Good afternoon
The first thing I'd like to do
is deeply and profoundly apologize to you
for not being able to speak to you in your native language Mandarin.
It took me 57 years of my life
to find the vision and the passion
that is driving me 24/7
which is all about culture and about language.
So I'm gonna take a few minutes
to run over 57 years
to tell you how I got to the point
where the rest of my life is being driven by what I learnt.
This is my business card right now,
"dotsub" up to recently was my 9th and I thought my last start up
and two and a half years ago,
I hired a CEO,
and his card was gonna say CEO
so I had to figure out
a title to put on my card
so very whimsically
I said: "I'll be a collector of puzzle pieces."
So as you could see,
without a thought, founder, chairman, collector of puzzle pieces,
my wife thought that was the stupidest thing she's ever seen
many people that I gave my card to didn't understand that
are you in a puzzle business?
But let me show you what business I am in,
I have very privileged to have a home
on the water in Long Island.
in all on the flagpoles
I have cleats for 6 flags.
And Jason was there with a bunch of other people
about the project that I/m going to explain.
I always buy a flag of the country
from which all over my house guests from.
So that day we had people from 5 countries at my house.
You have no idea how deep and profound the appreciation is
People come to the house and they see their flags
and they cry
Because very few people
really understand the importance of
culture communication and culture awareness.
And so, that's what my vision in life is
which I'll explain to you to remove languages as a barrier to
cross culture communication
Something I've learned in last day and a half
is with my headphone on with much of the talks in mandarin
I hear a lot of loud laughter in the room
but when I am hearing the translation
I don't understand what's funny
and these are the best interpreters in the world
This is really tough to communicate in another language.
and with technology as it is,
with innovation as it is,
and mooches and everything else
it is critically important than all 7 people of the world
in all 7 thousand languages
have the ability to profoundly and deeply
learn the knowledge that is currently available
with current technology
new technology does not want to be
need to be the technology is there
but we all have to have the culture awareness
Now what I like to do,
this was Jason at my house 3 months ago
I'd like all of us to give him an
amazing round of thanks of doing
what he's done right now
From the time I was 10 till I was 57.
And I'm 66 right now.
I would say I wandered the planet when i was 10 years old
for four years I studied Hebrew
and I studied Latin
Have no idea why Hebrew was because I was being bar mitzvah
Latin is because I guess it was a thing to do.
And then in 10th grade
I started studying German and I was a fluent speaker in German.
and in college i don't know why I did it,
I signed up for a program in the Mindanao island
in the southern Philippines
and when I was 19 years old
learn how to speak Tagalog fluently
so my first trip outside of the United States on this journey
was the Mindanao island in the southern fizzled Philippines.
as being a visiting professor in mathematics.
And at that time, it took me 40 years to
understand this,
I was infected with the cross-culture disease
now today and the talk and yesterday
a lot of people half of my age
are talking about their vision and their life vision
I feel fortunate in one hand
that I have it I'm passionate about it
but I wish it happened earlier
but I didn't have the luxury of the benefit of the mentor
no one sat me down and told me what I should do
or encouraged me
I just did, I followed the wind,
and I had an amazing experience
I had one real job when I was 23
I quit it when I was 24
I started doing business in Port au Prince Haiti
I'd making hand-painted wooden toys
I had a factory there for 20 years
I have 4000 employees was the largest employer in the country
I was put out a business by President Bush, the father
in 1991 when he declared a trade embargo
I was the first American to privatize the company and Hungary
after the Berlin wall
simultaneously set up a factory in Mexico
before and after and then Hungary then I set up a joint venture in Romania
and add 2500 employees in Hungary
and 1500 employees in Romania
Making cotton t-shirts successfully competing with China
delivering Tshirts from Hungary and Romania
to every major capital in Europe
For Nike Levi's Gap Russel Athletic one day by truck
better quality cheaper delivery than mainland China
sold that business in 1996
went further afield into either by John Russia Jordan Pakistan
Why I did this? I have no idea
But it was just the opportunities presented myself
I was excited I was able to do it so I did it
and during this entire period of time
I was like my wife said
I was like exploring new areas and every time I did
I got a little bored and tried something else
made some money but didn't have that life vision
so as you can see
I gathered a huge amount of cross culture understanding and awareness
and unfortunately even though I am an American
Americans have the title of 'Ugly American'
and it's well deserved
Because they don't really understand other cultures
they don't have to deal with other languages
they think everyone has to speak English
But right now we're sitting in Asia
which absolutely for the next 20 years is gonna be
the explosive place for growth all over the world
I n 2004, I was hit with the lightning ball
or the 'a-ha' moment,
when I saw the movie- Fahrenheit 911
After I experienced 911, I was in Washinton
I couldn't get back in NewYork for 3 days
I left that movie I said,
"Wow, here's a documentary film in English
that potentially could change a US presidential election"
What would happen if I could create an easy simple and inexpensive
browser-based technology that could enable
any film or any video in any language.
