- Support all of you in other ways
with a daily class schedules, to kind of approximate,
keep the learning going on during the closers,
webinars for teachers and parents,
and also this homeroom is really
just a way to stay connected.
Talk to interesting people about interesting topics
and answer any questions you have.
And so over the course of this conversation,
and I have a very exciting guest today,
I'll give him a proper introduction in a few minutes.
I encourage you to put any questions you might have
on Facebook or on YouTube,
and our team is going to be looking at them,
and getting to as many of them as possible.
I will give my standard announcement,
Khan Academy just as a reminder is a not for profit,
we only exist because of philanthropic donations.
We were running at a deficit even before the COVID crisis,
and you could imagine now that our traffic,
our usage is almost three X of what it typically is,
registrations are five to 10 X of what they typically are,
and we're trying to accelerate a bunch of programs,
our costs have gone up even higher.
And so if you're in a position to so,
please think about making a donation.
I wanna give a special shout out to several corporations
that have stepped up in just the last few weeks
to help with this effort including Bank of America,
AT&T, Novartis, Fastly and Google.org.
So thanks all of them, and for our longtime supporters,
obviously, many foundations and corporations,
but we do need more help, so if you can,
please think about donating.
So with that, I'd like to introduce our next guest
who is actually been playing a huge role in Khan Academy,
even existing, he's been a supporter of Khan Academy
from really the early years, Jorge Paulo Lemann.
Nice to see you, Jorge Paulo.
- Hi, how are you Sal?
- I'm doing all right, and you know,
I thought there's a lot of interesting things for us
to talk about over the course of this con,
over the course of the next 30 minutes or so.
You've done very well and from a business point of view,
you've been a very active philanthropist.
I think you have some very interesting life stories.
We have some young, a lot of young people
who watch this Live stream who are really just trying
to figure out how to navigate their own lives,
so maybe that's a good place to start,
you know, I was reading some of your bio,
and obviously, we've known each other for many years now,
but talk a little bit about your early start,
you know, it sounds like you're a very good student.
You're an amazing tennis player,
and then you got to college,
and it sounded like you didn't have the,
you weren't a fish in water initially,(laughs)
you had some hard times.
- So I went to college when I was very young, 17.
I had never been to the United States before.
And I was basically a surfer and a tennis player.
And college was tough in the beginning,
I wasn't used to studying, I wasn't used to reading,
so it was very tough but I made it through,
and adapting that first year was one
of the many crises I sort of went through in life.
I was making a list of all the crises
I've gone through in the last 80 years.
And I guess it started when I was born five days
before the Second World War.
So when even when I was four or five,
I remember to my family, listening to bank,
Voice of America and finding out what was going on the war.
And so every sort of eight to 10 years,
there is some sort of a crisis that comes up,
and you really learn how to live with them,
you learn how to adapt.
And each one of the crises I think I've come out
a better informed person or better prepared person,
or like that.
This crisis we're now undergoing
is one of the toughest ones,
but you know, we'll make it out of it,
and I'm trying to figure out what are gonna be the learnings
and how can I come out of it better than I was before,
so this is one more crises action.
- Now, that's a good way to think about it.
And you have more experience to draw from than I do,
but it does seem like it feels around roughly every decade,
something comes up either personally,
or in the macro picture as a whole.
But I wanna double click on what you talked
about your early life,
because I think there's so many students
who even before the COVID crisis
were feeling a little bit lost.
They feel a hunger to make something out
of their life, have a purpose,
but sometimes don't know what it is, how to discover it.
And then obviously, in times of crisis,
like now things can get even more difficult.
So in those early years as you mentioned;
you're coming from Brazil,
you're a freshman in Boston,
you didn't like the weather,
you were having trouble getting used
to just even how things worked.
What were you telling inside of your head,
or what do you think it was the traits,
or the muscles that you had that allowed you
to persevere through that and not essentially give up?
- Well, my family thought it was important.
I actually wanted to quit Harvard,
but you know, my family kept saying,
"Ah, ah, Harvard is so important then,
"get it done and get it over with, et cetera,"
and like that.
So after my first year at Harvard
where I flunked a lot of courses
and almost got suspended and like that.
I decided, I made a very stupid decision,
I decided I would go back and I would finish
the next three years in two years.
