Transcriber: Laurelle Walsh Reviewer: Denise RQ
Is it working? Good?
(Portuguese) It's my great pleasure to be here with you.
I speak a little bit of Portuguese,
(English) but unfortunately, not enough to do a presentation in Portuguese today.
(Laughter)
Not yet, but maybe in the future.
I'm working on it.
What I would like to do today is try to bring together a lot of the ideas
that were discussed today.
It has been really amazing being here,
and being inspired by all the different things
people have been working on.
Trying to make their dreams become reality,
and working so hard to run the world, and here in Brazil.
What I would like to do is talk about entrepreneur ecosystems,
about what it means to be an entrepreneur, and how to make these things possible.
It has become really important to me.
I want to start by talking about my personal history with entrepreneurship,
because that has really formed a lot of my beliefs,
and how I think, and what it means to be an entrepreneur.
I grew up with entrepreneurship.
My dad is an entrepreneur.
He has a business in the United States
building houses in the construction industry.
So, basically from the time I was born,
I have been surrounded by entrepreneurship.
I have always been fascinated by the idea of creating something from nothing.
Just like my father does, he takes an empty piece of ground
and builds a beautiful house from it that didn't exist before,
for someone to live in.
For me, following my father's example,
I started different businesses when I was growing up, as a kid.
But it really was not until after I graduated from university
that I had my first larger-scale experiences with entrepreneurship.
In college I studied a lot about globalization.
I was really fascinated by the process of how things change,
and what factors lead to different situations developing in the world.
In doing that, I studied a lot about China.
I was really curious about the changes that were happening there.
So, soon after I graduated, I packed my bags,
and I moved to Beijing, China, where I lived for two years.
And actually, I met Benjamin this morning,
and we lived two blocks from each other in Beijing.
(Laughter)
We didn't even know each other.
People always say the world is small.
It is really small, right?
I had an amazing time living in China.
I quickly started different businesses, using my entrepreneurial spirit,
in any opportunity that I thought was a really good opportunity.
I started a business in electronic product manufacturing,
and international trade consulting.
I started a business importing coffee into China from South America.
And the main business I worked on was a business to develop solar chargers
that I sold to people in the United States,
and also donated to people in developing countries,
where they do not have access to electricity,
because that could change people's lives.
So I was using business to do a lot of different things,
and doing what I had always really dreamed of.
I was 22 years old, living in China,
making deals and negotiating in Mandarin Chinese,
sending products around the world,
and doing things that were just really inspiring to me.
I was really happy with what I was doing.
Just look at the picture; look how happy I was, right?
(Laughter)
Unfortunately, as often happens with entrepreneurship,
things don't quite work out the way you think they will.
You try some things, and things change.
So, despite having some initial success, and some of my businesses worked OK,
it eventually became a situation where anything that could have gone wrong,
did go wrong, which happens sometimes.
I had technical problems with some of my products.
I had to refund a lot of orders.
There was one time when I sent a large order of money
to a manufacturing company to make a huge production run,
and I got a call the next day,
saying, "Oh, we are actually bankrupt now, sorry."
So, a lot of difficult things happened.
Eventually it got to the point where I ran out of money.
I had invested all of my personal savings into these businesses,
and I ran out of money.
I had to borrow money from my mom just to pay for my living expenses.
So, it was a hard situation.
I had all these dreams, and they came crashing down,
and I was faced with reality.
But it was also an interesting time.
I used the experience to think about what I had learned,
and how could I become better.
I realized that even though I had done some things right,
I needed to learn more.
So I decided to move to the place in the world
that is most famous for entrepreneurship: to Silicon Valley.
A few years ago I moved to Silicon Valley,
and just a couple days after I moved there,
right as I moved there, a friend invited me to go to an event,
and I met a couple of people starting an organization
called Singularity University.
I had never heard of it before,
and I thought, "That's kind of a funny name.
I wonder what they are doing there?"
I found out about the mission,
which is to inspire, assemble, and educate leaders,
and teach them about new technologies,
so that they can positively impact a billion people.
A billion people, why that is huge!
I had never heard of something that big before.
And I said, "Where can I sign up?
How can I get involved?"
It is located at NASA.
This is Singularity University right here,
at a NASA research facility in Silicon Valley.
Singularity University has partnerships with Google, Cisco, Nokia,
Autodesk, and other companies in Silicon Valley.
So I knew it couldn't be completely crazy
if these different organizations were involved.
So I said, "How can I get involved?"
And I volunteered at the beginning,
doing a lot of the audio-visual work for the first program,
because I joined right as the organization was being started,
for the first program.
So I did all the presentation work for the first program,
making sure the projectors worked, the audio and all the microphones worked,
helping organize speakers, which is a huge challenge, actually.
It is not as easy as it looks, so thank you guys very much.
(Applause)
It takes a lot of effort, I know, to make everything work.
So, it has been really amazing, being there for the last couple of years,
seeing how the model has evolved.
And now my focus is doing a lot of the business development,
and setting up programs, especially in other countries,
and trying to take what we are doing in Silicon Valley,
and spread it around the world.
Singularity University is really focused
on bringing together groups of people.
Actually, Everson is somewhere in this picture up here.
We bring people together from around the world,
and teach them about the fastest moving technologies:
things that are happening in biotechnology,
medicine, robotics, artificial intelligence, energy.
What are the things that are really changing the world,
and what is predicted over the next 3, 5, or 10 years?
