The Power of “How Can I Help?”: A Conversation with Christopher Schroeder

What does it mean to not only witness but actively champion the entrepreneurial spirit across the world? In this episode of A Legacy of Purpose: Conversations with Dina H. Sherif, Christopher Schroeder—renowned entrepreneur, investor, and author of Startup Rising: The Entrepreneurial Revolution Remaking the Middle East—shares his journey from co-founding innovative tech companies in the U.S. to championing the untapped potential of growth markets like MENA, LATAM and ASEAN, Christopher’s story is one of humility, curiosity, and an unwavering belief in the power of people to solve their own communities’ most pressing challenges. During the conversation, Christopher shared: “There’s something in their teeth… there are problems out there, and not solving them does not make sense. Solving them makes sense. And maybe they’ll win, maybe they’ll lose, but they’re in.”

In this episode, Chris discusses:

•How his Italian immigrant roots shaped his worldview 

•His early experiences in tech and the challenges of building trust in new markets 

•The importance of storytelling and shifting narratives to elevate growth markets 

•Why fostering innovation in the Middle East, ASEAN, and beyond matters now more than ever 

Chris’s dedication to championing entrepreneurs globally offers a fresh perspective on curiosity, humility, and the transformative power of technology.

About Christopher M. Schroeder:
Christopher M. Schroeder is a Washington D.C. and New York City based entrepreneur and venture investor. Aside from co-founding Next Billion Ventures - a leading early stage fund focused on rising markets - he is on the investment committee for Saudi Telecom Ventures, the largest venture capital effort in the Middle East,  and advises Village Global and Endeavor Global on their international investments.  He co-founded HealthCentral.com, one of the nation's largest social and content platforms in health and wellness, backed by Sequoia Capital among others and sold to the global health media publisher, Remedy Health and was previously the CEO of washingtonpost.com.

Schroeder is active in the intersection in American and globally of business, tech and policy making. He has served on national and economic security advisory boards, and is the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the leading transatlantic think tank and funder of projects supporting rule of law, The German Marshall Fund.

He has written extensively about innovation and international economic geopolitical issues for The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Business Insider among others and is seen regularly on CNN and CNBC. He was named one of LinkedIn top 50 Influencers, with over 800,000 followers, and has a leading blog there and on substack. 

Host: Dina Sherif
Produced by Donovan Beck

For Media Inquiries:
Donovan Beck

Communications and Storytelling Coordinator

Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship

Sloan School of Management
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
292 Main St, E38, 5th Floor, Cambridge, MA 02142
don_beck@mit.edu

Transcript

Dina Sherif: 0:00

Music. Okay, so welcome back to legacy of purpose. I'm super excited to welcome Christopher Schroeder, a renowned entrepreneur, an investor, a book author who has a fascinating journey from running major tech companies in the US to championing innovation in growth markets, like countries where I come from, Egypt, Your journey has been far from typical, based on what I've read. There are certain things I discovered about you that I didn't even know after all these years, after all these years, but today, we're going to explore the values that have driven you throughout this journey, and your thoughts around the transformative power of entrepreneurship. And you know, for me, Christopher, you embody, in many ways what true leadership means. I've only ever seen you walk the talk and your career, your overall curiosity about the world and the dedication that I've personally seen you have to making this world a better place is something that is not common and always sits with me in a very special way. So I hope that you all enjoy and take something useful away from this conversation. So Christopher, welcome. Thank you. I want to start the conversation from the very beginning of your life and ask you a few questions about your upbringing, which, which seems to be very interesting, because you're you're a child of Italian immigrants who moved here to the US and your family is deeply connected in New York. And your parents were both lawyers, and I, having read about your family history, how did that impact your own worldview, and what did it mean to be an immigrant in New York at that time, and how did that influence your life moving forward?

Christopher Schroeder: 2:10

Well, firstly, Dina is just such a treat to hang out with you. I mean, any talk is awesome at every level. So thank you. And so much of my journey, particularly in rising markets and Lord knows, in the Middle East has been structured and founded and educated by you. And so your patience with stupid questions and just helping me navigate so many things has been no stupid, deeply, deeply personal to me. So you

Dina Sherif: 2:31

said rising markets, that's an interesting word. Yeah. Well, you know, because I hate the

Christopher Schroeder: 2:35

term global south. I mean, I just tell you that I hate it. I hate it. So I'm not quite sure how to phrase something in aggregate. And since my work takes me from the Middle East to Asia to Latin America, there has to be some way to aggregate the future of the global economy. But so I'm up for any issues, any ideas you have. And you know, look, I guess some of that ties back a little bit. So it was my grandparents who were all immigrants. It was a classic Ellis Island story. So my parents were the real kids of immigrants. And it's very funny, because you and I have so many friends who are immigrants. Who are immigrants and what have you. And it's amazing to listen to some of the things which I did not really reflect on until years later, about how shared those experiences are, the pressure that parents put on you, the expectations of what you have to do and show up, to this sort of balancing between very, very much of your culture. I mean, whenever my mother would tell stories about growing up, it was always about the Italian community. And all the holidays were dozens of people, all from the Italian community. There was an expectation, implicit, if not explicit, that you would marry an Italian, of course. So this is all

Dina Sherif: 3:34

you all come together. I know when we grew up, it was like Egyptian stick together, nice little community,

Christopher Schroeder: 3:38

my Indian friends. I mean, when you get talking, it's actually quite amazing how universal this dynamic is, and by the way, also the expectation. I mean, you know, my parents were lawyers. Other kids they grew up with are engineers. Others are doctors. I mean, it's a very sort of classic. If you're going to be successful, you take three or four, you know, paths, but what you don't do is you don't become an entrepreneur, which is really sort of strange in that almost every one of them, by definition of the act of immigration, are entrepreneurial, make some risk. There I went this summer, actually, to the little, little town in Basilicata in the deep south of Italy, where my great grandfather came from. And my grandfather was born just after he arrived. And it's, you know, you know the stories, you know about the complexities and the difficulties, but when you're actually there in the middle of nowhere, Southern Italy, in a very charming town, by the way, but you knew that 100 years ago, that the nearest town was 10 miles away, and they probably rarely went there. Matera, which was a large city, is an hour away, they probably never went there. And I just had this image, in a way that I'd never really thought about it before walking the town, that at one point my 19 year old great, great grandfather and his 18 year old wife in the same place. They walked in that place, and at 1.1 of them said to the other, I said, I have an idea like, let's go to America. And it's an impossible decision when you when you're there, physically at a time, of course, where there are no cell phones or anything else. You think about what entrepreneurial drive made them say they would take on an adventure like this. And so it's sort of ironic that the people take some of the most gutsy entrepreneurial decisions once they get to places like America, they kind of want the kids to be a little bit more conservative and what have you. But you know, having said that, my parents always were very encouraging of us to do whatever we want to do. So I never felt under any stricture. I think that's a general one generation away thing, but I also think it's a reflection what my parents really discovered once they were raised here.

Dina Sherif: 5:30

I feel like New York was a landing place for so many people. That's also where my parents landed in the beginning as well. Both your parents were and so we were just discussing the, some ways, champions of the arts, specifically music. And your father co founded education through music, offering, you know, music education in to young people in New York.

Christopher Schroeder: 5:55

How inner city schools, right?

Dina Sherif: 5:58

How did that influence you.

Christopher Schroeder: 6:01

There was a soundtrack on in my house all the time, which was classical music. And I think this goes a little bit to the immigrant story. Maybe one of the reasons why classical music isn't quite as popular among younger people today, but when you grew up as the sons of daughters of immigrants. Doesn't matter if you were from anywhere from Central Eastern Europe in particular, but if you're from Italy, if you're from France, if you're from Germany, if you were from Romania, what was then now Romania, if you were from Poland or Russia, it was understood that you had a piano in your house. It was understood that someone was playing violin. You tried to get to concerts as much as you could. And very much in that tradition, you know, there was like a soundtrack in my house, there's classical music on all the time, and it meant a lot, I think, to both my parents. And I think they felt like it was a connection to the culture, particularly they liked Italian opera and some of that kind of thing that was a part of it overall, and so it mattered. But they grew up in an environment where everyone touched this. So I mean, my father played stickball with a young kid named Alfredo Toscanini, who was the grandson of one of the most legendary Italian conductors at the time. And he met the old man one time and scared the hell out of him. But there are things like that my father went to now. It was made into a movie not long ago, but he went, he was actually a boy at the first concert that Leonard Bernstein conducted him, another great conductor that became a legendary figure. And so, you know, I sit and I'm like, wow, he got he touched all these kinds of things, but I think he would have told he was just very normal, like everyone knew someone who served in a symphony or whatever. It was just kind of part of the European immigrant experience.

