SPEAKER_00: The first time I met Bill Gurley, I went to his office in San Francisco and he walked into the meeting with a folder that was full of research about our company and our CEO. And he walked in and he said, you know, hey, I just read all these interviews about your CEO and he was asking all

SPEAKER_05: these questions and he was so curious. And I walked out of the meeting and I was like, wow, this is one of the best venture capitalists in the world. And he had spent so much time trying to learn about who we are before I even walked in. I've had so many meetings where I just walk in and people say, what's Mobadla anyways? This Week in Startups is brought to you by

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SPEAKER_11: All right, everybody. Welcome back to this Week in Startups. I'm really excited because my friend Brad Gerstner from Altimeter Capital told me about a month ago that he was going to go to the UAE, the United Arab Emirates. And he was going on a tour to meet with all of the different family

SPEAKER_13: offices and funds over here. And I said, you know, I've never been Brad. And I invited myself to come with you. So I said, do you want some company? And you were gracious enough to say yes. And here we are in the UAE.

SPEAKER_16: Thanks for having me. It's been, it's been just an incredible few days. And, and I'm really looking forward to this because we're sitting next to somebody who's,

SPEAKER_17: I think really driving innovation technology in this part of the world.

SPEAKER_11: Yes. And, uh, so with us is Ibrahim Ajami. Uh, Ibrahim, you are, uh, with Mubadala. Why don't you

SPEAKER_13: explain to the audience, um, in America and around the world, of course, um, what you do, and maybe a little bit about the region and the sudden interest and collaboration we'll get into as we go, but maybe just a little background on who you are and what you do. Thanks, Jason. Brad,

SPEAKER_20: welcome to Abu Dhabi. First of all, and I just want to say that it's a real privilege to be doing this. I mean, I just give you a little bit of a story. Uh, my mother sent me to a Microsoft DOS

SPEAKER_04: class in the early nineties here in Abu Dhabi. Wow. And, and she would tell me you need to go take this course on a weekend because, uh, computers were going to be the future. So fast forward 30 years, the fact that I'm sitting with, uh, with you here in Abu Dhabi talking about technology and,

SPEAKER_05: and the bridge between Silicon Valley and the UREs, it's a, it's a real big privilege for me.

SPEAKER_04: So I, you know, I head up, um, the ventures business for, uh, for Mubadala. Mubadala is a large sovereign wealth fund from Abu Dhabi. We operate globally. Uh, we invest in all sorts of sectors, everything from financial services to healthcare, technology, semiconductors, manufacturing. Uh, we operate, uh, you know, from the U S Latin America, Europe, Asia, and, uh, and I've been at Mubadala for 17 years. I joined them in 2006 and, uh, you know, it's been a, uh, an incredible journey.

SPEAKER_23: Most of my career in Mubadala has been investing in technology and we can get into that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_25: And so for people who don't know, uh, the UAE maybe like a little primer, tell us about this region.

SPEAKER_13: Uh, people have heard of Dubai. Uh, people have heard of Abu Dhabi. They've heard of UAE, but they may not understand, uh, you know, the seven different states, if you will, or regions, how they operate together. Uh, we see on television as Americans, you know, Abu Dhabi and certainly Dubai with some of the tall buildings and that there's a lot of activity here. Um, explain what

SPEAKER_14: be, how this region was formed, uh, and the, and how it operates. Yeah. The United Arab Emirates is

SPEAKER_27: just like you said, it's a, um, you know, it's a, it's a federation of seven Emirates, seven states.

SPEAKER_28: And, um, it was formed in 1971. Uh, so we're quite a young country, quite a young country with, um,

SPEAKER_04: with incredible leadership that is very committed and, uh, and devoted to, uh, growth and development and education and health and, and innovation. And we've gone through tremendous amount of change. Um, and, uh, you know, it's, uh, the, Abu Dhabi is the capital. Um, and we are, uh, we're very fortunate and blessed that, uh, we discovered, uh, oil and hydrocarbon resources here, um, in the URI and Abu Dhabi. And what we've been very focused on, the leadership has been very focused on, um, is leveraging those resources and transforming the economy and transforming the country over the past 20, 30 years. And also thinking about the next 50 years and a hundred years and taking a long-term perspective and a long-term plan. So I came to, you know, Abu Dhabi, my parents moved to Abu Dhabi in the, in the late seventies. And just to have witnessed this tremendous amount of growth, it's just truly

SPEAKER_28: incredible. Abu Dhabi is, um, um, is now a major financial center. Obviously we're a large energy producing, uh, country, but we're also now a major financial center. We're a big education center and healthcare center. And, uh, and we've also taken, made a very important decision to make this as an

SPEAKER_33: important technology and innovation hub. Yeah. And it's very interesting. There seems to be a little

SPEAKER_13: rivalry between Dubai and Abu Dhabi, uh, Dubai, some, uh, buildings there, but they don't have,

SPEAKER_14: if my understanding is correct, the oil is not there. It's here, but the oil, uh, in, uh, the UAE has been, uh, sort of the, the, the revenue from it has been split amongst these seven, uh, different states. And so everybody is pursuing slightly different strategies. Uh, and there's

SPEAKER_13: massive investment in the discussion, Brad, that I thought was super fascinating. I'm curious your take on this as Americans, as we come over here, this is your first trip here as well. Um, I've been to Qatar and so you and I are neophytes. We're learning a lot here. And that was the reason I wanted to come on the trip. And I know that's the reason you started this trip. Uh, we're both fun, fun managers. So of course we're interested in capital allocators over here and technologists and the startup community. Um, but the unbelievable unbridled optimism, innovation and energy here is palatable. It feels to me very similar to New York in the nineties, Silicon Valley in the two thousands. Um, what I experienced in Shanghai or Hong Kong, Australia, just some of these great other hubs, but there is a recognition that this incredible wealth, uh, that this region was lucky to have. There's a, there's a, there's a timeframe under which that will last and that investment needs to occur. And that's been an overwhelming discussion I've been having with folks. They seem to think 2050, 2060, you know, Hey, maybe the oil is not worth as much. And there's a 30 year window here to build, uh, additional industries. So what was your impression? You know, we're here at day three of our trip. You've done a ton of meetings. I've done a ton of meetings. What's your general impression of this, uh, region doing massive investment, the massive optimism and the transition?

SPEAKER_16: Yeah. Great question. Jake. The first thing is leadership matters. If you look at over the last 30 years in this country, the GDP is 10 X. The literacy rate has gone from 20% to over 90%. Uh, the number of schools in Abu Dhabi, I think went from four to over a hundred. Um, now this is a country with basically the same oil resources as a country like Libya, about the same size as a company country like Libya. Libya's GDP over that period of time is only two X, right? It's been fraught with wars, lack of innovation, certainly not a financial hub, right? And so in the UAE and Abu Dhabi in particular, you have a committed government leadership to diversify the economy away from hydrocarbons. The country has gone from 60% of its GDP was hydrocarbons to I think now less than 30% of its GDP is hydrocarbons. If you look at Dubai, it's on multiple dimensions to buy and Abu Dhabi. I mean, two of the, the most busy airports in the world, Abu Dhabi is doubling yet again, the size of their airport. It will become, you know, uh, welcome even twice as many passengers. If you look at things like the Cleveland clinic, the quality of life in Abu Dhabi, uh, New York university in Abu Dhabi, you know, they've had more road scholars out of the, in the last 10 years out of NYU in Abu Dhabi, than all but three other schools on the planet. It's incredible. Including Harvard, Oxford, et cetera. So the Renaissance here starts at the top. It is a welcoming, open government that is inviting entrepreneurs. And really Ibrahim and I started a dialogue, not because I was over here, wanted to come over here and look for capital. Um, we can find capital anywhere that we want in the world.

