1: a tremendous amount of wealth creation, impact and so on.
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  Speaker 1: But you don't want a world where a few people
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  Speaker 1: make everything happen and the rest of the people are
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  Speaker 1: just beneficiaries. I mean, that's not a stable society. So
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  Speaker 1: I'm very excited about a program that we launched about
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  Speaker 1: five years ago called for all entrepreneurship for all. So
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  Speaker 1: just like entrepreneurship, the power of innovation entrepreneurship, I would
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  Speaker 1: like to bident to these Gaveay cities. Well, you're gonna
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  Speaker 1: have to come back and tell us about that. Despond,
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  Speaker 1: the President chairman of this PARTWO group, being honored tonight
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  Speaker 1: by the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce. This is Bloomberg Radio.