Dina Sherif: 7:38

But his decision to do something to allow more young people to be exposed to music. That's a demonstration of particular values. And I'm, I think what I'm curious more about is, I know you pretty well, and I feel like that, that those values of giving back, you know, always serving like I have never asked you for something where you have said no, or asked you for help, where you have said no, and I've seen you do so many things for so many different people. Do you think that came from your the way your your parents? Yeah, I

Christopher Schroeder: 8:14

think so. I mean, you know, my mother was went to college at 14. She went to law school at 18, yeah, I

Dina Sherif: 8:20

know I read that. I was like, wow, and I knew that already she's one of two women

Christopher Schroeder: 8:24

in all of Fordham Law School. And then one of her first clients was a woman named Lucy Rosen, who was the wife of a man who made a lot of money on Wall Street at a beautiful estate in upstate New York, and she wanted to make it into a location of classical music in the arts, and hired my mother at 24 to be effectively her lawyer. And that was a journey of 50 years of my mother involved both in music but also in building this, what was really an education center for young people. Her father served and was friends with Mayor LaGuardia, like it was absolutely just sort of understood that if you're in a situation of any kind, you should figure out a way to make that situation better and to give something back. It was not discussed explicitly. It was there. And so when dad then formed this thing called education through music, there were 2b in his bonnet. I mean, effectively, he was stunned that the arts programs were no longer being funded in New York City, in many places. The data was very clear to him that if you study music or arts. Generally speaking, you tend to do better on SATs. You tend to be more engaged in school. Lots of good things happen, but when their budget cuts, it's usually the first program to go. So he wanted to marry funding of these kinds of programs with his passion for classical music, but and he served on the board of directors of his of my school growing up. He but it was never talked about explicitly. You just saw it in action. Just did it. You just people, just did it. There was you see a problem, you fix it. You're in a circumstance, in a community, and if you can sort of wave your hand and do something, it was never so much about hierarchy or title. It was just simply, like, I have an opportunity to make something a little bit better. I'm going to do that. That sounds very entrepreneurial. Well, it's interesting. You have two. Lawyers who were, in fact, in a way, almost like you would love social entrepreneurs. Yeah,

Dina Sherif: 10:03

totally. I love it. So, you know, you went to Harvard, undergrad and grad, I also went to Harvard. And I think, you know, universities are interesting places, but places like Harvard are also particularly interesting because of the network that you acquire and the community that you become part of. And you know, I could talk about all the different communities that you're a part of, starting from your Harvard where, when you went into very young all the way to the boards that you sit on, like endeavor or YPO. I met you and you were doing something with the YPO in Dubai. For me, it seems that you have this drive to always surround yourself with people who will intellectually challenge you and who will allow you to be curious, but who will also be your friends? And I'm curious to know where that desire to be a part of these multiple communities come from, but also you're very dedicated. I've seen you be very dedicated member of these communities. And I feel like for entrepreneurs, especially entrepreneurs from what you call rising markets, or what we call growth markets, to be able to be a part of a community is often a matter of survival when you're really going against so many odds, but, but for you, why? Why is being a part of community so important? You

Christopher Schroeder: 11:49

know, I think that there's one that's genetic and one that was acquired. The genetic thing is Q, is what you said before, is curiosity. I can't explain it to you. I'm just very interested in how things tick. I try to understand people and why they do what they do. And if there's a problem that's been solved by someone, I want to unpack it. And some of it is because of application, like I think I can learn lessons from it that maybe I can be better at. And sometimes it isn't, sometimes it's simply, I'm just fascinated by the story, and I am just loving to see people who are passionate about something and how they did made something with it, and what have you. And I, there's never a time in my life where that I was a pain in the ass as a kid, people would talk about this kind of

Dina Sherif: 12:27

thing. I cannot imagine. I was apparently true

Christopher Schroeder: 12:29

and was whatever the one that was acquired, and it started probably in college, in part, probably a necessity, because, as you know, when you go to a place like Harvard, has got a lot of wonderful aspects to it, and things which are a little bit less than wonderful, but the one thing wonderful. But the one thing that is true is you are surrounded by very, very smart people who are not shy to give their opinion. And I learned very early on the importance of forming almost a wonder in being wrong, that it's actually a wonderfully exciting, uplifting thing. And I think in the first days at a place like a Harvard or if you work in whatever your business is, or wherever you are, you want to spend a tremendous amount of time proving that you know everything. You want to prove that you're not wrong, and you dig in, and that's my weakest moments, I think are when I dig in, it's because I want it's an ego thing. It's not really about trying to get to the answer, but I began having conversations as a very young kid where I get blown out of the water by people who simply knew better than I did, and I went from being defensive to having a sense of wonder. It was a sense of epiphany. I had it wrong, and now it's right or it's better. It's never feels entirely right, but it feels better. And I think I, you know, I fall back, certainly from occasion, but really, if my career has been marked by something, it's not only a very deep curiosity in the service of getting things done, but also an ability to say, Okay, I got that one wrong, but how wonderful. Now I get it. Now I

Dina Sherif: 13:51

get it. You actually said that in an interview. You said that something about Harvard. When you were a student at Harvard, you said you needed to learn quickly how to embrace being wrong, yeah, and, and you said that when you first get to a place like Harvard, everyone is trying to prove that they're right about everything and that they know everything, and you get a very early lesson in humility, but also a lesson in saying that being wrong is fantastic, because if you're wrong, you can do better. And, you know, at MIT, it's interesting, because here there's this incredible culture of no ego. You have an ego you can't innovate, yeah, because Ego is the Enemy of curiosity. So I think, I think it's interesting, because I think most entrepreneurs I have met who are really kind of sucked into solving a problem, they are the ones who are most willing to say, I'm wrong, so that they can figure out how to get to that place. That's right. I had this

Christopher Schroeder: 14:59

kid. Who came and visited and went to school for a few months in Washington, DC High School, kid from Vietnam, and he was almost, it was almost sort of a cliche. He was brilliant mathematician and stem. In fact, he literally was the number one math student within two weeks in this private school of very smart young people. You know, he had, he had a great sense of STEM way ahead of many of the kids around him. And I asked him once, I said, So you come here, do you think like our system is like pathetic as compared? He said, Are you kidding me? So there's no comparison. It's much better here. And I said, What do you mean? And he said, Look, I can actually talk to you very intelligently about nuclear power, but I can't apply it at all. We do no application. It's all rote learning. You can't make mistakes actually there is you have to memorize all the things. And he said, My eye opening experience, which I think captures what you've said in so much of the work that you've done in entrepreneurship, was that he learned most in the engineering club of the high school. Why? Because he watched a bunch of kids make mistakes over and over and over again, and no one learned and no one got pissed, no one got in trouble. It actually was the ability to solve it and make things better. And he said, we'll never really compete without that. And I think your global experience, my global experience, has been very confirming about that,

Dina Sherif: 16:10

yeah, oh my goodness. I mean, Egypt is the same, right? That type of rote learning is the same. So I still want to go back to this idea of community, and what has driven you to join all these different types of communities? Because, you know, I think a lot of our fellows will come and say, oh, you know what community should be a part of. Or they'll come to us and say, this fellowship in this community has saved my life. Um, what for you? For you, like when you joined the YPO, or any of the professional communities that you have joined and been a part of, what, what was your thinking?