SPEAKER_47: What was interesting to me is that founders wanted to be here, is that GPs wanted to be here, is that the innovation, uh, hubs, like we spoke at the other night that was off the charts at hub 71, you have incubators forming here. And we, we met five founders from around the world that 10 years ago would have been coming to the United States and now they want to set up shop in Abu Dhabi. And so I

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SPEAKER_13: And Ibrahim, it seems like the immigration policy, I heard people talking about golden visas and just the support that you're giving to startups, you're making a big investment there. So maybe you could explain when founders come here, exactly how you're supporting them, and why they're coming here. Because it's a big decision where to put your company. And it's a big strategic decision. And you guys are giving some very significant support.

SPEAKER_28: Yeah, listen, I just want to build on what Brad said. This is something we we also learned from

SPEAKER_00: Silicon Valley, which is founders and companies have choice, just like founders and companies have choice about which investors they take money from. Founders today have choice about where to go and build their companies and how to set up. And what you see happening here in the UAE today is truly a coordinated effort between the policymakers, the regulators, the financial institutions, the investors, the capital providers, to really create an inviting, welcoming, and enabling environment for entrepreneurs and founders. And we've been working on this for quite some time. So let me just

SPEAKER_04: share with you a little bit of the Mubadla story in technology. Yeah, please. Because I think that is ultimately going to help frame how we ultimately started creating a a technology ecosystem here. We, we in 2008, we decided to invest in semiconductors,

SPEAKER_00: as Mubadla. There was a point in time in 2008, where the the US wasn't investing semiconductors,

SPEAKER_60: the European were not investing, and this is the great financial crisis, right? Right, right. For people who are young and don't remember that 2008 is the great finance.

SPEAKER_62: Exactly. We took a we took a decision, a very important strategic decision,

SPEAKER_00: that we will invest in semiconductors, and we committed to the sector. And we did that. And you know, we, we, it was semiconductors, a cyclical industry, we went through ups and downs.

SPEAKER_04: We ultimately took the company public that we created called Global Foundries, and we continue to be a majority shareholder. And we're very, very happy with that investment. In 2016, we stepped back and we said, we've been investing in semiconductors for

SPEAKER_00: eight years now. And over that period, we saw the emergence of the mobile with the iPhone,

SPEAKER_04: and the emergence of the cloud, and a lot of the value that was created with software and the internet. And we did not participate in any of that value creation, even though we actually powered a lot of it with our semiconductors.

SPEAKER_05: Right. So we said, for Mubadla to be, continue to grow the way we want to grow,

SPEAKER_04: we must be active in software, we must be internet active in the internet economy, we must be active

SPEAKER_00: in ventures. And to do that, we should go and set up in Silicon Valley, because that's where we're going to learn the magic. That's where we're going to learn the craft. We should go start our journey in ventures in Silicon Valley, set up in San Francisco, and start getting to know the founders and learning the craft. And we didn't just go and say we are better than everybody else. We said,

SPEAKER_04: let's go also partner with some of the best, so we can learn from them. And we can educate them about our part of the world. So this is seven, eight years in the making of us building our technology franchise. And ultimately, that's what led us to, again, in 2018, to say, okay, we have all these relationships around the world and technology. After Silicon Valley, we also set up in London.

SPEAKER_27: And we all we have offices here and we said, why don't, why don't we start creating an

SPEAKER_33: ecosystem here in Abu Dhabi? And so Mubadala will invest in the United States, in Europe or here.

SPEAKER_13: And so what is the focus then? Is it majority to get people here or equally to invest globally?

SPEAKER_04: First and foremost, it's about identifying great companies, investing in them, and taking a long-term perspective and long-term journey with them for financial returns. This is a very, very important

SPEAKER_05: distinction. We are, at the end of the day, we start and we're as financial investors. We're

SPEAKER_13: very financially focused. Because you want this to be evergreen. You don't just want to take this incredible oil wealth and just donate it to a bunch of tech companies or you want to get returns. So this becomes a sustainable business and evergreen. A sustainable business that ultimately compounds

SPEAKER_04: over a long-term period of time. And we want to be partners and investors with long-term, enduring technology companies. And then as we grow with these companies and as we learn about these companies, we ask ourselves and we ask them, should you set up in the region? Should you come and set up in the UAE? Can we help you with opening markets here in the UAE? Can we help you with customers? Can potentially setting up in Abu Dhabi help your business grow? So that's also part of our strategic

SPEAKER_05: lens. So if you step back from it, what is our product as venture investors, as tech investors?

SPEAKER_04: Our product is, we actually look like and feel like a venture capital firm out of Silicon Valley, but we're backed by a sovereign institution with the power and the resources and the scale and the capabilities of a sovereign. And we tell our founders, we're lifecycle investors from seed to IPO and beyond. We provide you access to a lot of our relationships and assets and businesses potentially as customers. We can help unlock opportunities for you. And we're a steady

SPEAKER_00: partner. We actually put the journey on our shoulders, just like you are. We've been telling the story to founders over the past eight years. And what's interesting, it's never resonated more

SPEAKER_16: as it's resonating today. Right, right. And let me just answer that from a GP perspective, right? Again, you asked the question, you know, there's a meme in the world right now. I mean, you and I are staying over at the Four Seasons in Abu Dhabi. We walk into the lobby and it's like being in the lobby at the Rosewood Sandhill Road in the heart of Silicon Valley. I mean, it is pulsing with founders, with GPs. And part of the meme is that all these American GPs are over here carrying bags looking for

SPEAKER_47: money. And what I would suggest is that when you look at the depth of the commitment, a multi-decade commitment, as a GP, I want to partner with somebody. And we're not going to partner with that many people, we can only allocate so much capital a year. But I want to partner with somebody like Mabodala, where when my founder says, Hey, who are your partners, you know, we know you're partnered with, you know, great university endowments and great families, etc. That I can say, you know, you ought to consider your distribution out of Abu Dhabi, we're partnered with Mabodala, you know, meet Ibrahim, and like really know that they're going to deliver value, enduring value. And so I think that that's what attracted us. I mean, we really started a dialogue on Twitter, got to know each other through a lot of mutual friends. And then you see the power of this. If I walked out of the room and

SPEAKER_16: sent all my founders over here, I know they would thank me for introducing them. And I think that's the power of the relationship and partnership we're looking to build. Yeah, it's very powerful to see

SPEAKER_13: the pace of change here. That's what I found shocking. Social change, economic change. I mean, just buildings and architecture, the investment is incredible. I also notice folks like to talk about politics a lot. They're really knowledgeable about what's going on in the United States. And we've been talking, I mean, my voice is getting hoarse because I've been talking till two or three in the morning. Maybe we could talk a little bit about the regions and how they're different. They're the Saudi government, the kingdom is now trying, they're doing a lot of reforms, but it seems like reforms here started much earlier, and have gone much further over time. There's about 500,000 nationals here. And there's 10 million people total, am I about correct? Yeah. So, you know, there's nine people for everybody who lives here or so. Uh, and it's in completely international. When you come here, it feels like you're in Hong Kong or London. Yeah, it's very diverse.

SPEAKER_87: And very cosmopolitan, very cosmopolitan. You have the Louvre here. You have a full NYU campus.

SPEAKER_00: Brad was referring to Cleveland Clinic. Yeah, you know, at the Cleveland Clinic, Abu Dhabi today, you have nearly 6000 caregivers from 19 nationalities of the Cleveland Clinic. So it's, listen, I, you know, I don't, I don't speak on behalf of the Saudi government,

SPEAKER_04: but they're also going through their growth and their diversification and their evolution. We've been, we've been working on this for quite some time for decades. Now you see what's happened in Dubai. It's a, it's a, um, you know, a commercial center. Uh, it has one of the best airports and airlines in the world. It's a major trading center globally. Yeah. Trade that goes through Dubai in Abu Dhabi. You, you'll, you, you, you heard over the past two, three days.