to me to be made available and all over the world language
and more difficult and important be able to be viewed
on all video-enalbed devices and platforms
included mobiles.
This was my lightening ball
this is what I am spending my life 24hrs/day doing
and I had no experience in anything that I attempted to do
I had never known anything about language, technology,
video, or subtitling
But I intuitively knew
that was going to be the dominant way
that the world was going to communicate
like Lakshmi's said and tell stories
So I started this vision in 2004
For the next 3 years, I created 'dotsub'
which is what Jason said was the technology for plan a day
and opening a TED translation program
we did a lot of work with major cooperation
from a bowser based tool
group quite rapidly
here's a picture of video that's available in 62 languages
in this picture was taken in southern Taiwan
and the partnership with Iron and the global origination
So I was moving along doing well, business was growing
becoming profitable and I really then realized when I turned 60.
that I was spending my time trying to convince people
that didn't get it the day should understand
that language and culture are important
and the sorta a really seminal moment
without mentioning the name of the company
which is well known by everyone in the room in Silicon Valley
when I was sitting with the senior vice president
He told me, Micael, we don't need to spend any money
on making our information available in every language
Because all of the important people of the world speak English
When he told me that
I realized they didn't want to waste any more of my time
trying to convince people to see something that
they couldn't see that was for someone else to do
So I hired a CEO in March of 2011.
came up with this title collector, a puzzle pieces
and what that means is when I did that and only when I did that
that sort of little rocket in my body.
when I realized I had the freedom to only speak with people that get it.
and speak to all kinds of different people
my relationship exploded, the power of the people I met exploded
because as I'll tell you at the end by talk
I let things go
As Lashimi said, I surrendered to my vision.
I surrendered to my passion
so when I meet people, I explain who I am and what I'm doing
and very different then this wonderful man this morning
who's the ultra marathoner was doing amazing things with 700 kilometers
700 kilometers is a hell of a long run
but if you finish it in 13 days
my vision to remove languages is a barrier to cross culture communication thru video
If everything works well and I plan to have 19 more active years
in my life traveling to Taipei without jet leg like I did 3 days ago.
until I am 85 we're just gonna begin to have a little impact on the world
this is a huge amount of problems to have
so as a collect of puzzle pieces, I started realizing
what are the large areas that need work?
Healthcare and pharmaceuticals,
educations and learning,
conferences, or 3.3 billion people on the planet earth
that live in villages that not only have no access to the Internet
they couldn't afford to have high spin bandwidth
and they are not having smartphones but they all have feature phones
and video is the way to emotionally connect with people
but its very expensive in time consuming for video
so I was conceiving an idea to come up with 5 new businesses
and they all started to happen simultaneously
and as i was meeting more and more people in Young Men Fedrico who you speak yesterday
is the CEO of the spolrate and one of these businesses
can raise Jason is gonna be involved with.