Christopher Schroeder: 16:50

So YPO, Young Presidents, organization of which I'm sure many of the folks around here have been members, and what have you, was interesting me because it was global. It was interesting me for another reason, which is that you got to meet other women and men who are CEOs, who you could have conversations based on two fundamental principles. First was complete confidentiality, and the second was that in that confidentiality, there's no judgment. And the assumption was that anyone who's been a CEO has looked into the abyss. Anyone who's a CEO has had personal problems. They've had problems of a company almost going out of business.

Dina Sherif: 17:26

We've all had them. They've made some serious mistakes, catastrophe and

Christopher Schroeder: 17:29

in some cases, near catastrophic mistake, I mean, some cases truly catastrophic mistakes. And to be able to put that aside and in a way, have this sense of a wonder and being wrong in the spirit of making folks more effective in society, not just in their businesses, was very appealing to me. Like any large network, you meet people that you don't really want to spend a lot of time with, but you also meet people to change your life very, very foundationally, a lot of the yprs that you alluded to before in the Middle East, like Fauci, Gondor, Ahmed Alfie and others, changed me entirely like they they completely re educated the way that I thought about the world, about business, about humanity, about the perception of how one thinks of themselves as an American. I mean, it was that kind of level of depth. And in a way, any organization that I've decided to become a part of its community. And in a way, this is an additional add on to this concept of having a wonder being wrong, which is to be with people that don't view you or the operation as a transaction. I've become extremely focused in the last two decades, and I almost know within five minutes who I'm dealing with. You can almost see it in their eyes. Am I a transaction to you, or is this the beginning of a co authorship of doing something or making something different? And there's nothing wrong with transactions. I ran companies. You have to sell things. But even when I sold things, I wanted to know the story of the person my customer was. I did care about that at the end of the day. And we all have experiences with women or men, that when we can do something for us, they're right there in the moment. It's less obvious what we can do for them. They disappear. And I had some early lessons in that were very clear to me, and it made me understand that I was absolutely going to optimize around women and men who were not driven by the transaction. In some respects, a transactional outcome was a secondary thing from the depth of the relationship that was formed. And I found in that depth much more change happens. Much more change. How

Dina Sherif: 19:22

do you? How did you I mean, obviously so many of us have dealt with that dilemma of people who are very transactional and just want something from you, versus people who really want to build something deeper. How do you deal with those who are coming with a very transaction, transactional approach. Now, after these lessons that you've learned,

Christopher Schroeder: 19:44

well, I mean, first of all, there are always people who let you down. Also, life is very complicated. There are people who are very genuinely engaged in many things, but there'll be transactional moments. And as I said before, that's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's just something that is cautionary. But I can remember that, for example. All had worked in a presidential politics, and there were lots of people, I was their best friend until we lost office. And then, you know, you see it at that extreme. And I think that was very formative. And so I suppose, implicitly, not explicitly, when I'm dealing with someone, I start with the assumption of, what can I do to be a service to you, regardless whether you're transactional or not, if you're a decent enough person, if someone's been you've been referred to me by someone, then my first mindset, 80% of my mindsets, what can I do to help

Dina Sherif: 20:26

you? It's so interesting that you say that, because when I think back on many of my interactions with you, often say, How can I be of help? Well,

Christopher Schroeder: 20:32

it's interesting that you say that there was a young entrepreneur who was I was paying watching him have a conversation with another woman, and say, You know what Schroeder always says at the end of every meeting. And I was sort of curious as to what it was, and everyone, every time, apparently I say, what do you need? What can I do? It's true. How can I help you? How can I make your life a little bit better than it was? I'm

Dina Sherif: 20:53

telling you now that I'm thinking about I feel like almost all of our conversations, you have always said, How can I how can I be of help?

Christopher Schroeder: 21:00

So the interesting thing is, with that mindset and with some filtering, even when I deal with people who end up becoming more transactional, I've become almost Buddhist about it. I don't it doesn't bother me at all. I still try to optimize away from it. But if I meet with someone and it's a good conversation, I've been helpful to them. And there are people of integrity and they they move on the transaction. Who cares really?

Dina Sherif: 21:23

My mom always says, she says, if you can help, just help.

Christopher Schroeder: 21:27

It's a great quote. Yeah, I think she's right. I

Dina Sherif: 21:30

think she's right too. She's been right about, how

Christopher Schroeder: 21:32

do you handle because you're this way in spades. And I think one of the things I've not figured out well, and I'm wondering how you figure it out, which is, there's only 20 the one gating factor is 24 hours in a day. So how do you how do you manage all the requests that you get and all the desires you have to help people and still have 24 hours in a day?

Dina Sherif: 21:52

Oh, my goodness, I feel like you just reversed podcast with me. Um, that is such a tough question. You know, I get so many emails every day, I can't answer them all. I mean, I can't. I have come to realize that there are limitations to what I can do. Before I didn't, and I would try to fit in and do as much as I could, you know? And I think now I've I realized that I can't

Christopher Schroeder: 22:20

live with it. Is the answer or no,

Dina Sherif: 22:23

you gate with it.

Christopher Schroeder: 22:24

Are there things that you wish?

Dina Sherif: 22:25

There are things that I pace, you know? I kind of look at those who are coming to me, and I think, you know, who, whose priority, and who can I maybe push out a little bit, I will answer everybody. I think that's like a general rule I have. I will always answer. Because I just think that's basic respect is to recognize somebody. I will always answer. But now I will be honest about my time constraints. So I will say, you know, if I can make the time for somebody, I will, if I can't make the time immediately, I will say, you know, very honestly, I can make time for you, you know, at this later time. And then I say, if it's something urgent, can I offer somebody else to to support? Yeah, and I give options, but I will always answer, which is also pressure, right? Because I'm sure you're inundated with emails and WhatsApps and all these things there. And you do want to help everybody, but I get 400

Christopher Schroeder: 23:27

emails a day. I don't. I do not. It's staggering. And then, you know WhatsApp is, I'm more efficient on some of the other signal and other depending on what field of my work it is, I make it very but I, I will get back to people. But I've been shocked how often I've buried things and I'm embarrassed by it. Yeah,

Dina Sherif: 23:42

it's really hard. I think, I think the commitment I made to myself is that I will answer everybody I but I cannot, like, make time for everybody when they need it in that moment. Good for you. And I think, you know, that's just the way, the way it is, like time is not infinite, at least the way we understand it in current realities. So I want to talk to you a little bit about I've only known you since when you started writing about entrepreneurship, but previous, previously to that, you were a several time entrepreneur, and you started ventures, you know, online ventures at a time where that was just coming coming about. It's not like starting something now you were doing it right in the beginning of when the internet came out, right? So I have a couple of questions. One, you know you you could have continued your career working in finance or anything you wanted. Actually, you could have done but then you chose to go out and do your own thing. And what was, what was going through your mind when you made those decisions? Yeah. You

Christopher Schroeder: 25:00

know, it was a different era in many ways. And you grow up in New York and you're surrounded and even place like Harvard. I mean, even now at Harvard, by the way, everyone will say, I want to do a startup in two thirds of them, or McKinsey, or Goldman Sachs or whatever. So there's always this sort of people fighting their nature versus expectations upon them and what have you. And I think what I'd say is, I was always very intrapreneurial, and I was entrepreneurial points like, you know, people don't believe in that because it sounds much cooler than it was at the time. But, you know, I had a DJ business which failed immensely after two years of great success. And people don't think that I would necessarily have done that, and but I did, and I did great stories, and I loved music, and made a lot of money doing it until they explained. But

Dina Sherif: 25:38

I loved it. I don't think we discovered that in our research is that buried somewhere, probably pretty buried, but there you go, everyone,

Christopher Schroeder: 25:46

DJ, we have a lot of fun, and made money and and it exploded, and learned a lot lessons. Okay, so, so I always had the that sort of, I'm going to do my thing thing. But I think I would have told you that in the first decade of my career, I was more intrapreneurial. In fact, the first company of scale that I ran was intrapreneurial. I ran the Washington post.com you know, which was not a startup. It was not a spin out, though. It was run very separately from the legacy business. And part of the challenge we had to do

Dina Sherif: 26:13

was to figure out and it was, what wasn't it one of the first to go online? Well, all of them