SPEAKER_00: Uh, we are creating quite a progressive, sophisticated financial center here. Yeah. Uh, because again, we've taken a point of view that financial regulation and creating

SPEAKER_04: an innovative regulatory environment for companies to set up here was going to be critical for success. So, you know, I think we're all, all these countries in the region are going through their journeys. And, uh, you know, the, the, again, the, uh, the, the, the special and beautiful, um, recipe that's happening here in the UAE and specifically in Abu Dhabi is again, this coordinated approach between the government and the investment firms and the financial institution. How do you deploy and leverage this capital to actually force multiply the impact, not just from financial returns, but ultimately force multiply the impact from, from the economic, uh, and societal

SPEAKER_13: development over the next 20, 30, 40 years. The taxation, uh, for startups, for individuals, for corporations here is radically different than in America or in Europe, let's say. Um, and then visas, uh, are much more, um, uh, available. Maybe you could explain what the golden visa is, uh, and, um, the taxation, because that's going to be, I think, very material. That's a material

SPEAKER_04: advantage, I think. Yeah, there's very little taxation in the UAE. Um, um, and you know, the gold,

SPEAKER_00: the visa situation is actually quite interesting where, um, you know, again, as we go back to this

SPEAKER_05: concept of founders and people have choice or talent has choice. And then we took a point of

SPEAKER_04: view and a, and a, and a developed a strategy where we needed to build real depth and talent. We needed to attract talent. Then you had COVID, which really accelerated this con, this talent

SPEAKER_05: migration, uh, where people wanted to go live in places that, that were secure and safe and,

SPEAKER_14: and open and open during COVID. Uh, the region was open very quickly. Yeah. And, and it was,

SPEAKER_04: I mean, it was, it was, uh, again, a very coordinated, sophisticated strategy to be open, but at the same time controlled in a way to make sure that people were safe. Um, so the golden visa was really, Hey, if you are a talented entrepreneur or have some talents and you want to come and live in the UAE, then we can give you a 10 year visa, a 10 year visa, a 10 year visa. Isn't this incredibly

SPEAKER_36: frustrating? Like Brad and I are just like, we deal with founders who have raised millions of dollars

SPEAKER_13: and they're still contending with being removed from the United States and their employees. And the drama of just trying to get a developer or some super talented person into America. We we've, you look at it as recruiting. Yes. You look at this as, Hey, this is a growth opportunity to bring people from around the world to the region. And then I cannot tell you how frustrating it is in

SPEAKER_113: America when talented people just, we're not even letting them in. It is infuriating. Yeah. Let me,

SPEAKER_20: let me just build on that more. I mean, if you look at, you know, we at hub 71, which you both

SPEAKER_00: visited, which is our think of that as a startup community. Yeah. By the way, why did we decide to build a startup community? Not just because we wanted some office space. That's something we learned from Silicon Valley, which is founders need not only a physical place, but they also need a a place where they can connect with other people. Yeah. And, and share ideas and, and share pains and ups and downs. And so hub 71 is this physical space, but it's also a place where potentially you can tap into customers. You can work with the regulators and most importantly, which is again,

SPEAKER_05: the magic of Silicon Valley. We invited venture capitalists and capital providers because you can't build companies and create a startup ecosystem without VCs. Yeah. So that's, you know, it's, it's a comprehensive why enraged your community where we wanted to create some of the magic that we witnessed from around the world here. So golden visa is yet another component of how do we attract talent? How do we invest in talent? And we don't want to just enable startups from the ground up. We also want to invite mature high growth technology companies to expand here. Yeah. Can, can I say

SPEAKER_16: one thing, you know, it oftentimes, you know, us investors or us entrepreneurs will go preach the, the values of Silicon Valley to the rest of the world. I mean, one of my takeaways the last three days is what we need to be learning from you all. Right. I just spent an hour. Where's our golden

SPEAKER_47: visa? Yeah, exactly. I just spent an hour with, you know, a member of the planning team of the Abu Dhabi, you know, uh, of, of the UAE government, you know, and he was saying, how do we leverage generative AI in our government to take the next leap forward? Yeah. I mean, is there anybody in Sacramento in California? I mean, you know, we're talking about how we can leverage, you know, generative AI or in Washington, DC. Instead, we're trying to shut it down. Yeah. We're trying to regulate. We increase taxes. You know, we abuse businesses in the state of California. Um, we don't have golden visas. We're not inviting immigrants to come to the United States. And here's the thing. It is not a divine right that Silicon Valley will be in 10 or 20 or 30 years, the place where founders go. Yeah. They went there because we created the conditions for prosperity. Yeah. Right. And today I look at UAE and they have a national imperative to diversify, to create the conditions for prosperity. I mean, you hear it, you see the enthusiasm and the passion. And so I think, you know, we would be well served to not just come over and talk, but to listen and to learn and to think about what we need to take,

SPEAKER_125: uh, you know, take away as well. Are you still using your personal phone number for your startup

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SPEAKER_128: because we use it for our sales team and our ops team every single day. We have gotten so much value

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SPEAKER_128: no problem, they're gonna port it over at no extra cost. Head to open phone.com slash twist to start your free trial and get that 20% off. You know, what we we say this a lot. And partnership is a

SPEAKER_00: truly genuine and important part of our value system. And we've we've invested and committed

SPEAKER_05: and partnered with over 50 funds, early stage funds, seed funds, growth funds, some of the largest funds in the world. And we keep repeating that for us, you know, where we're really we want to build a trust based relationship, we want to build a long term partnership. So we, we appreciate very much when these leading investors from around the world come to Abu Dhabi invest time in building relationships with us. Why is that because you'll learn about us as we learn about you. And it for us, it's not just solely about capital allocation. And because in addition to being a fund investor, we also a very active direct investor into companies, but it's about how do we also make an impact together? How do we help these companies together? How can we help your business as a fund manager? How can you help us think differently about our business? I just met with a fund manager earlier today here in Abu Dhabi. And he's like, hey, we have, you know, a very deep enterprise and AI capability. And he's been coming here trying to get a fund commitment. And he said, listen, what I'd like to do is I'd like to set up some sessions with you and your team and do some education around the impact of AI on the enterprise space. That's an example of potentially this fund manager investing a bit of time and resources in helping build more dialogue and more trust. And that's really, really important. You know, we, as, as, as Brad was saying, in a way, this is our moment, a lot of funds and are coming here to Abu Dhabi looking for capital. But we've been on this journey for the past 10 years.

SPEAKER_11: And this is something I've heard a whole bunch of, and I'll double click on in a second. Another interesting experience I had, Brad, in talking to some VCs here and some early stage investors,

SPEAKER_13: the valuations were incredibly high because there's a smaller number of companies and a larger number of angels and capital allocators. So a little more competition and they were lamenting how high the valuations were. And I said, wow, I thought the companies would trade at a discount to Silicon Valley because in Silicon Valley, the companies, let's say they were worth $15 million in a seed round. You know, in Miami, you might see the same company worth 10 or in Austin, you know, 12 or whatever it is. Uh, so even the geography in the United States is different and here have, you know, 20 or 30. And I said, wow, that's going to be hard on exits. And they said, yeah, this is an issue where we're level setting and trying to figure that. And we had a great dialogue around valuations and then, uh, governance and boards. And so I already saw it because they, this venture group, they listened to this week in startups and they had a lot of questions for me. And we're having this like very interesting dialogue and they were educating me on, um, you know, I think one of the key learnings for Americans. And we had the same learning looking at Europe, uh, when we brought companies there, when Uber or Airbnb or Google, uh, Facebook decided to go to Europe, it's not a monolithic thing. You know, each country is different, has different cultures, in some cases, different languages, same thing with South America. And here, these are very different cultures, very different

SPEAKER_14: social norms, um, and different size markets. One of the amazing statistics that I heard was this is where food delivery has the highest margins. The food delivery service here is printing money. Why? Well, because people have big order sizes here, uh, they can charge more fees. The average customer here, uh, spends more money. Very interesting, you know, because you and I are both