and as we were going forward
K Cop Lovitz the founder and USA network in the United States
who brought satellite to broadcast TV in 1974
we started springboard enterprises that is funded 6 billion dollars of female at entrepreneurs
when we were working with an organization in India
that has a product called health phone
that is delivering knowledge to pregnant women
and mothers have children on feature phones
with videos in native languages
on micro SD chips put in the back of the phone
because there are 330,000 babies a year
they die on their first day of their life
because their mother don't have the knowledge in their native language
to do what is necessary to save their children
so when I was working on this product
why can't we have all knowledge to all of these three billion people
so we started a fourth project called 'video for villages'
to enable all knowledge to go to 3 billion people in the world
that live in rural areas that for 5 or 10 years ago
everything goes well
even if they have rudimentary smart phones
we're not going to be able to pay for the bandwidth the deliver vedio
so as we were doing these 5 new projects,
something became very obvious to me just 3 months ago
why don't we joined forces with all of these companies?
and create a consortium so thats what we've done
3 months ago a video Without Boarders consortium
and interestingly enough 7 years earlier on a Saturday night
in my home in Saint Harbor with some reasons i do not understand
I bought the URL's for videos without boarders
7 years ago when I came up with this concept e months ago
I said, hey, that might be a good idea for that company
and so this business potentially hopes to empower 1 billion women
that live in rural areas who have no access to knowledge
and unfortunate their husbands don't want to empower them
because they like the power dynamic where the women is in the home taken care their kids
and they're going out and if their wives become empowered
their dynamic with their family changes
so we're trying to empower a billion women
and each of these businesses is set up with the metric in the goal
to impact hundreds of millions of people
so if you wanna talk about an audacious large idea
this is it
and so this is what I am doing and bigger in Jason
when you saw him with his arms up and you see him in this picture
this was a 3 day meeting at our house
to kick off this idea
and so when this is happening
this is something that is really driving our life
and Jason said, Taiwan, is changing what it wants to do
it once the institute innovation
it wants to change the way that people are thinking
I think I can introduce you to some really forward thinking people
in Taiwan that would want to be a part of that
So I here in Taiwan talking to a bunch of wonderful people
before I go to the traditional venture capitalist in the United States
Because I don't want someone telling me that I can't help
Lakshima's people in India because there's not going to be earnings
in the next quarter
when you want to empower a billion of women
and when you want to impact hundreds of millions of people
you can't worry about next quarter's earning.
and we are a for-profit company
we're not a nonprofit but we're going to be doing huge amount of things for free
for very very important people
so what are the lessons that I've learned?
the most important thing is to have total complete clarity in what you wanna do
this is not easy, this is not easy
but once you have this clarity
you can move forward in every aspect of your life, 24/7
you need to have on relenting passion
yesterday afternoon late Lakshimi said I'm invited
to a BBQ here in Taipei, would you like to go with me
in the car I was talking about what i was doing
to someone i had just met because that is what my life is about
you need to be fearless
when you do new stuff you are going to make mistakes
you cannot help but make mistakes
you're gonna need to fall down
you need to get up and you need to make more mistakes
because if you're afraid of making mistakes
you should lock yourself into a took with pads on the wall
and you won't get hurt
but all of you are here at TED X Taipei
because you want to change your lives
and you want to get out there in the world
and feel good about making a difference
and the only way to do that is to start stepping out
having a figure out what you wanna do and fearless
and the last thing which is the most difficult
is let go, which is interesting that
that was the last thing Lakshmi said yesterday
she said surrender,
if you are clear about what you wanna do
and your trust your god, you trust the environment
and you trust life
and it is sort of the buddhist teaching
if you allow yourself to surrender to what your life is all about
you will be amazed
and how powerful that is
and in the last 2 years
since i have become a collector of puzzle pieces
this entire world has exploded in a wonderful direction
so if there's any advice that I would have to you
its start your journey
don't sit around and moan about how bad your life is
do something get out there which feels right
start doing it until you find something
have no fear and then let go
thank you very much