Christopher Schroeder: 26:17

around that time, New York Times had a great guy who's building one who I learned, frankly, a lot it's in a way, goes as a side, goes back to the community stuff. I've often found that every business I've run or been a part of, I'm often quite friendly with my number one competitor. And I must say, one of the people I admired most of that time was a guy who ran New York times.com and we actually did some co authored projects and stuff to raise the industry overall while we elbowed each other and that kind of a thing. So there were no I was hardly the only one. I also inherited. I came in at a time when there was something up and running that I had to sort of reorganize and fix, and then we took it to a different level. But it was intrapreneurial. I mean, I was entrepreneurial, but I had a balance sheet, I had a brand, I had product that existed, which is night and day from making, you know, when I made phone calls as the president of Washington post.com, people and.com people answered them when I was broke out with, you know, Sequoia and a lot of very good investors, and I'd call up people and say, I'm Chris Schroeder from health centrally. Who the hell are you? And they don't call you back and like, you know, you learn that there's a big distinction. But in brand, different in brand, different in organization, different in it's all the kind of stuff we were talking about, the transactional elements of it and all. But I will tell you that I had in my teeth, even throughout Washington post.com that at some point I had to do this myself, like it was interesting what I was doing. And I love news, and it was an interesting time in history. But then you started healthcare. Then I did healthcentral.com, and

Dina Sherif: 27:34

health Central was also backed by some serious, was serious players, including Sequoia, yeah, and that was great. And it was also Carlyle Group,

Christopher Schroeder: 27:44

who's definitely back. Carlisle had a venture capital wing back then, and they were back. I think the lesson that I learned there is, you know, the money is important. It does actually open doors. But I had unbelievable board members. I mean, these men just got up in morning, went to bed at night, and it was very, very helpful to me. They were totally of service. I get Alan spoon, who was the president of The Washington Post and then became a very successful venture capitalist in Boston. He never did not answer an email or a call within minutes. It was unbelievable. Mike Moritz, who became a legend in Sequoia, if ever I needed something, it was astounding to me, the speed with which they would come up with an introduction or get on the phone with me to brainstorm a problem or whatever. And so the pressure of having that kind of money and just raising money, and the pressure that is a startup was all there, but I must say, it was ameliorated by the team, and it was ameliorated by having people around me who really were trying to help us succeed.

Dina Sherif: 28:37

So what was, what would you say, especially with health Central, because that was something that you co founded and built from the bottom up. What would you say was the most gratifying moment as for you as an entrepreneur, and what was the most difficult?

Christopher Schroeder: 28:56

Well, the difficulties here, because in many respects, there's so many of them, I mean, and I mean, and I say this entrepreneurs all the time. I mean, the difficult ones are almost every day often. They're people related. I mean, I cringe most, and I think a lot of CEOs cringe most when they realize that they probably should move somebody out much faster than they did, and the ramifications on the organization, on the culture, on the person, is brutal, and I have tremendous embarrassed regrets by not doing those things better, and those tough decisions more timely than I did. You know, so there's always the people. Issues are always the hardest. We

Dina Sherif: 29:30

don't talk about that all the time. This issue of you need to fire quickly and get rid of those. It's kind of true. It is true. It's really true. It is really hard to do. You get

Christopher Schroeder: 29:39

caught in the cycle that good enough is good enough, and that the vacuum of not having a role filled, particularly in an early stage company, has got to be worse. But if I'd looked in the mirror and said, you know, something for six months or whatever it takes, get the right woman or man, I'm going to be head of sales or head of whatever. Like, that's the right answer. Like, I should have been that way, and I thought I could either fix it or get a little. Bit better. I could find someone in parallel. And the culture recognizes that people wonder if you are really on top of your game and for the person themselves. If it's not a fit for them, it's not that they're screwing up. I actually think of that as a CEO screw up. I'm having a baseball player playing soccer. We

Dina Sherif: 30:14

forget that most people, if you need to get rid of someone, they're probably it's probably crushing them too, crushing

Christopher Schroeder: 30:20

them. And often they really are very talented, but you got them playing the wrong game, and so you have to help them get to the right fit and that kind of stuff. So that was the tough stuff, the positive moments, I would say there's a broad one, and then one specific to health Central. The broad one was when you watched people realize they could make a difference in what they were doing, and they did, like this, aha moment, where you could watch people self Elevate, almost by the act of them taking on something that none of us thought we could actually do, or individually they couldn't think they could do. And not only they did, they did and really well, like you just the multiplier effect of what that did, also culturally and to the success of the operation, I think, was very profound. I mean, obviously winning big deals and all that kind of stuff was of stuff was, you know, you get sort of excited by that. I think the mistake a lot of entrepreneurs made, and I made sure not to make this mistake, was that when you raise money, particularly your second or third round of capital, that somehow or other, that's a victory. And it is not a victory at all. The number of people go public and they think they can less, go back on their laurels, or they just raise another brand round, and they think, okay, we kind of won. In point of fact, this is where it gets even harder, even more difficult, and so that. But I was pretty alert on that kind of a thing. So, you know, it was just very exciting. But you know, it was tough. It was very, very tough. And I think a lot of people, you know, they saw, you know, movies or, you know, HBO dramas or whatever, and they think this is all much of laughs. And, you know, you got to want to solve a problem. Oh, yeah, in your teeth, it's

Dina Sherif: 31:46

not really all that sexy. No, it's not sexy. So I know the story of why you founded health Central, but I'd love for you to tell those who are going to listen to this podcast, because there is a story behind why you Yeah, there's

Christopher Schroeder: 32:00

a there's a personal story that laid into a theory of the game from a business perspective. And, you know, I feel that I and a couple of other people at the time co founded something, but we actually did, which in many respects, was a mistake, because we rolled up some other health properties that had good brands that we thought we could then expand. And in many respects, you get so I think everyone underestimates how tough it is to do even a series of small acquisitions. And a lot of times we got caught in the mire of different cultures and stuff that you find under the covers that you don't find in due diligence that slowed us down. So it was a co founding, almost of an acquisition vehicle that became, then a company on its own. But it started personally. So this was at a stage Facebook had just been up and running. A lot of social media was up and running. Was up and running, but I had two personal experiences that were very profound. I had a very dear friend who eventually lost his battle to bipolar disorder after an incredibly brave battle, very, very gifted guy who was a great speech writer and policy guy in Washington. He was a speech writer for Carly Fiorina and at Stanford, and very gifted guy, but he suffered from bipolar disorder, and eventually he couldn't win the battle. And then a little bit earlier than that, my mother in law was given what was clearly a terminal diagnosis of cancer. And what I found digging and digging and digging in the internet at this time was that there were all these little groups of people who'd been there or were in it, and you would not even necessarily show each other's names. I don't think I knew any of the identity of the people I found these groups towards, either you just found them, or they were part of the university, or whatever it was, but all of a sudden you were in a room with people as narrow as friends of friends of with people who have bipolar disorder or the son and the son in law of a woman with adenocarcinoma. Like, the level of specificity you found was unbelievable, and with that, the level of detailed answers and care and genuineness was off the charts. And 60% of it was about, you know, treatments and medical things, but almost half of it, 40% of it, was definitely about how you live your life on a day. Your life on a day to day basis. And it was so hard to find these things, and they were so powerful. The original thesis of health Central is, what if we could aggregate a bunch of these sites and have experiences where people could find people just like them, not necessarily care who they are, the content that they needed from a very genuine place of experience. And you know, you get sucked into, you need to be another portal of healthcare stuff, and how many doctors you have involved and everything else. And I had to sort of keep that the way it was done, a bit at bay, to try to unleash something that had not really existed at scale at that time before. And we ended up doing a whole bunch of stuff with medical things. We did have doctors and things like that. But the real thing was, you know, I'm a 32 year old woman with a pain in the ass husband, and I've been diagnosed with breast cancer. Do I tell my children? Like, those were the kinds of questions that were coming up as much of, what treatment should I get? And so that really was kind of the essence of the proposition. And with that came a business model, because the theory was, there's a tremendous amount of money in health. Care, and that money would rather not reach 10 million random people, but they'd rather reach 30,000 people are actually going through the experience, and you'll get a much more greater performance on that and do pretty well with it. And I must say, I was right in part, and it was such bigger slog than I thought we had to get through all sorts of regulatory issues. The regulators at that time of the FDA did not think that people should advertise drug information around social media. It was crazy stuff. Yeah, and I had to testify before the FDA and do a bunch of shit that no entrepreneur should have to spend time doing. But I had to do it. And the outcome ended up, though, we built something that was impactful. We I think we saved people's lives, and, you know, we ended up selling it. So it was okay,