SPEAKER_13: investors in Uber, but labor costs are cheaper. Yeah, I left that part out. And so you have this incredible, uh, opportunity there. And so, and fintech, uh, people here are incredibly enamored with and willing to try different fintech applications. Um, but it it's, let's face it, American, uh, venture capitalists were oversubscribed. There weren't that many fund managers and they weren't exactly interested in taking money from the, the broader region for many years. Now we see a little stumble in the U S markets, maybe too many venture firms, maybe a little bit clogged up, uh, ecosystem as people work through their balance sheets and some companies were overvalued, et cetera. Now they're interested. And it, the story I kept hearing was we've been inviting people for a while. Nobody came. Uh, we went to Silicon Valley. We didn't get the warmest reception because funds were filled. Now there's more funds. There's more opportunity. So it seems like a very unique moment in time, um, that, uh, the funds might be willing to take capital from the region. Uh, so maybe you could talk a little bit candidly about how do people feel about that? Yeah. You know, it reminded me of 2016,

SPEAKER_05: 2017, when we first set up in San Francisco, actually some of the managers in California back then told us that, listen, you shouldn't set up here. You should just give us your money. Um, and because this is our craft, it's not something that you should be doing. And if you fast forward till today, that, um, engagement narrative perspective has shifted a lot. Um, listen, I, I say this to, to, uh, a lot of managers that come from the U S and from other parts of the

SPEAKER_00: world. Sovereign wealth funds, investment in technology and allocation to technology is, is here to stay. And it's only going to grow from here. Why? Because with the sovereign wealth funds,

SPEAKER_13: let's face it, we're doing a lot of public market. They were doing a lot of real estate, private equity started, but now you're seeing a big interest in venture, early stage venture,

SPEAKER_05: you know, and more private equity. So why, for two major reasons, a real recognition that there's a lot of value to be created in technology and in venture companies and building

SPEAKER_04: enduring technology companies. And number two, you have to understand that technology is starting to impact large swaths of these countries, GDP. So the importance of engaging in technology

SPEAKER_62: is a very big national priority. You have to understand it. You, you can't just give the money to another fund manager, a part of creating it and shaping it got to get closer to it by the way,

SPEAKER_05: both healthcare technology and the role of technology in healthcare and also broad technology. So, so I think the, the managers, the thoughtful, smart, forward looking partnership oriented managers are going to look at the sovereign wealth fund as allocators and say, how do I work with this new,

SPEAKER_150: very important constituent over the next 10, 20, 30 years? I mean, just to that point, you know,

SPEAKER_16: obviously there's a seminal moment where we talked about software eating the world. And now we're here at a moment where AI is going to eat software. Yeah. Okay. And if you're sitting, you know, that's why there's such interest in all the conversations I've had with Ibrahim and, and his team with the EA with others who are here about, you know, it is no longer about technology. And then all these other industries, our defense industry, our hydrocarbon industry, every industry has turned into a technology industry. Yes. And so that national imperative around investing in technology is not just about diversifying away the hydrocarbon economy. It's if we want to be the most competitive in the world at all the other things in which we compete

SPEAKER_47: from tourism to the financial industry sector, then we have to be technology forward. And I found just the, you know, curious, Jason, your take on this, just the general level of curiosity and IQ from

SPEAKER_16: government to allocators to founders here of these issues is extraordinarily high.

SPEAKER_13: Yeah. It used to be Silicon Valley was like a secret playbook. You know, there was like a handbook and, you know, people just didn't understand a lot of how the mechanics, how the tactical issues were handled strategy. Um, I had a number of people while I was here, tell me, um, I would like to have lunch with you because I'm going to be a Kaufman fellow. I'm going to be coming to Silicon Valley and, and, um, have an office here, you know, different allocators, different family offices. And I thought that was fascinating there. They want to learn the craft of being a venture capitalist and angel investor, not just blindly put money in and, oh yeah, tell me in 10 years how my fun did. And that's a very distinct difference. The curiosity level and the interest in this

SPEAKER_166: is, uh, palatable. Listen, when you're a fund manager, like me, you're trying to raise money. The hardest thing to do is get in front of those elite LPs, limited partners, right? How do you get

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SPEAKER_16: Yeah, I have a question for you, Ibrahim. You know, we've just gone through this period, you know, 2000, I mean, the COVID period, technology asset bubble that we went through, interest rates went to zero, all asset prices went to the moon. We have 2022 interest rates reset, technology prices collapse. And a lot of allocators in this part of the world had really just started allocating to technology. And all of a sudden, right into the teeth of this major correction. And what we see around the world is while we've had a massive financial dislocation, so asset prices are down 50 to 70%, um, we also have a major platform shift with AI.

SPEAKER_47: And so right at the time, arguably that people should be allocating to venture capital, right,

SPEAKER_16: this vintage that's coming up, which is going to benefit from a major platform shift, you see everybody narrowing their apertures, pulling back the polling back, right? How do you deal? I mean,

SPEAKER_47: it seems to me you have a natural advantage just because of the long term strategic planning of the country. But talk to me about like the internal dynamics. What are the pressures on you from the big bosses, you know, about like pulling back? Did you allocate too much? How are you guys thinking about allocations changing in the post correction of 2022?

SPEAKER_05: First of all, I mean, like I said, we have been investing in technology for, for nearly a decade now, um, in, in software and internet and healthcare and health tech. Um, so I remember when COVID, when COVID happened and, and we had this massive acceleration in investing, we didn't just show up and say, oh my God, let's start investing in technology. Right. And then when this reset recalibration that we're going through happened, we then just say, okay, let's just backtrack completely and contract and stop investing. It goes back to we as Mubadla are devoted to innovation. We as Mubadla are committed to technology being a very important part of our long-term strategy. Um, and we learned a lot during the semiconductor cycles, the importance of focusing on fundamentals, the importance of having a steady hand through the cycles. It doesn't mean we didn't make our mistakes. We also made mistakes during 21, 2020 and 2021 by we're a part of, we are part of the, the macro that's unfolding, but we are uniquely positioned in the world today to continue to play a very important role in technology by leaning in. Yeah, what, what, what, what, what?

SPEAKER_13: No, I have one observation.

SPEAKER_183: You go, go, go, go, go.

SPEAKER_13: Yeah, the, the high, don't get too high with the highs and don't get too low with the lows. And I was just thinking as you were talking, you had this experience.

SPEAKER_154: Obviously we all had the experience 2018, 2019, you have this, the pandemic happens. It actually increases the value of zoom, increases the value of stocks, Peloton, everything goes to the roof, more consumption, digital consumption,

SPEAKER_14: more people use your breeds, et cetera. Um, and then you mentioned, okay, we had a similar experience. We were educated through the cycle of semiconductors, but you also have a fundamental swing in value where oil they were predicting would be $300 a barrel. And we've seen it go down to 30, a hundred oil fluctuates five X, 10 X. I think, uh, you've experienced. So does that contribute to your ability to stay calm with big swings?

SPEAKER_22: I think a combination of that plus a committed long-term focused leadership here in Abu Dhabi.

SPEAKER_05: Yeah. Um, a, is a financial global institution like Mubadla. That's, that's deep and large and, and very well capitalized that can take a long-term perspective.

SPEAKER_109: How big is it? We managed $280, $290 billion. $290 billion. So nearly $300 billion assets under management.

SPEAKER_16: If you look at, if you look at Abu Dhabi in total, it's over a trillion dollars of sovereign wealth. I mean, you think about.

David Friedberg: It's the entire venture industry times.

SPEAKER_16: But, but, the wisdom of the founding leader of the country. Like, I think they started the sovereign wealth fund two years after the country was founded. That's right. Right? So they could have just went out and spent all the money like. Yachts, Ferraris.

SPEAKER_47: Like back to Libya and other countries, they could have squandered the resources. They lived quite humbly and said, we got to invest all these resources in the future. We live in a dangerous part of the world. Like, let's really build this, you know, this incredible place that we dream about.