So I sort of buckled down, took twice the number of courses,
I should normally be taking,
and so I got out of Harvard and I passed,
but (chuckles) I didn't really learn
as much as I could have learned,
or as much as I should have learned.
I was just there to get it over and done with et cetera.
Not only did it later that it became clear to me
how much more I could have learned if I had taken more time.
If I had socialized a bit more.
If I had met a few more of the professors
that were teaching the courses, and things like that.
And basically I was there to get it done with,
and get out of there.
And so it wasn't a good decision, but that's what happened.
And so I got out, and then I went to Europe to work
for a bank in Europe.
And I worked there for about seven months
in this bank and it was very, very boring.
And I always played a lot of tennis
and all my grandparents are Swiss, my parents are Swiss.
So I have a Swiss passport,
so I got invited to play the Swiss nationals in tennis
and I won the Swiss nationals,
which sort of surprised everybody including myself.
- You say that very nonchalantly?
"Yeah, I got invited and I won,
Swiss nationals." (laughs) (Jorge mumbles)
- And then they invited me to play tennis
for the Swiss national tennis team Davis Cup and all that.
I was then 21 and I thought that was much better
than working in a bank.
And so I did that and I played Wimbledon and Roland-Garros,
and all the big tournaments in Europe,
and Davis Cup and I like that.
Meanwhile, my family was sort of wondering,
"Is this guy just gonna play tennis,
"or is he gonna do something else, or?"
Eventually, I came back to Brazil
and started working, et cetera,
but that was sort of my early start.
- And then Jorge. - And then --
- Oh, go ahead.
- Yeah, and then when I came back to Brazil,
I joined all these Ivy Leaguers guys
from the Harvard Business School, Princeton, and like that,
and who would set up a finance company.
And I thought, you know, it looked very good,
and all of them had graduated good Ivy Leaguegy schools
and like that.
Well, the result of that was we went broke in three years,
so that was a very traumatic experience.
So you know, crises are always there,
and you learn something in every one of them,
and hopefully you come out better.
- And you know, in hindsight these are fun stories,
because, you know, many of us know where you ended up,
but at the time, what were you feeling were you,
was it like a crisis of confidence, were you just like,
"I'm not going to be able to make something out of this,"
or were you pretty, you know,
how did you pick up the pieces and say,
"No, I'm gonna keep working on this,"
and especially keep working in finance.
- I'd be pressed for a while,
and you know, I graduated from Harvard,
I thought I was pretty good,
and then go broke at 26 et cetera.
Having just gotten married
like that was not a good experience.
I was invited by a few large organizations to go
and work for them.
And I didn't like that and I liked the liberty of being
in a smaller company, being more of an owner like that.
So I didn't join any of the larger organizations,
and actually joined the small brokerage house in Brazil,
and then that it went reasonably well.
But I really wanted to run my show.
I didn't wanna be part of somebody else's show
and like that.
So after a few years of doing that,
I bought my own brokerage company and set up
what became a successful investment bank later.
- And what I know
what tech ways would you have? - I think my (mumbles).
- Go ahead. - I think my playing tennis
and you know, when you play tennis
you don't win all the sets, or all the games you lose,
and so that sort of taught me that if you don't do well,
you can do better the next time,
you can practice more,
or you can figure things out better like that.
So that's been with me all my life,
I think always trying to do better
and to learn from your mistakes.
And boy, do you learn a lot from your mistakes. (chuckles)
- Now, this is the time we learn the most,
and there's two questions from YouTube
that I think are related to this one,
Marcella Carter asked,
"What was your biggest lesson in life?"
And from YouTube, Matt Gray asks,
"Who was the most influential person in your life?"
So when you're going through this journey,
I'm sure there's a lot of actors there,
but I guess, what advice would you give
to a young Jorge Paulo or someone like you,
who's you know, in that position now,
and then who are your influences,
who kind of got you, kept you on the trajectory?
- Well, you know, when I learned
that it took me a while to learn.
I was a tennis player, a surfer,
and then went to the financial market,
and was basically a trader in the financial market,
so all of those things basically
made me a short term thinker,
I didn't think very far ahead.
And only with time and with some of the mistakes I made,
that I learned that you know,
what's gonna happen in 24 hours, or in the next week,
or next month is not really that important.
And you gotta figure out where you're going
for a longer period of time.
And so as time went by my thinking became much more
long term oriented.