Dina Sherif: 35:42

yeah, well, I'm glad you actually embarked on it, but I think the reason why I wanted you to share the that origin story is because even with that, it started by you still wanting to make the world a better place. Yeah, right. And I looked

Christopher Schroeder: 35:59

at the news business that way. I mean all the to me. I mean in some respects, like in hindsight, you and I can look at our career and make into an arc, and you and I both know that it's much more of a sine wave. You have these highs and these lows and ridiculous mistakes and everything else. And then hindsight, it looks like an arc, but to the degree that, in foresight, there was an arc for me, I was always it goes back to my curiosity stuff. I found that if people had better information, they made better decisions. And the Unleashing, this is why I love entrepreneurs now, because entrepreneurs are about unleashing individual potential. It's about, I've got a problem my teeth, and now I want to be able to solve it, and the best way to do that is often starting with amazing information. And I think most of the companies I ran at the time had that element to them. Yeah,

Dina Sherif: 36:39

I love it. It's it's what we ask of our fellows, right? You have seen a lot in your life, and you've seen a lot of actually, you've seen the entire evolution of technology kind of take over our life, right? You and I grew up without without the internet, without phones, without cell phones, without smartphones, we didn't have any of that. And then all of a sudden, you know, our lives changed. And I think, you know, I've seen you talk about the power of just the smartphone, and what happens when you put a smartphone in the hands of a poor person in a remote rural area in somewhere in Africa or in Asia or anywhere. And you talk about how technologies actually power and can actually be used to generate jobs and prosperity, and you've been a huge voice for the adoption of technology and innovation within countries like mine. So my my question is like, where is that coming from? Why are you so dedicated to that particular agenda, and why also in our markets?

Christopher Schroeder: 37:57

So there's a foresight element to the question, and in a way, it's a cousin to what I said before about the empowering of information to make better decisions with technology unleashed smartphones certainly did this at scale, but what it really unleashed was a very clear and specific, not fluffy, sense of empowerment. And that definition for me, I saw this at Health central all the time. If I see someone like me, looks like me is from my economic strata, my age, whatever I identify myself in, if I see someone like me who takes hold of something and it works, that means I can do it too. And the Unleashing, I think that is so powerful about smartphones, obviously, being able to buy things and all that, and have banking, if you never had it before, a part of the equation, a massive and revolutionary way. But I think what is sometimes underestimated is the act of seeing people just like me doing all sorts of things. And that means, if they do it, I can do it, we can all take a swing and make our lives better in a more constructive way. And it was very, very clear to me that this was true in America. It was certainly the story of so many of the entrepreneurs, many of whom, most of whom came from nothing, many of whom are immigrants. But then when I started getting exposed to parts of the world, you see it in states. So before I got to the Arab Middle East, my first exposure to this was because I ran companies. I did what gringo CEOs always do, which is I outsource technology to almost any emerging market. We called it that then, from Argentina to Sri Lanka, yeah. Yeah. And you get cheaper engineering, yeah. Unlike a lot of gringo CEOs, I actually went and visited my partners on the ground in these places. And it was very clear within hours that these women and men were not simply getting up in the morning go to bed at night, so I'd have cheaper engineering. They were looking around them and saying, Why is there no Amazon here? Why is there not even necessarily, in the case of the Middle East, there's no email here in Arabic. Why is it that that 80% of our country can't get a loan other than going to a loan shark within their community, they're asking all the obvious, Whys why? Because what I said before, they've either been around the world or saw the world and said, people like me are doing it, so why can't I do it here? Secondly, they're great entrepreneurs, and they knew it would be an opportunity for most of them. Very impactful. When you talk to Marcos at mercadoli, which is a juggernaut e commerce company, you know, he had in his teeth not only to build the Amazon of Latin America, but he knew it would revolutionize lives there. And I came away from that trip saying something much bigger is going on here that was different than anywhere else. Case of the Arab Middle East. You know, I was involved in a group. It was through YPO, of Arabs and Americans talking about a time when the only narrative of the Arab Middle East in Washington and certainly America, was conflict. It's just war and disaster. ISIS was in your bed. Pick whatever it was. Here I'm meeting women and men across the region who are like, What are you talking about? Like, yes, of course, there's this stuff going on, but there's something else going on. And honestly, I didn't really believe it, or I thought it was a sideshow. I mean, there were engineers in Egypt, I had no doubt. But, you know, were they really going to change things in light of the bigger forces that I understood them? And, you know, Fauci and a couple of other people put together the first major gathering, I think may have been the first time I

Dina Sherif: 40:56

met you. That was when we met. So, the celebration of entrepreneurship. Celebration of entrepreneurship. 2010

Christopher Schroeder: 41:02

2010 in the fall. And you know, there are a couple of things that were happening in parallel. One, there was like 3500 young people from around the Arab world who were there, who did not give a damn about any political stuff or Obama speeches or Israel or anything from a geopolitical perspective. They had in their teeth that they had tools to solve problems. Secondly, there was 3500 young people on a waiting list to get into this. Third, after that trip, I actually went to Egypt for the first time in Jordan, and saw it all in the ground happening there as well. And I came back and said to myself, something is happening here, combined with what I'd seen in other parts of the world, that is going to redefine the global economy and redefine infinite innovation globally. And needless to say, a month later, most of those young people were in Tahrir Square or whatever, protested something different. You

Dina Sherif: 41:50

you started writing this book, as you know, the so called Arab Spring was taking foot. And I remember when you went to Egypt because I helped you, helped organize a visit for you to go visit tawa so an NGO that I had co founded with Yasmina, I remember very well, and where we had built a school and provided access to income opportunities for the people of that community and and then I know that you went into writing your book, and I just want to tell the story, because you started writing your book. I was in the US, when the when the revolution in Egypt started, and I remember you would, you would every day, you would text me to see how I was doing, until I finally made it back home. And you every day, how are you doing, how are you doing? And I felt like you were checking in on everybody. Um, which was really beautiful, because I felt like you had developed this very unique bond with our part of the world that was very special. I'm not even sure that you even realized how how deep it had become, and how fast it had become, but you ended up writing this 200 page book about, um, what was happening in the entrepreneurship space in the Arab region, and there was a lot happening at the time. What? What was it that you found most striking about that part in time in the Arab region, with regards to how entrepreneurship was evolving, versus what you see now, almost what 13 years later? Because I feel like every time I go back, there's like an evolution. Things are changing. Yeah. I

Christopher Schroeder: 43:34

mean, it's interesting. A friend of mine just told me they it's the 10th anniversary of the writing of that book, and no tech book last week, let alone 10 years? No, I feel like you should write a part two. Well, some I know someone else is running a part two, nor SWOT is writing no new told me about her book, and I'm very excited for that. I think it's good that it's now. So, I mean, I think she was one of the pioneering people also, and she's of it and in it. And I think she'll have I'm much happier to be helpful to her, then be kind of an external reporter on it. I think it'll be a more genuine book and answer some of the questions you just raised. But what I would tell you is a friend of mine just looked at it for whatever reasons. If you read the introduction of my book, a Ford was written by Marc Andreessen, and the conclusion of it, all the themes of what was changing about human interconnection and the Unleashing talent have held up entirely the stories who succeeded or who failed and who came after the book. All that the book is way too dated to be relevant in its detail, but I think it hit a lot of the issues that were important to the Arab world, but is important pretty much everywhere, because it goes down to this idea that we have in these tools for all the criticism people like to give of social media and what have you, we have an unleashing of capacity and capability that simply was not possible for them. And even you go to the Middle East now, and obviously, the way the political situation played out much differently than people had hoped and aspired in many ways overall, Saudi Arabia barely appears in my book. Barely appears.