SPEAKER_05: And, and our sovereign wealth funds, you know, I can speak on behalf of Mubadla. We've been building this institution, the management system, the culture, the values over the past 20 years. Right. And, and we've, we've made some mistakes and we've grown and we've evolved. And we've never wavered on our long-term commitment of really being a responsible, astute, smart, long-term focused investor. And standing behind our commitment to the companies that we back, you know, Brad and I were talking about this, you know, and this is something we also learned from, from engagement with some of our best partners in Silicon Valley, which is every interaction with a founder is a, is a sales process, but there's also sort of a bargain where if you commit on delivering your side of the, of the house, we will deliver on our side. And that's something that Mubadla is very, very committed to, you know, we didn't, when, when semiconductors went through in cycle, we didn't just decide, oh, it's time for us to exit. And we don't, we hate this industry. Right. We stuck through it through very, very challenging times. And we're, we're doing that today with software.

SPEAKER_197: Do you have some companies that are just been impacted by this downturn down 60, 70, 80%.

SPEAKER_61: And how are you handling that? Yeah. Fintech companies are, you know, consumer companies are also impacted significantly.

SPEAKER_05: Listen, I think we're going through, um, like many of the other leading technology funds are doing, we're spending time triaging our portfolio, deciding which companies to lean into and support. And there's some companies where we're saying, listen, we don't believe this company will be a big, important company in the future. So let's decide what to do there.

SPEAKER_58: Yeah. And being very rational about it.

SPEAKER_13: Yeah, it's very hard to be rational. I think when the market swings this hard, and you also have a deep chip, cheap chip stack, if you were to think about it. And so you could, um, you know, put bad money after good. And so having that discipline, it's hard when you have a big chip stack.

SPEAKER_16: Well, no, it is one of one of the things I want, I want to ask you about a lesson learned, you know, or, or maybe, you know, something, there's a, there's a view that when you have 300 billion or a trillion dollars of sovereign wealth, you know, that venture capital at the end of the day is a pretty fragmented craft industry. There are only so many winters that get created. You know, angel investors are writing $500,000 checks. But at the peak, we saw, right, we saw some gigantic funds get funded. Right. And the most famous one of all is the vision fund. Um, you know, $100 billion, uh, vision fund one, and then they have vision fund two, you were an investor in the vision fund. So J Cal wouldn't let me, uh, do the job here if we didn't ask you about the vision fund. So tell us a little bit about that journey. Um, and you know, what, if anything, you take away from this idea about the industrialization of venture capital, and is it even worthwhile for somebody who maybe wants to partner with you, but only needs $20 million a year to have that conversation? Or are you only looking at the scale players looking, uh, to, to partner with?

SPEAKER_22: Absolutely not. We're also, you know, we've committed million dollars to small emerging managers.

SPEAKER_05: Um, because these smaller emerging manners can provide us insight and signal and understanding and triangulation that potentially maybe these larger funds could not. So we also need like beat on the ground. Yeah. Um, you know, the soft bank experience, um, was a very, was, and continues to be a very important one for us. First of all, I just want to make sure, I mean, I want to remind you, we structured that fund commitment in a very unique way where 60% of that capital has a PREF instrument to it. So, uh, it's not just an equity commitment. So there's some protection mechanisms, which obviously are, um, playing out today in our favor. And that's, that's a very, it was a very important part of the structure.

SPEAKER_13: Which means for an audience doesn't understand you get to have your money come out first. You have some downside protection.

SPEAKER_69: If something like Uber and that portfolio were to go down, you would be able to get more shares or some more consideration.

SPEAKER_00: And, and, you know, 60% of that is earns an interest. And then we also get our first money back. We get the interest first, then our, then our PREF instrument and then any losses. So I think you're right, uh, uh, and how you articulated that, um, soft bank was just a,

SPEAKER_05: another unique moment in history where they took a view and we participated in that where potentially capital was a moat. And if you can deploy significant amount of capital in these companies and provide them with the fuel they need, they could potentially grow exponentially and dominate the markets they're in. And we saw that play out in the likes of Uber. Um, it didn't play out in many other cases that we thought of it. So I don't believe that thesis holds anymore in the world we operate in today. That's changed, especially as we talk about, um, AI, the world of AI, what happens with potentially AI disrupting major industries.

SPEAKER_99: You know, the, the, some of these companies might not require the significant amount of capital. This is the key point.

SPEAKER_11: Yeah. And we've been talking about this a whole bunch around the poker table and in our discussions.

SPEAKER_13: And as we deploy capital, um, I had on this podcast in the past week, uh, uh, Aaron Levy from box, Brian Chesky from Airbnb and, and Reed Hoffman from LinkedIn fame, uh, and a capital allocator himself. Um, and all three of them, I asked him what percentage of work of your teams, your companies, your firms will be done by AI by the end of this year, 2023.

SPEAKER_55: So just, you know, six months from now or seven months from now, they all came up with the same

SPEAKER_13: number, 30%. And so if you look at Brad's thesis about getting fit, Hey, maybe you don't need as many employees. Maybe you added too many, and then you add to it.

SPEAKER_14: Well, everybody's going to be 30% more efficient. The companies we've invested in. Can pause hiring because they're actually adding, if they had a hundred people in the company, they just added 30 this year because the hundred are so much more efficient. Now the question becomes, does next year, is it 30 or does it compound? Because the technology is getting better. And those developers, instead of getting 30% better in 2024, they become 50% or 80% or jobs they were doing are eliminated. And then we see more riffs or we see them being deployed for new products and services. And how quickly do they go down the product roadmap? And to me, and that's incredibly exciting. We have companies, Brad, maybe you could tell me which ones are the most capital efficient, because you do a lot of public market investing, public market investing, which ones have the highest revenue per employee. And then where could that go if the trend continues? Because we were talking, hey, Uber hasn't done a riff. They did it back during COVID, but they haven't done it since. But the revenue went up 30% or whatever it is, 20, 30%, and the cost stayed fixed. And that's what's made their stock grow in the free cash flow.

SPEAKER_225: So what could it look like in revenue per employee in the coming decade?

SPEAKER_16: Well, revenue per employee actually went down over this COVID period, which had never really happened in technology, right? Because these businesses, the ones we all know about, Meta, who touches 3 billion consumers or Google or Amazon, et cetera, their incremental EBITDA margins in those business are probably over 90%. Okay. So for every incremental dollar of revenue, 90 cents of that is falling to the bottom line.

SPEAKER_227: Because it's a fixed cost business.

SPEAKER_16: Correct. They're just inherently very profitable businesses. But two things happened. Number one, they started getting attacked by Washington, DC. And so I frankly think they wanted to hide a little bit the profitability of the businesses because the stocks going up every day didn't help their standing in Congress. Number two, you had the COVID moment. And in the COVID moment, everybody thought these elevated growth rates were going to last for a really long time. Everybody got unfit.

SPEAKER_47: They, you know, we're talking about Meta going from 40,000 employees to 80,000 employees, Google going from 110 to 190,000, like extraordinary number of hires working from home.

SPEAKER_16: We know they weren't really working from home. Okay. So productivity plummeted. So there are two things that happened.

SPEAKER_47: One, this idea of time to get fit really became, it has become a lexicon, not only of Silicon Valley, but of all the startups. Like we all knew it to be true. Like we could just do more with less. That was before AI. Okay. So it was possible that, you know, and read Mark Zuckerberg's memo that he wrote in March of this year. He said, year of efficiency, and we're doubling down on AI. And just by getting fitter, he said, leaner is better, flatter is faster. They got faster and better with fewer people. Okay. Now on top of that, they're going to train their own engineering co-pilot on top of chat GPT four and every engineer at Meta is going to get 40 to 50% more efficient. So now you tell me they went from 40,000 to 80,000 employees. They're tightening their belt. They're going faster. They're having more fun. It's getting leaner. And now you layer on AI on top of that. I think we're about to see three to four years of massive margin expansion in technology companies.