And it took me a while to learn that and then,
you know, it sorta clicked and some of the things
I began doing when I was already 40,
or getting close to 50 were really long term ideas,
and they actually turned out much better
than in my trading days when I was thinking
of the next week, or 24 hours, or things like that.
In terms of the most influential person,
my father died when I was 13.
My mother was a very strong personality.
Yesterday was Mother's Day so I thought a lot about her.
And she was very influential, very strong personality.
I only had a sister who was 10 years older than me.
So I was sort of like an only son,
and my mother and I were very close.
She was very ambitious for me, very loving and also,
but gave me a lot of liberty.
She trusted me entirely I could sort of go out
and do anything I wanted on my own,
and that helped me a lot.
And figuring, going through experiences,
which were not necessarily always good or like that,
but I think the liberty she gave me,
and the love she showed in backing me up was very important
in everything else that I was able to do later.
- Now that's super powerful.
And you know, now you mentioned that long term thinking
which I agree with you, you don't see enough of it,
and I'm guessing you'd pinpoint that as one
of your differentiators and what allowed you to do well.
You know, putting that same hat on later in life,
you've become very active in philanthropy
and that's how we connected almost 10 years ago now,
eight, nine, 10 years ago.
What got you so active in philanthropy?
You know, a lot of ways for those of you,
for those who don't know, you're one
of the most active philanthropists in Brazil,
especially with the focus on education,
what got you interested in this problem?
- When I was building up our brokerage company in Brazil,
I had no competitive advantage in terms of having a name
or having money.
And I figured out that the only way
I could really be competitive would be
if I hired and attracted the best possible people
to work with me.
So I made a big effort in looking for these people.
I would interview hundreds of candidates per year,
and pick the best even when we were hiring
10 or 15 people per year.
That became very important for us
in building up the brokerage business,
and in doing that, I met a lot of really spectacular people
who had not had the proper education,
or had not been trained properly, and like that,
they were pretty exceptional.
And so I figured that, besides trying to improve people
who were working with me,
and making, giving them a better education,
maybe I could do it for other people.
So I set up these foundations
which basically give scholarships
to people who wanna study abroad at that point,
there were just very few scholarship
for people wanting to study abroad.
And so this the foundation which was called
(speaks in foreign language) study
became quite important, and over the years,
we have sent many Brazilians to US colleges
and they've come back to Brazil,
they've built businesses up.
Lately, I've been giving a lot of scholarships
to people who wanna come back and go into public service
or to government.
I figured we got enough good businessmen,
and we need better people in government
and in the public sector.
So that's how I sort of got going in terms of trying
to get people more educated,
or give them worthwhile experiences by studying abroad.
And then we evolved from that,
we evolved to trying to improve education
in Brazil in general.
Brazil scores very badly in all the international test,
we should do better.
I'm a big believer that countries do as well
as they have educated their people,
so for Brazil to do well in the future,
we have to educate more people and educate them better.
So my foundation now beyond giving scholarships
to people wanting to study abroad,
we have teacher training courses.
We work in partnership with you
so that people can learn more online.
We try to work with governments in terms
of improving their teaching standards like that.
We give courses to school principals
so that they can manage the schools better,
and we make a variety of efforts.
Recently, there is one small city in Brazil called Sobral.
It's a very poor city in the northeast,
but for the last 10 years it has scored really high
in the national test of how public schools are doing.
And we have now hired some of the people
that set up this system in the city of 200,000 people,
and we're trying to duplicate what they have done
in other small cities of less than 200,000.
And it's much easier to introduce education systems
in small cities than in big cities.
And so it's something very practical.
They were successful, and we are now in another 25 cities,
and if that works, we will duplicate it to 50 cities.
So we have a lot of things going on,
besides what we do with the Khan Academy
which I think is really important.
I think, you know, online learning has a big future
in Brazil and in poor countries.
I think being able to access online learning
in poor countries is really more important,
because it gives you a chance to reach the people
who really don't have a chance to go to school,
or have access to terrific teachers or like that.
So anyway, that's, all I do is a little drop in the bucket
of (chuckles) what Brazil needs to improve education.
But you know, I'm trying, I'm trying to do my best.
- Now well, I think you're being slightly modest there,
but you know, there's a question that from YouTube
that Susanna Garcia Dominguez is asking,
and this is actually something I've always wondered,
actually how did you learn about Khan Academy,
how did it sharpen your radar?