Dina Sherif: 44:56

Yeah. Now if you wrote today, you'd start there. You

Christopher Schroeder: 44:59

would be. Right there Dubai. Dubai was, in my book, some but even then, Dubai was very expensive. In a lot of respects. Was viewed as kind of a private equity, not venture capital mentality, big real estate projects and big companies and what have you. And then no one could afford to live in Dubai. And of course, that's changed dramatically. But Saudi Arabia was literally like a market for E commerce. They have money, and you could sell stuff there. But the idea that there'd be entrepreneurs, let alone women entrepreneurs, being unleashed 10 years ago, of course, was completely off the radar. So now here we are, 10 years later, and I think the core thing which is shared is the desire from people who have a problem in their teeth that they have to solve, has the capabilities and tools to do so with a market that's much more adept to doing it. And we forget COVID, in some respects, was, for all of its horridness, was an unleashing of people's engagement and understanding of how to use technology in their lives in a day to day basis. And a new generation of entrepreneurs have just leaned into that to be able to solve some really big and thorny questions. And I see now incredibly exciting companies in Saudi Arabia and UAE, and there's still fantastic companies in Egypt, the ankle weights. The countries who choose to unleash this talent are making the right choices for the 21st century. The countries that are deciding they still want to contain this or make it hard for young people to do it, are missing the greatest opportunity. Which brings

Dina Sherif: 46:15

me to an important, important point. So here at the center, we always talk about bottom up growth, through through venture development, that entrepreneurship can be the critical pathway to achieving prosperity that is sustainable, inclusive, but that also requires political will. Yeah, and I don't think any of when I think of my country or and what it's going through now, especially with economic downturn and the currency issues and the devaluation and the fiscal scarcity mindset. If we had, you know, 3040, years ago, said instead, we want to invest in bottom up venture growth that is driven by technology. Where would Egypt be today? So on many levels there, there's political will involved. And we saw that happen live in places like the UAE and Saudi which really was very recent, when they decided to the government, decided to go full force into supporting technology and innovation and entrepreneurship and backing that with money and providing capital. But you've traveled, you know across the world. You've traveled in the Arab region. You've traveled now in the ASEAN region. I know you've been to some places in Africa, Latin America for sure. Why is policy and politics so important when it comes to unleashing entrepreneurship as a and when I say entrepreneurship, I'm not talking about like your traditional SME, but really those innovation driven entrepreneurs who have the potential to grow fast and create jobs and completely transform systems. Why does it matter so much?

Christopher Schroeder: 48:02

Look, I mean, it matters because it matters. I mean, at the end of the day, the regulatory environment, the ability to get money into an investment and get a money out, is by definition rule of law. The ability to bank people who have never been banked before is by definition going to run into regulatory circumstances. I mean, the there was almost a naivete, kind of a Silicon Valley started naivete that you can move fast and break things, and you'll deal with government later, once you're so big, they can't, they're not going to mess with you in the same way, and you're gonna always solve problems bigger and faster than them. And by the way, I'm not saying that that's completely wrong, but I will say at the same time and the reality, particularly in the markets where you and I focus overall, it's really naive. But having said that, you know, if you were to ask me now, who are some of the top countries who are really getting ahead of how to think about FinTech regulation, who think about FinTech not as an extension of banking alone, but are thinking about what it takes to make them succeed, to meet with the entrepreneurs, to meet with venture capital, and try to actually create both enabling capabilities, whether that may be infrastructure or a rule of law, to make them succeed. It would surprise a lot of people. I think Brazil has been very forward, I was about to say Brazil very forward leaning here in a way that I sure America is. Indonesia has had very positive moments, and that surprises, I think, a lot of people. But look at the end of the day one, a lot of the leaders are a generation older than you and me, meaning that all this stuff they don't quite understand. I think lots of generation are too, and they feel very threatened by what they don't understand. There's tremendous lobbying and political pressure from business as usual to not have things that disrupt. I mean, the dynamics are very, very real and need to be understood at the end of the day. I think one of the great capabilities of the best entrepreneurs you and I have ever been behind is a sense of persistence. They're going to get tailwind headwinds somewhere, and unfortunately, in many countries, those headwinds come top down, and that means that you almost enable a brain drain. And so I look every leader of every country is making a choice, and that choice is. Do I want to leash this, or do I want to contain it? And those who contain it will find themselves not well in a competitive position in the next century.

Dina Sherif: 50:07

Yeah, and I feel like some and you've heard me say this many times, is that it requires a massive mindset shift to really see that your people who can solve problems are actually assets. Well,

Christopher Schroeder: 50:20

my favorite quote in the book, my favorite quote probably in my experience of the last 15 years. No, not in your experience in the last 15 it is because it summarized so much. And it was, it was from you, and it was this distinction that you made between top down mindset and bottom up entrepreneurial mindset. And you said that effectively, top down mindsets. This is true in America. You talk to NGOs and, God knows, government people very, very often, who I think are very well intended and very decent people who really do care. But top down mindset looks at people as problems to be solved. You, poor people, we will fly in. We will solve you, tap at you in the head on our way in and out of doing so. But the bottom up mindset, the unleashing of the entrepreneurial mindset is people are assets to be unleashed. But the fact of the matter is, a lot of political power is not happy when people get unleashed. And by the way, history sometimes is on their side. But that is the trade off. You captured that trade off beautifully in that distinction.

Dina Sherif: 51:17

Yeah. And I, and I think, you know, when I think about companies like M PESA or, and what that did for the people of Kenya, right, or, and also, more broadly, Africa now, or when I think about suit.com and you know you've met Ronaldo, Ronnie, and one of the things that I Never knew about suit.com which was acquired by Amazon, is that in the beginning, in the early days, of them trying to deliver these products, this through this e commerce platform, you know, in our part of the world, we didn't actually have addresses.

Christopher Schroeder: 51:55

Well, for the Saudi it was almost impossible deliver. Stories are hilarious, right? And

Dina Sherif: 51:59

like even in my country, in Jordan, in Lebanon, it used to be, you would say my house is on the corner of blah, blah, blah, with the kiosk that has this written on it, and just go down. It's four buildings down. But addresses were never used, right? It was done by like, symbols and things. And he actually had to actually get addresses written. And that created a massive opportunity to be able to have all these addresses. I guess the the question is if, if you're a policy maker and you're listening to this podcast in in countries that are still hesitating to really embrace and adopt technology as a way to achieve their prosperity, prosperity, but also to develop the kind of regulatory environment that would allow their own entrepreneurs to thrive in their own countries without leaving what advice would you give them?

Christopher Schroeder: 52:52

Look, I have to tell you that I'll speak from America's perspective as they get involved in this. I think never in the history, at least in my lifetime, is the intersection between policy making business and technology overlap more at a necessary level. And I just think it's descriptively true, whether you're talking about military tech, health tech, education tech, or anything overall. And having said that, it is very striking to me how most of the government institutions one are so swarmed with people who've never had experience in running bank, managing or really leading an organization in a private sector. View, a lot of them are have limits on their access to use technology on a day to day basis because of security issues or everything else. And they really speak different languages. I mean, I've brought some of the real poo box of Silicon Valley, and certainly AI to meet very smart very, very top people in our government and elsewhere. And I literally will sit in a room with three or four people and I walk away stunned at how you have such bright, such caring individuals. And I think for the most part, they really are who one is speaking coina Greek and the other is speaking Latin. Yes, there is a miss of language. There's a misunderstanding of the analogies that they make, and a disconnect. And so my answer to your question is, and regulators tend to want to go after problems first. They want to kind of justify their existence first. And what ends up happening is they don't have the language or the experience of the people who are most affected. And part for me, is to really get embedded. The Brazilians did this very well very early on, when they decided they were gonna have FinTech regulation, they brought in the entrepreneurs themselves. They brought in the expertise who have to live under these regulations. Yeah, and made trade offs accordingly. But

Dina Sherif: 54:29

I think with them, they did it at the right time. I think when Egypt did it, it was too late. But well,