SPEAKER_14: And when you say margin expansion, we mean profits, cash coming in the door. It's going, these companies, I agree, they're going to become cash printing machines. And at the early stage, a three person company is going to start to look like a 10 person company, a 10 person is going to start looking like a 30. I think this million dollars per employee, and I think it peaked in some companies at two, maybe Apple or some, I think we might see five and $10 million revenue per employee companies.

SPEAKER_237: Well, think about, think about WhatsApp had it stayed private.

SPEAKER_238: Oh my God. Yeah. Right.

SPEAKER_47: You're going to touch a billion people. And you know, you have 20, 20 people in the business going to 50 people in the business.

SPEAKER_242: Um, so I, I Instagram was 15 or 20 when they had a hundred million people.

SPEAKER_16: But I think the point that Ibrahim made is really important. I just want to kick it back to you on that, you know, what I love about the way you said it is

SPEAKER_47: with a lot of intentionality, we looked at this, we looked at this, this notion that capital could be a weapon. It could be a competitive moat. Right. And it didn't play out that way. And part of the reason it didn't play out that way is because when interest rates went to zero, the problem was everybody else used it as a weapon. So what we ended up doing is destroying the economics of these businesses because Lyft had their backers who gave them too much money and every market ended up having too much. And they all chose to lose money. Right. And so now the interest rates have gone back up. Now we have a cost of capital. The stupidity is getting wrung out of the market. And what I love is you're saying, you're saying as one allocator, my bottle is not going to reenter the game of, you know, using capital as, as a moat, you know, and, and, uh, what I, what is very

SPEAKER_05: exciting for us, um, about this AI cycle, um, are two things, especially for Abu Dhabi. We could, if you think about snowflake or stripe or even meta and you go to them and you say, you know what, come and set up an Abu Dhabi.

SPEAKER_00: We can give you the golden visa and we can, um, set up everything you need. A snowflake would say, okay, well, um, I need to put 20 software engineers and I have to put 50 salespeople.

SPEAKER_05: I'm going to need a hundred person team on the ground in Abu Dhabi for me to do what I need to do. Right. With AI, potentially that's just 10 or 15 people. Yeah. So it just reduces significantly the friction and the barriers for a company like snowflake to start thinking a lot more seriously about markets that before were potentially just tertiary markets, secondary markets. And number two is young entrepreneurs and founders that could potentially from the region, from Abu Dhabi, that could potentially start companies using AI and for them to scale, whereas previously they needed to get talent. They needed to set up offices. They didn't have higher resources. They can do this a lot more efficiently. So again, we've, um, talking about getting fit, we've been preparing, we've been getting fit for this moment for some time and we truly believe we're ready for it. We are ready for it. And having the two of you here in a way demonstrates that we're ready for it.

SPEAKER_25: It's very interesting.

SPEAKER_13: Um, your, your greatest, uh, asset was how deep, uh, you know, this chip stack is how, how large the fund is. And now that's not an asset. Now you actually have to be clever.

SPEAKER_69: You have to be nimble. Yeah. You have to sharpen the blade. It cannot just be, we could throw money at the problem.

SPEAKER_28: And you know, and you know who the most important brand ambassadors for us are,

SPEAKER_05: our founders, because we've been investing in these relationships for over a decade. Yeah. And, and a lot of our founders that call us now and say, Hey, we'd love to talk to you about that. We just heard from this other founder and say, listen, I, not only do I, I'm looking for an investment, but I also want to understand how I can expand to your part of the world,

SPEAKER_150: how I can potentially build a real business in your part of the world. We didn't have that dialogue in 2015 and 2016. Yeah.

SPEAKER_13: I mean, I think we did see Google, um, Uber, a number of companies, you know, expanded to the region and have very profitable businesses. Um, so there is definitely, um, hundreds of millions of customers here across the various countries, but it is not a monolith. Again, you, you have to address Egypt very differently than the UA very differently than Saudi. Each one is very unique and that's going to be, uh, an incredible learning process. The other thing that I find is super fascinating. I've been very lucky. And because of my public profile, I'm able to raise funds. It's not very difficult for me, um, but my funds are smaller.

SPEAKER_14: And in the United States, the large LPs, let's say university endowments, uh, you know, and, um, retirement pension funds, they're not adding a lot of new fund managers and the existing fund managers, uh, the large ones, they just decided to bigger and bigger funds. And we're going to have multiple funds and we're going to raise them faster. They're not adding new fund managers. So then you have all these new fund managers, but domestically in the United States, the biggest complaint I hear is, oh, this giant university, 10 billion, 20 billion, 30 billion. They're going to add one new fund manager.

SPEAKER_13: And then on my trip here, I've met, I wasn't going to do any meetings, Brad. I was just coming here to hang and do cultural stuff and restaurants and each shawarma. And my trip got culturally and food trip got ruined because I have had 10, 15 meetings

SPEAKER_14: and they're heading new managers. There's an appetite to work with new managers and to do it quickly and to start relationships.

SPEAKER_13: So for fellow fund managers who are, you know, in their first, second, third, fourth fund,

SPEAKER_14: who are not making progress because, you know, let's face it, some university or some pension fund, they've already allocated. You got those funds, what, 10 years ago?

SPEAKER_255: Correct.

SPEAKER_14: How many of them are adding a new fund if Andreessen Horowitz or whoever's coming to them with their crypto fund with their next fund? And there's a feeling amongst those large ones. If I don't do every fund by this big brand name, then they're going to get upset and they're not going to give me an allocation in the main fund, the small series, a fund, the, you know, the crown jewel. Maybe you could talk, Brad, a little bit about that log jam that obviously this region unlocks. And that's what I've seen here. When I came in the lobby, we saw all these people we knew.

SPEAKER_256: They were the younger fund managers.

SPEAKER_113: They were the 30 and 40, 50-year-old fund managers whose funds were under 10 years old, not the 40-year-old funds.

SPEAKER_47: And that's probably a different experience in the region because, I mean, Mabatola's got these extraordinary relationships historically with the Apollos and the Silver Lakes

SPEAKER_16: and the KKRs. Private equity has been big in this region for a long time. I think it's venture that's newer to the region. And listen, let's, you know, a lot of, a lot of the allocators here started allocated in 2018.

SPEAKER_47: They start moving some chips on the table and then venture blows up in 2022. Like it didn't get off to the best start in terms of building reputation.

SPEAKER_263: Timing wasn't ideal.

SPEAKER_47: But in the US, you know, you've seen our chart, the TVPI to DPI chart. So you just get a lot of paper marks. They're not turning into distributions as a result. And that coupled with the fact that venture managers have not marked down their books. Yes, they haven't taken the medicine. Means that under the endowment model, these endowments, charitable foundations and others have what's known as the denominator problem. Explain. They're over allocated. So when you look at the denominator in these businesses, the denominator has gone down for Harvard or for MIT or for children's hospital.

SPEAKER_267: The total value of their endowment has gone down. Because the mark to market things go down immediately.

SPEAKER_268: So their holdings in.

SPEAKER_47: Google, et cetera, those go down immediately.

SPEAKER_45: So on a percentage basis, it looks like your venture holdings are a much bigger percentage of your overall holdings.

SPEAKER_183: So they went from five to 10% to 15 to 20.

SPEAKER_14: Correct. Because they have not been marked properly. And for a fund manager, it's painful, maybe even shameful in their minds to mark it down. So they wait and hope that the market catches up.

SPEAKER_15: They hope they get a kick save.

SPEAKER_47: The reality is they're doing a disservice to the industry because now it makes these people feel like they're over allocated. But if you just mark the venture books the way they should be marked, which is down 50, 60, 70% like their public market counterparts. Then on a percentage basis, you would be back to where you were before. So you have this denominator problem. You do see the aperture narrowing. Listen, I think it's great for the industry. I watched the cycle in 1999. I watched it in 2007. 2007, all the hedge funds showed up in Silicon Valley. They were all gone in 2008. Same thing happened in 1999. And so this sort of creative destruction, it doesn't just apply to founders and operating companies. It applies to venture capitalists and allocators and LPs alike. And so, you know, we're going through that process. But when you come over here, you get a real sense. This country has been on a 50 year journey. Right?