Because you were one of the earliest philanthropists
to really reach out to us,
I mean this was back in 2010 or 2011.
- We were reading about the Khan Academy,
and I said, "Gosh, this makes so much sense."
And I read a few things that you had written,
and that you had spoken.
And I thought it made so much sense.
And you know, so I guess we tried to establish
some contact with you.
And then what happened was
the president of Brazil called me up once and said,
"Do you know this guy Sal Khan?
"I think he's very interesting.
"Can you get him to come to Brazil?"
I said, "I don't know but I can try."
And so we actually, we were already talking
but then we said, "Sal, don't you want to come down here,
"the president of Brazil wants to talk to you."
And so you came down and, you know,
and talked to the president and like that,
and I got to know you a little bit better
and that's how we sort of got going. (chuckles)
- Now, I tell the story a lot.
It's actually those early days,
I mean, for those who don't know,
I mean back in 2010, I think Khan Academy was
about an eight person organization.
We were above a Chinese tea store
in downtown Mountain View here.
And it might see my I have an extroverted nature,
but I'm actually very introverted,
so I really enjoy kind of being by myself
and I think I was recording a video or something,
and someone said,
"Hey, you know, we have this delegation from Brazil,
"that is here ," and as like,
"Oh, but I need to finish this video."
And I was kind of in a grumpy mood, (chuckles)
because I wanted to finish like an organic chemistry video
or something, and then we met and I remember that room,
it was like, there was like 12 of us packed into a room
that could probably fit five people.
But who would have thought, I remember it all, you know,
we were very intrigued by the notion
of being able to work in Brazil,
but it felt like we were small at that point,
but y'all were really pulling us in.
And I have to say, if not for that push,
then and then obviously, we started working together
over the next few years.
I don't think, you know now, Khan Academy in Brazil
is the most built out Khan Academy outside
of the United States, and it wouldn't be if not
because of that first meeting in the (mumbles) desire.
And y'all have been supporters, not just in Brazil,
but you know, Khan Academy globally,
so that was one of those meetings
that are definitely have been logged in my memory bank.
And then obviously had a wonderful trip to Brazil.
Well, one question from YouTube,
actually, there's two questions,
I think they're related,
Josie Mubarak asks, "What advice would you give
"to graduates?
And when you related that Nikita Govender asks,
"How do you build great leadership skills?"
And I'll add to that, you mentioned,
like you realize the success of your orgs,
were hiring the right people,
and maybe training the right people.
What do you look for, like are there signs that you see
in young people that you say,
"Hey, that person is onto something.
"This is a person I want to invest in and work with."
And there's other signs you've seen people like,
"Ah, not so sure, I think I'll pass on them."
- I don't think there's any thing very special
the way we went about hiring people
and you know, first thing I learned,
or I learned in my Ivy League Partnership,
which didn't work out is to run a business,
or to run anything you have to have different types.
So if everybody's the same it won't work very well.
So you know, I made an effort
to have a different points of view.
And we like people who get things done,
people who will work as a team but also, you know,
will individually try to get things moving or going.
We don't tolerate bad ethics at all.
I mean, there are some people who are brilliant
but their ethics aren't good, and if you know,
that doesn't work in an organization.
So if there's any sign of ethical misbehavior like that,
we don't tolerate it.
And basically, we'd like giving people experiences
that they, to test them,
and the ones that do well, we promote very fast.
The ones that don't do well stay behind, et cetera.
So you know, in our organizations,
now we have over 200,000 employees sort of,
and we always know who are, who is on a fast track.
Every organization of ours
on a yearly basis looks at everybody who's on a fast track,
and figures out what they should be doing for these people.
So we're always trying to pick the exceptional ones,
and giving them a chance to do something bigger.
And so that's how it has basically worked.
You know, I think like I say you learn a lot
from your mistakes, so I'm talking about what worked well.
And maybe I should talk a little bit
about what didn't work well.
Over the last five years our companies have not done
as well as they did the first 25 years, like that.
And so like I said, we've always been very people focused,
and always focused on people who were ambitious,
wanna get things done, cut costs, look at goals,
and have very clear goals and like that.
We missed down a little bit in terms of the world
becoming much more consumer centric,
in terms of the clients and public having much more,
many more choices of what they want to consume.
We're basically a consumer goods businesses,
and so we didn't pay enough attention to what our buyers,
or what our clients really wanted.