Christopher Schroeder: 54:35

you know, I'm gonna be a little bit naive here to say that it's never too late, like if you're actually willing to embrace the feedback and want to make a choice to unleash this phenomenon. It's not too late. But if your instinct is this thing called AI appears, and I'm going to be the first out of the box Europe with regulations here, and I'm just going to sort of jam all my data protection learning into a very different kind of an animal. And you know, be able to declare victory. And like. You sort of say to yourself, is that really in the public good? And certainly is that in a good that's going to make you competitive in the world that we're facing right now? And these are the questions people have to look in the mirror and say, what is it that I want to be now? The fact of the matter is, a lot of women and men who don't care, yeah, that's also true. I mean, let's we, you know, we can have a whole podcast just about how politicians think about education, and at the end of the day, if you're not serious, if you're not trying to do more and more to help this young generation have the tools and capabilities for the 21st

Dina Sherif: 55:28

century, ultimately, it's going to impact your country. Yeah, it's and you

Christopher Schroeder: 55:31

got to look in the mirror and say that. But many politicians, obviously are more short term focused, and they have different incentives, and they don't, again, really understand what you take for granted, and it makes it hard, but it's not impossible. Enough examples where people know something's happening, I would think that any country in the world will look, should look at places like Dubai and UAE, and how they in Saudi Arabia, are leaning into AI and saying, you know, not unlike what I said before, if they're doing it, why can't I do I've got a lot of money, or I've got a lot of energy, or I've got access to GPU or very talented young people, but you have to, you have to use your imagination. I mean,

Dina Sherif: 56:05

personally, I'm not sure exactly what led to the UAE and Saudi really embracing AI. What was that turning point? Regardless, they're at a place where they're really embracing it. And I, you know, not to name which African president. But, you know, I spent some time with a president in Africa who very openly said to me, he's like, you know, for me, AI is very scary, and, you know, I don't know what to do with it, and I don't know what good it can do for my country. And, you know, so a part of it for me became, are we also, you know, when we think about all the work that the World Bank and IMF is doing educating people about technology, and advanced technology in particular, and how to use that to actually create prosperity, is not on their agenda. No. What's on their agenda is squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, uh, put everyone in a scarcity mindset, and that doesn't create change, no, it creates fear, right? And I'm at a point where I feel like for Africa, and I know you've been writing a lot lately about the ASEAN region, and you've been traveling like Vietnam, Taiwan, China. I mean, that's on my list. I'm so jealous. But, you know, we need to find ways to kind of break down that fear barrier and also overcome a lot of the kind of very structural, I would say, suffocating mechanisms that also exist in these governments. I

Christopher Schroeder: 57:39

don't know how to how to crack it another suffocation is true. The legacy of many of these governments is heavy. But then you have to say to yourself at one point, a leader, because it really does boil down to leadership. The leader woke up one day and looked at the desert and said, I'm going to build an enormous city here. That's an economic move of the world. And I'm going to go study Singapore. I'm going to study other people have done it, and I'm going to have my own version of it, and but I want to study it. And you without naming names, you and I know a leader in Africa who studied Dubai and studied UAE and studied Israel, and was going to be that in Africa, hasn't happened yet. And so, you know, there are all these kinds of trade offs, but I think very often in life. This is true in running a company, and it's true in assessing a macro conversation like this, that if you really unpack the incentive structures in place, you can almost predict with 100% how people are going to act. And the fact of the matter is this technology, particularly now, I mean, we've had a similar conversation 10 years ago with mobile capability, but now with AI, we really are in new territory, and it's quite understandable for people to say this may move in a place where either it could be dangerous for things that are in my incentives or my understanding, or I'm going to get dwarfed. I'm going to be a pawn yet again in the China America game or whatever it is. So you have to be creative, but at the same time, you start asking yourself big questions, which is, every kid in my country can have a personal within five years, can have a personal tutor in their hand. Like, what does that mean do? What

Dina Sherif: 59:05

can that do? Future progress of my country, we

Christopher Schroeder: 59:07

will cure cancer with this ability to manage data in a way that was unimaginable five years ago. But I'm just saying it's there. But you have to have the mindset that says, not only do I have to regulate things because of a reasonable conversation of what can get off the line, but at the same time, I'm going to say to myself, I'm in a unique position in the history of the world be able to solve the problems in theory. That's why I'm there. But that takes a certain leadership mindset, and they don't come around that often. No,

Dina Sherif: 59:35

they really don't. That's That's where there's scarcity. But since we're on that topic. You know, you've been traveling a lot in Asia. You've traveled extensively in the Middle East, Africa. You've traveled in Latin America. And you know, the US is your playground. Do you think there's going to be a new playbook for technology and innovation? That moves away from the kind of Silicon Valley playbook that everyone has been emulating,

Christopher Schroeder: 1:00:06

like everything in life is like talking about the Singapore model. I think there are things that work, and if people are smart, they will take them and leverage them, and there are things which are either get long in the tooth or they didn't even work in the timing you make a choice to do it differently, or your culture or society, or things that you want may be different than a thing overall. But there's a reason why, after a period where people are starting to write off Silicon Valley and the problems, God knows, of the tragedy that became San Francisco as a city and the infrastructure around it, and COVID, people moving to Miami and whatever else, there's a reason why there's a massive sucking sound of the most capable and talented people from around the world in AI gravitating back into that area. Because one of the things that we have learned for all the power of virtualness is that there really is still, it's almost back to your community conversation earlier, a desire to be in the same room with people who are solving big, big problems, and you want to be around the best of the best, that network effect of talent does not happen often in history. And I think every country that cares about this stuff is asking, Can I in some way prime to do that? I mean, it's very interesting when you look at countries, and we come back to Saudi Arabia and UAE, and no country is perfect by any stretch of the imagination. But what's one of the determinants that they've said they're like, I'm gonna have open visas, so the best talent on earth will come here. Like that is a statement about where you want your ambition to go, not only in theory, but in application. And the idea that people would say, well, Silicon Valley's past its prime, they're just being naive, because the fact of the matter is, there's still incredible talent that likes to aggregate there geographically. Now we can say that talent is everywhere, which I do believe. But the fact of the matter is, there'll be some AI companies that come out of New York and Chicago and Austin and what have you. But there is a reason why. There is a recipe of the network effect of talent wanting to be around itself, and that's the secret sauce that I think in some respects, we never know how to do that, except in hindsight. But it is magic

Dina Sherif: 1:02:04

in Boston, right? Anybody who wants to do anything in relation to biotech somehow finds their way here, even if it's for a brief moment in time. I think for us, we just hope to see more of these hubs in other parts of the world.

Christopher Schroeder: 1:02:20

You know? I think the beauty is, at least for a period of time. I mean, there's a period of time, I think, a couple of years, where more Indians were leaving America to go back to India than to come to America, which was a major statement. When you stop to think about it. I don't know what those numbers are like now, but at the end of the day, great entrepreneurs are globalists, almost by nature, in that I'm not making this as a geopolitical statement, but they will go with the least amount of friction to succeed.

Dina Sherif: 1:02:44

Oh, totally. We have some fellows who are quite, quite like that. So almost my last question, but kind of my last question I'm asking, I'm gonna ask you this question for Donovan, right? I think, you know, the world is in a, I would say, not a great place. And you know, we were talking, there's so many things in the world right now that kind of makes you sad, right for but at the same time, you know when I read, when I read your pieces, and your experience, what? What your experiences lately in Asia, and even if I go back and to your book that was published 10 years ago, there's something about your stories of entrepreneurship that has a promise of deep hope, yeah, and I remember something that I will always, always hold close to my heart, and in The kind of worst days of Egypt during the uprisings and the revolution and what was happening. And, you know, I once said to you, you know, I'm not optimistic. And you said, it's okay, you don't have to be optimistic, but you always have to be hopeful. Yeah, and I've always kept that in the back of my mind. When you look at, you know, what is happening in the world, and what is happening with regards to technology and enormous potential that, like I feel that AI has the potential to really help countries leapfrog and completely transform systems that are deeply broken, if they just embrace it. But I guess my question to you is, in the midst of all these terrible things that are happening in the world, there is this place of hope, which we call entrepreneurship. What? What does that mean for you?