SPEAKER_16: And it's like when we're done here, I want to show you the before and after pictures that I just saw

SPEAKER_47: of Dubai 2005 to today. Hmm. I mean, it went from nothing to, you know, this gleaming city, Abu Dhabi. I mean, these before and after pictures are utterly shocking. They only happen with incredible long-term strategic planning, a commitment by the government coupled with industry. So when they have an industry focus and a commitment to innovation and technology, it means something. Imagine if the United States actually had a strategic plan around innovation and technology.

SPEAKER_14: No, they're, they're not involved. The only thing we've seen in our lifetime was the CHIPS Act,

SPEAKER_13: which was an acute moment of abject fear because of the Taiwan situation that, wow, we can't take this risk. We must have chip fabs in the United States.

SPEAKER_47: So, so my, uh, just wrap it up by saying, I don't think the allocation issue is all of a sudden, you know, Ibrahim woke up and said, oh, the U S allocators aren't allocating. So I want to have Brad and Jason over and I want to like, this is part of, I get the sense of a 50 year journey. They want to be carbon neutral by 2050. They want to diversify away from hydrocarbons and they're doing, they're saying the same thing that you and I are saying to ourselves. The best thing to bet on for the next two decades, five decades is technology. Yeah. It's going to be the thing that drives humanity forward.

SPEAKER_05: And you'll never hear a say. You will never hear a say that we're not allocating to new managers. How could we? Yeah. But that's, that's not the strategy. What if a new manager shows up with a very unique point of view, with a very clear strategy that it's different, with some sort of a special energy and magic about that person? Why would we close ourselves and shut ourselves from allocating to new managers? Yeah. Again, as you, as you, as we think about Mubadla going from 300 to 600 to a trillion over the next 10, 15, 20 years, some of these managers will play an important role in that growth trajectory for us. So it's, it's also, you know, as, as, as Brad said, this process of creative destruction,

SPEAKER_150: it's also about us learning and growing with them.

SPEAKER_98: The loyalty is something that's come up over and over again. It's part of the culture, huh?

SPEAKER_13: Like this gratitude, humility, and loyalty. I keep hearing these themes over and over again. Very important. Educate me in the audience on how business works here, because I've been taking these meetings and, uh, somebody pulled me aside and said, maybe slow down. Maybe too many details, uh, maybe build the relationship in the first meeting, second meeting, maybe more details, third meeting, uh, data room.

SPEAKER_00: So just on a pragmatic basis, take, take the time, invest in the relationship. Um, you know, Brad and Brad invited me to his office in, in, in Menlo park. And then I said, Hey, why don't you come to Abu Dhabi? And then when I come to Silicon Valley in a couple of weeks, we're going to have dinner to

SPEAKER_05: take, learn about us. And, and through that process, we'll learn about you. And then we can start mapping out, okay, how can this relationship, what does this journey look like together? Uh, it's just, it's very, very important just because of our long-term nature. Uh, we want to be partners with you through good and bad times. Yeah. It's not just about a quick transaction. A lot of managers that come here present the fund. And then you never hear them say, Hey, do you want to commit to my fund?

SPEAKER_150: It's not how it works. The bar is very, very high. So you also have to fight and you have to invest in that relationship.

SPEAKER_154: Makes sense. I think that's how it worked in Silicon Valley.

SPEAKER_14: When I hear Bill Gurley tell stories about benchmark, that's how it worked in the, uh, in the States for a long time until the denominator problem. And I think all of our endowments, all of our retirement funds hit their target. And then the venture funds who were already in those relationships,

SPEAKER_144: maximize those relationships as capitalism. And as they're apt to do.

SPEAKER_20: Can I, can I tell you two stories, please? Um, about people that invest in relationships.

SPEAKER_00: The first time I met Bill Gurley, I went to his office in San Francisco and he walked into the meeting with a folder. That was full of research about our company and our CEO. And he walked in and he said, you know, Hey, I just read all these interviews about your CEO. And, and, and he was asking all these questions and he was so curious.

SPEAKER_05: And I walked out of the meeting and I was like, wow, this is one of the best venture capitalists in the world. And he had spent so much time trying to learn about who we are before I even walked in. I've had so many meetings where I just walk in and people say, what's mobile anyways? It's versus like, that's the quality of the human Bill Gurley is.

SPEAKER_04: I'm by the way, I'm, you know, I'm lucky to be, uh, sitting on a board with, with Mike Moritz and, um, and I find, you know, in this privileged position to also work very closely with him

SPEAKER_11: on a couple of opportunities of Sequoia legend in the business.

SPEAKER_05: That's right. As a journalist in the eighties. And, and I message, I WhatsApp Mike Moritz or I send him an email and I say, you know, sir, I'd love to speak to you about this.

SPEAKER_183: And he's literally, when you say, sir, by the way, he is a sir. He is knighted. It is sir Moritz by the way.

SPEAKER_05: And he keeps telling me, don't call me sir. And I can't, I have to call him sir. And, and, uh, he responds to me in less than an hour. I'm like, I don't understand. This is one of the greatest venture capitalists. And sometimes you write people that don't respond to you for like a month. Ultimately, you know, it's, it's just a part of who you are.

SPEAKER_13: It is the, it's so interesting that Michael Moritz story, when I was pitching my company and I did my second company, I, uh, had, uh, Mark Cuban as my investor again, because he had backed my first company. Uh, or yeah. And so I said, well, maybe I should try to get venture capital. And I said, well, who are the two most famous venture capitals, John Doerr and Michael Moritz. So I emailed them both. And I emailed Michael. I said, I just sold my company, Webluxing for $30 million to AOL 18 months after I started it. I've got a new idea. I'd love to talk to you about it. We met one time at this internet summit, uh, in Laguna, but you probably don't remember because I was a kid back then best Jason. And I kid you not in an hour, my phones rang. I didn't pick it up because it didn't have his number on my phone. And he left a voicemail at my desk phone on my phone and replied to my email in the first hour.

SPEAKER_316: Yeah.

SPEAKER_13: I said, when can you come up now?

SPEAKER_14: John Doerr. And this is no dick to John the next week. One of his, uh, partners called me and asked me to come there. I had already been to Sequoia and had made the decision to go to Sequoia

SPEAKER_13: before I was in the office with the, the Kleiner Perkins team. And I always took that lesson with me. I now start at the top of my inbox and I reply back to the last 10 people who've emailed me because at least those people have that Michael Moritz experience. And that's what made Sequoia great was that lightning fast response. And that they out hustled. Everybody is there was a sense of urgency that matched the founder sense of urgency. And then bill Gurley was, has that trait of a prepared mind.

SPEAKER_14: He's coming into every, whether it's going to a concert or going to a

SPEAKER_71: basketball game, coming to a poker game or investing in a company or working with a partner. That's right. Prepared mind.

SPEAKER_47: It's interesting. You know, Jason, you, you know, that, um, we've heard a lot about the all in pot over here. That's been weird. Right. So, you know, stopped on the street 20 times. And, and lots of people are listening to it.

SPEAKER_16: And I think about the conversations that that grew out of. Yeah. Right. Which is conversations with bill. We all research debate are insatiably curious about everything. Yep. We have an ongoing dialogue about it and, you know, a docket forms and it ends up in this great dialogue, authentic dialogue among friends on the all in pod.

SPEAKER_47: And the reason I think it's so appealing and so popular here is because that's exactly the culture that exists here. Like without that curiosity, without that prepared mind, without creating the conditions for prosperity in this country, like it would not look anything like it looks like today. And I'm convinced that 10 or 20 years from now, because of that DNA, it's going to be, you know, again, you know, way further ahead than it is today and way further ahead in the region. Um, but you know, the story about bill and Mike that without that level of passion fire in the belly, right to, to, to do what we do, I would give the same advice to founders. Like a founder shows up in your office and hasn't done the research and is there just there with a bag looking to put some money in it. Like your conversion rates going to be zero. It's not going to happen because it's really about the people who are authentically passionate about moving the world forward and putting the miles.

SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is something that our, our CEO, um, has embedded this value, like go out there and meet people and learn and be curious.

SPEAKER_05: He comes to Silicon Valley twice a year. And when he comes, you know, his request is, listen, I want to meet new managers and entrepreneurs and founders, and I want to learn about what they're seeing. Uh, that curiosity, but also go invest in, in going out there.

SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, I like to tell the story of, uh, uh, you know, there's this company in San Diego, an amazing company that we wanted to invest in.

SPEAKER_05: Um, and I flew from Abu Dhabi to Los Angeles, landed in Los Angeles, took a three hour drive to San Diego just to meet the founder and to demonstrate to the founder that, Hey, listen, I'm here because I want to be in your place, in your offices, in your home turf. Uh, two years later, the company ultimately did very well during COVID got acquired. You know, I think that the fact that I went all the way there, 36 hours, invested the time to be with a founder meant a lot for him. Of course. And, and that's a deep value for us here in Moala, which is, you know, you're not going

SPEAKER_150: to change the world by just sitting in your office here. You also have to go out there and you have to see the world and feel the world.

SPEAKER_13: I am already planning my second trip. Literally all the people who I didn't get to be with, uh, all the other regions, everybody's reaching out to me. And I'm like, I'm going to have to have a second trip and it's going to have to happen this year. I can't wait till next year. There's just too much going on.

SPEAKER_47: I mean, I, I, you know, Jake, Jake, how you really need to talk to hub 71.

SPEAKER_16: Yeah. You need to do a launch collab, right? With hub 71.

SPEAKER_47: And like, I think that it's, it, you know, it's high time to get some of your angel yum yums over here in, uh, Abu Dhabi.

SPEAKER_330: It's, uh, that was when meeting with some VCs and, uh, they were like, should we do a podcast?

SPEAKER_13: I said, yeah, get good microphones and start interviewing people here. We'll listen, uh, you know, and you could do this week in startups, UAE and, uh,

SPEAKER_335: That would be very cool.

SPEAKER_336: I mean, I mean, that would be, I mean, they got this incredible, uh,

SPEAKER_13: final issue. We'll, we'll go close to the third rail here, social issues, uh, very young country, very progressive. Uh, people have some thoughts on the women here in the UAE, the rights of women or alcohol consumption. Maybe you could explain and just educate people. How this operates here? Because we, again, in America sometimes look at regions as monolithic and not very, uh, in a very granular way. This felt like the party we're at last night felt like we were in, uh, Los Angeles or New York.

SPEAKER_326: Yeah, I think people, people were having cocktails. No big deal. Uh, people were smoking cigars. Um, it was pretty normal.

SPEAKER_14: Uh, didn't, people weren't wearing burqas. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it was not, uh, uh, it didn't feel like this was like a repressed society in any way.

SPEAKER_04: No, no, people, people should come here and, and see what's happening on the ground. This is a very open, tolerant society. What people don't know is that we just, uh, you know, we just opened the, the Abrahamic Center here in Abu Dhabi, which is the place where you have a church, a synagogue and a mosque, um, all in one location. Uh, we have, uh, tremendous amount of, of, uh, women talent in, in, uh, our leadership ranks. Uh, we invest extensively in women, uh, women's development and, you know, it's, it's a, it's a truly an important part of our values, uh, and our leadership agenda. So, uh, it's, you know, I think the, the truly the best way, um, to see it is you'd have to come and experience it. Yeah. Um, this is a very, very special, what's happening here on the ground in Abu Dhabi and in the UAE is, uh, again, it's such a unique moment of time, not because of all the change and the growth geographically where we're located between the East and the West.

SPEAKER_00: Um, so, uh, you know, it's a, it's such a special cosmopolitan, um, with tremendous

SPEAKER_05: youth that is excited, energetic, focused on the future, building, growing, learning. Uh, we go out to the world, we invite the world.

SPEAKER_14: A lot of the youth have been educated in the West.

SPEAKER_13: Everybody I met who is a national went to Stanford, uh, went to Oxford, uh, you know, went to who DC or New York worked at Goldman in New York for a couple of years. Uh, it is an incredibly cosmopolitan.

SPEAKER_113: Uh, and, um, I think that's like a very interesting, uh, part of the story here is how rapid the social changes are happening.

SPEAKER_159: Yeah, it, you know, just a couple of stats that I thought were pretty fascinating.

SPEAKER_16: The average age in the country is 30, right? The U.S. I think it's 37, um, you know, Japan's 47.

SPEAKER_267: Yeah.

SPEAKER_47: Okay, UAE University, I think is 75% women. The cabinet of the government is a third, I think, women. Um, you know, and then, you know, think about like major cultural third rails. Yeah. So the weekend, uh, you know, in the UAE was Friday, Saturday to align with the Holy Day. But because of the rest of the world, the weekend was Saturday, Sunday, and if you wanted to align with the rest of the world around business, they literally got all the citizens to agree to change the weekend away from this very big deal. Right, incredible and sent this amazing signal, right? I think which is that yes, we can be, you know, committed to, you know, whatever religious faith that we are, but it's got to align with also our broad national interests and initiatives. Um, you know, I was shocked to learn some of these things and just how those things evolved. Um, so I, I agree with you. It's been a, uh, it's been a bit of an eye opener for me, um, and it's been a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_22: You know, hub 71, you think about hub 71, the startups and assume that, oh, all the startups are, you know, people from here. Um, the, the, the startups represent 30 countries.

SPEAKER_05: There's actually people that have come from the U S people have come from China. People come from Japan to set up in Abu Dhabi. They've made a decision to say, listen, I want to build my startup in Abu Dhabi. So it's really the diversity of it.

SPEAKER_13: That was incredible. I mean, I was people watching, you know, in Abu Dhabi and in, uh, Dubai and they're separated by about a 70 minute car ride. And there's going to be a hyperloop. I understand for 20 minutes or a high speed train, uh, soon between the two cities. And, um, I was just trying to figure out where all these people from and everybody I met, it's just a different place, Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand, the United States, uh, just the, the diversity is just phenomenal. It is like London or New York.

SPEAKER_16: Yeah. Think about what we've seen in the last few years. Um, in China, would you be excited to be a new founder, uh, in China today, given the success of what's happened with Jack Ma and you Ming and so.

SPEAKER_13: Well, every education startup was basically nationalized. So if you had an education startup, it was. Or in the United States, right?

SPEAKER_16: Like in the United States, if you're coming over there, like, remember so much of our success

SPEAKER_47: from Elon Musk to Larry and Sergey started people moving from outside the United States into the United States because California created the conditions for prosperity, right? And we take that now for granted. And what I see is two major superpowers that drove most of the innovation on the planet for the last 30 years that are now taking the conditions of prosperity for granted. And you have a region like this that has its hand way in the air. Yep. That's transforming itself. That is actually doing those things. Golden visas, tax systems, um, support, investment, regulation, regulation. Um, and so, you know, I, I just want to say congratulations. It's been a lot of fun. I look forward to spending, uh, a lot more time back here and, uh, and Jake, I'm glad that, you know, we got the chance you recorded the all in pod from, uh, from here last night.

SPEAKER_196: We got to do, uh, you know, a fireside chat together. It's, it's been a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_326: It's been fantastic. I mean, and just to the people here, what a warm welcome we got, huh? Yeah. So thanks to everybody. And it just, it was very heartwarming and great that people listen to the pods and getting stopped on the street for selfies and, and just, it was very, very kind. And, uh, man, that shawarma, man, I got to take you guys back to the shawarma place tonight. I went to the best shawarma. Oh man. It was incredible.

SPEAKER_365: It's great having you guys in Abu Dhabi and, and, and, and welcome, welcome to Abu Dhabi.

SPEAKER_326: Thank you for having us. And we will see you all next time on this week in startups. Bye. Bye.