And at the same time we did not use
what is available nowadays in terms
of artificial intelligence to know more
about our clients and where they are,
and what they want and like that.
And our culture was a culture of very much,
"We gotta reach the goals, we gotta produce more,
"we got to produce cheaply and like that."
But we missed out a little bit
on what the client really wants,
and figuring out what he really wants
with the modern techniques which are available.
So we're catching up now, we're going in that direction.
But you know, you have to have good people,
and you have to have good people who are up to date
on what is going on in the world.
And we didn't have enough of those
because our culture was so successful,
and doing so well for a while,
that it took us a little while to realize
that we had to go in this direction.
So we're correcting that now. - All right and for those --
And for those of you who are watching, you know,
Jorge Paulo, I think very intentionally
keeps a fairly low profile, but some of these organizations
include things like InBev, and you know,
Anheuser Busch, Burger King,
so very, very large global brands
that folks might be familiar with.
I mean, given your lens on the global economy,
but especially the Brazilian economy,
what's your sense of the short
and long term economic implications
of the crisis we're going through?
- I think it's, like I said,
I have been through various crises,
and this one looks like it's gonna last longer.
And it's gonna be tough on the emerging markets,
'cause the emerging markets really lack the organization
to figure out who was sick, who isn't sick,
what to do about it.
Emerging markets have slums, people living very close
to one another.
It's very difficult to have locked down.
The people need to make money,
and many of these people in the slums are sellers
in the streets something like that,
They're not able to go out now so they can't sell anything.
They're desperate to get out there and sell,
so it's gonna be messier in the emerging markets
than in the more developed countries which is very sad.
And I think it will take a little while longer
than most people in the stock market or financial market,
think that it will take, you know, many people think,
"Oh, three or four months from now things
"will start moving again."
But yeah, they may start moving,
but it will take a lot longer to things really fall into,
to fall in place again.
And so what advice you know,
we have so many young people watching
and we have a lot of questions I haven't gotten
to anywhere close to even the majority of them.
But there's so many young people who are always uncertain
about their future, what should I do?
And there's a lot of questions about your life,
and a lot of interest there,
but especially in a time of uncertainty like this,
what advice would you have for them?
- Don't give up, hang on, things look pretty bad.
You sort of think the world is coming to an end,
or everything is coming to an end,
but you know, eventually they sort of write themselves,
and there are many opportunities in crisis.
I'm not only talking about financial opportunities,
but there're a lot of opportunities to learn,
to learn different things, to do things in a different way,
to think in a different way.
So you know, think about it, think about (chuckles)
how you can adapt and what you really want to make out
of your life, and how this crisis can perhaps help you
and achieve what you want to achieve.
- Well, that's great advice.
Well, you know, I just wanna thank you,
Jorge Paulo for I don't think I've ever had a chance
to do it, but I'll do it in a very public setting.
Khan Academy would not exist in the way it does today,
if not for your support and your foundation support.
And it for sure would not exist in the way it exists
in Brazil, if not your your kind of, you know,
really pushing that in a very, very early stage,
so thank you and I agree with everything you said.
It's gonna be interesting times next few months, years,
but there's problems to be solved
and we look forward to partnering with you,
and your team to get that solved.
So thank you so much for being part of this.
- Thank you Sal and it's been a real pleasure
to work with your organization over the years.
We have a feeling that we're getting something done
or improving things in Brazil, so and the world.
So let's keep working and we'll have a better world.
- Sounds good to me.
- Thank you. - Thank you so much.
- [Jorge] Bye, bye.
- Bye, thank you.
And so thanks, everyone for joining as you can see,
we're, you know, I feel lucky.
I've said multiple times, I feel very fortunate
to have the role I have, obviously I like to geek out
on academic stuff and work with our team here
at Khan Academy making the product better,
making the experience better.
But another joy of this job is being able
to have really amazing partners like Jorge Paulo,
who I consider a mentor who pushed us to do more things,
who allow frankly a lot of what we do to be possible.
So you know, I think I get disproportionate credit
for the work at Khan Academy.
It's a team of 200 full time folks, thousands of volunteers,
hundreds of thousands of folks, many of you donate,
and many really great partners like Jorge Paulo
and his team.
So with that, thank you for joining this Livestream,
and I look forward to seeing all of you all tomorrow.
Have a good night, afternoon, day.
(laughs)