Christopher Schroeder: 1:04:34

Well, the sense that I've had about optimism versus hope is actually stolen from a wonderful quote that I can't do quite justice to of a really remarkable man, Vaclav Havel, who's the first real president of Czechoslovakia after the Berlin Wall fell. And it was interesting because he became a great leader of the country as a playwright. He was a political activist who was in prison and saw all that, but he actually was an artist first and foremost. And I think thought of himself that way. And he made a distinction. He said optimum. Ism effectively, is like it's all going to turn out well, and hope is, you know, sometimes things don't turn out well, but they made sense. And I've always held on to that distinction, because I think at the end of the day, and the entrepreneurs are case study, one of this, or women and men coming all the time, of multiple generations who see a problem in their teeth and they want to solve it. And in an almost Buddhist sense, the macro doesn't slow them down at all, because they can't do anything about the macro, but they can do about this, something about this problem in their teeth. And when you spend time with all the amazing people of multi generation around your world, a lot of them are younger, but not all of them. And I get to see all the people around the world, you don't get it. Leave those meetings without fired up. I just was a wonderful experience. Actually, I was just a judge for the Schwarzman Scholar Program. Steve Schwarzman from Blackstone Group started this 10 years ago, and it's kind of a road scholarship, but bringing mostly Westerners, but global students to spend a year at Tsinghua University. And they've built a beautiful campus there. And this is an extraordinary group of young people. I interviewed almost 40 of them, and every one of them, when I read their application in advance of it, I'm like, we're going to be okay. Like, these are just amazing young people.

Dina Sherif: 1:06:09

This is what our future has been stored and they're not all entrepreneurs. Some

Christopher Schroeder: 1:06:12

of them are social entrepreneurs. Some of them are professors. Some of they come from all different passion, but there's something in their teeth, and they come at it with a sense of that there are problems out there, and not solving them does not make sense. Solving them makes sense. And maybe they'll win, maybe they'll lose, but they're in and, you know, I think that's a very powerful reminder, because we forget that throughout history, there is terrible war, and there's now breathtakingly terrible war now, and there's political abuse and there's criminality of all sorts of natures. We try to pretend that the norm is not that, when, in point of fact, with any sense of history, the norm is that, in many ways, and it is these folks who are sort of like despite that I'm showing up that makes all the difference going forward. I think one of the things that marks this period different than any period in my lifetime, other than AI and technology, which is massively different. And I believe we're in the earliest innings of beginning to appreciate that is that we're in world order, where the world order is being questioned everywhere. All the bumpers of behavior, to the degree that there were some bumpers that either were implicit or explicit, people are testing them everywhere. There's not a part of the world where there's not a woman or man saying, I know 10 years ago, I never could have done this, but I can do it now, and I'm going to try and America. I just wrote a blog post on this. I mean, America is having a hard time understanding that what they need to do in the world is not tell people what to do, but to compete. Compete for ideas, compete for execution, compete for great product and services at a great price. Because everywhere around the world. People are saying, I have alternatives. China is an obvious alternative. But it's not just China. It's everywhere else. A world of choice is actually a very hopeful thing in the macro scary scenarios that we all know we're there. And I don't pretend that these things could not spin out in a way that is of a historical era. But you have to remember, I cut my teeth at 21 when the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union disappeared and there was war in the Gulf. And people now look back on that as a historical event that seemed just to happen pretty decently, and they forget how much everything in the world seemed to be on its ear at that time and at this time. Now, all the ways that we think about life, and you and I were raised to expect about them, are at least being pushed on, if not questioned. And in that it is, can be disarming, but in that, of course, is unbelievable opportunity. And I think that people tend to gravitate towards success. And if people actually not say they're great, but actually show and display and compete as great, that could be a very interesting period that we're going into. We'll see.

Dina Sherif: 1:08:43

It's interesting that you said that because your friend Fauci on dur once said to me, you know, competition is a fantastic thing. It is a fantastic thing because competition leads to excellence. He's right. And without competition, what we have left is mediocrity. The

Christopher Schroeder: 1:09:00

evidence, I think whether it's in history or art or dancing or entrepreneurship, is utterly on his side. And we look at our own personal experiences, there's so much that we do because we all work hard and we care, but we always take it that extra foot because we have someone coming up behind us that's just in that natural aspect of human nature. Yeah.

Dina Sherif: 1:09:18

Yeah,

Unknown: 1:09:19

absolutely.

Dina Sherif: 1:09:20

So my last question for you is, you know, you're at a moment in your life, your kids are grown up, and you've had an amazing career, and you're spending a lot of your time, you know, studying other markets, writing about other markets. I don't know why you often refer to yourself as the in and out Gringo, because I don't actually believe that to be true. I don't think there's anything in and out about you. I feel like you always go and deeply immerse yourself and really think about where you are and with deep curiosity and humility. Um, so I would encourage you to stop using that word. But anyway, um. Uh, my question is, really, when you look back on your life, what, what do you want people to say is the purpose? What would you like your legacy of purpose to be?

Unknown: 1:10:16

You know? I

Christopher Schroeder: 1:10:16

mean, first of all, I am an in and out gringo. I mean, the and I think the recognition of that is not a weakness, it's descriptive, meaning the difference between all the experience I've had in the Middle East and spending 15 minutes with you is just night and day. It's just night and day. It's a night and day when I get to talk to people like you and other parts of the country who live it and of it have been of it, and I can't my experience, my questions are better with each year, but my depth of understanding or understanding when i The good news is I pattern recognition across a breadth of experiences, but I am in and out Gringo, and it's a reminder of me. That term actually reminds myself that when I start getting comfortable, that I think I understand what's going on, I still don't know shit. And that demand for every one of us, I'd say, but absolutely true and different in whatever form, but we all should be conscious of that and remind ourselves of it and a part of that humility of being wrong and loving being wrong, because that's how we evolve. I don't know, I'm not sure yet that I figure out, what if there's a legacy, if anyone's going to give a damn that I existed a day after I'm go off to the great startup ecosystem in the sky, I will tell you. And I said this recently to someone I didn't even remember that. I said it, but it was true. There's no question that among the biggest legacies I'll have are my three children. I mean, they, you know, were profoundly interesting and very funny and very self effacing. They have deep passions and things that they do, but they're not defined by those things, but they are of service. They think of everything they do every day, of making somebody's life a little bit more informed, a little bit better. They have this sort of wonder of being wrong in many ways. And again, they're very funny. And

Unknown: 1:11:49

the multiplier impact them all wonderful. The multiplier impact of

Christopher Schroeder: 1:11:53

these kids, you know, I think on the world will be absolutely one of the biggest roles that I've played on the planet. And I think, sort of as a corollary to that, the ability that everyone that I've touched at one point can say, not only was he asking me what he could do to make make something happen or what have you, but I'm doing that now too. You know, you'll never measure that. I'll never be able to look at a balance sheet or an income statement and say the people that I've touched took elements of that and and were able to do that more for others. But I think more gets built that way. I think more success happens that way. I think we can leverage understanding in a much more profound way that makes lives better. And so, you know, I'm very proud to have built and sold businesses. I'm very proud to have exit and a company I invested in that's all nice, but I really think the big key and the entrepreneurs that I admire most are the ones who are constantly learning about how they can have multiplier effects among other people's lives. And you know, the frustrating part of it is you can't measure it, but you know, deep down, it's happening. So that would be it.

Dina Sherif: 1:12:53

Well, I would say that anybody who knows you or who has interacted with you will always take away that one question that you ask everybody, which is, how can I be of help? What

Unknown: 1:13:05

can I do to help you? And that's gonna make your life a little better?

Dina Sherif: 1:13:08

Wonderful, wonderful thing. So thank Christopher, thank you so much for making the time to join us on the podcast. And you know, for me, I know that I I always enjoy my conversations with you, and I think it was really important for for me. The minute I knew you were coming to town, I said, Donovan, you know, I want to share what I have learned about you over the years with others. And so I want to thank you for being with us, and thank everyone who's listening for listening, and I hope they take away from it what I have been taking away from you over the years, and if there's a lesson anybody can learn from you is, you know, what can we all do to help, even if it's a small thing? So thank you again for being with us. Thank

Unknown: 1:13:50

you for you and your friendship has been wonderful. Yeah, you.