Then we work with them to develop ideas, products, and businesses,
that they can spin out of the programs
to actually create companies to impact the world,
in areas like water, food, energy and education.
So looking at the biggest problems that exist in the world,
and trying to find new solutions to solve them.
It has been really fascinating being a part of this.
We are doing this by taking some of the best practices
that exist in Silicon Valley and also other places in the world,
to create this ecosystem of innovation, of people trying and doing new things.
So, having lived in Silicon Valley for the last couple of years,
it has been really interesting
trying to analyze what makes Silicon Valley work,
and how that contrasts against my experience in China.
I tried things in China,
but what was it that could have improved what I had done there?
What does it really take to build a successful company?
And how does that happen in Silicon Valley?
It has been really interesting being in Silicon Valley.
And one of the main lessons I have learned is that sharing your ideas
is one of the key things that makes Silicon Valley work.
It is really being open and talking to people.
In Silicon Valley it is hard to go out of my house
without hearing people talking about their start up,
whether it is in a cafe, or on the street,
walking down the sidewalk,
everyone is talking about and sharing their ideas.
Because successful entrepreneurs know that you need to work with people
to get things done, and improve what you are doing.
One example is a biotech company I know in Silicon Valley,
that was at a conference a few years ago.
The technology people were trying to start a company,
and they were talking to people about their idea at a conference.
And someone connected them to an entrepreneur, and an investor,
they met, and then boom!
The company went from being in a garage just a few years ago,
to now being a huge biotechnology lab with over 50 people,
trying to commercialize their technology.
So it is amazing how things change so quickly, if you just are open.
It contrasts a lot to my time in China.
I remember specifically one time I was at a cafe in Beijing.
I was talking to one of my best friends, who still lives there,
about the solar company I was trying to start.
I was telling him about my business idea, and he was getting really excited.
He said, "Oh man, your product is amazing.
You are going to do really well.
You are going to make a lot of money."
And he was talking really loud, getting really excited.
And of course, that made me happy,
to see that my friend thought I was doing a good job.
But I asked him, "Can you talk a little bit softer?"
There were other people in that cafe,
and I didn't want them to hear what we were talking about.
I was afraid that someone was going to hear my idea,
or try to copy my business:
completely the opposite of how I should have been thinking.
I should have asked him to speak louder, to say as much as possible,
so that someone else, maybe in that cafe, could have helped me.
Or maybe there was a solar energy expert sitting at the table next to us,
who could have been my co-founder.
Who knows?
That is one of the things that makes Silicon Valley a special place.
It is because of the culture and the way of thinking that exist there.
Another factor, when you look at successful ecosystems,
not even just with business, but in general,
another factor is diversity, which I will get into.
If you look at natural ecosystems,
a great example is a rain forest, just like the Amazon,
that exists here in Brazil.
What makes these systems in nature really successful?
It is diversity, right?
Just like in a rain forest like this,
you see all the big trees from the outside,
just like you see big companies in Silicon Valley.
But what are the dynamics that are really happening inside?
In rain forests, you have millions and millions of species
that are all working together.
And each one specializes in a very specific area.
And not one species, in one of these biodiversity systems,
lives without the support of the other species.
They all work together in networks where they help each other,
and they survive, based on mutual benefit.
The more diversity you have, the more species you have,
the more they all work together, and the richer the ecosystem is.
So it is the same way in Silicon Valley.
In Silicon Valley you have lots of people from around the world
coming to Silicon Valley and adding new perspectives.
Over 50 percent of the successful companies in Silicon Valley
are started by foreigners.
I think that is really surprising.
I just found that out recently.
So over half the companies are started by people who come to Silicon Valley
with their dream, with their idea,
and they plug it in to the culture that exists there,
of open collaboration and sharing.
And that is what enables them to be successful.
I think that is really interesting.
The third factor that I want to talk about with successful ecosystems
is actually a historical example.
In college, I studied a lot about history and globalization,
and I tried to understand what situations lead to different scenarios in the world.
And one of the most interesting is actually here in Sao Paulo, in Brazil.
This is a picture from the early 1900s in Sao Paulo.
During the late 1800s and early 1900s, learning about the history of Brazil,
there was a time when many entrepreneurs and business people in Brazil
realized that many manufactured products were being imported from Europe.
It was a problem because it created huge trade imbalances,
which was an economic problem in Brazil at the time.
So they decided to invest in companies in Brazil,
to create a domestic manufacturing industry.
This happened at the same time as a huge wave of immigration,
with people coming from Europe, from Asia, from the Middle East,
from all over the world, coming to Sao Paulo.
So you had these two factors happening.
You had entrepreneurs trying new things,
and networks of people coming here from other countries,
working in teams,
because of the immigrant communities that developed here,
to build new businesses.
And that is what has transformed Sao Paulo
into the vibrant economic center of Brazil that it is today.
Again, this contrasts a lot with my time in China.
In China I was 22 years old,
and doing all of these international businesses,
or especially in my head doing things on a really large level.
At the time I felt really cool.
I felt really special because I was doing that.
Because there weren't very many entrepreneurs in China
who were going out into the middle of nowhere,
visiting these factories, working with these businesses in China.
And because that wasn't very common,
a lot of the business owners in China thought that I represented
some huge company back in the United States.
They took me to fancy business lunches and dinners;
they gave me really special treatment;
they drove me around everywhere; and I was 22, it felt amazing.
I thought I was really special, but in reality I was by myself.
I was alone.
I realize now that having that dynamic of working with people,
working in teams, sharing ideas, and sharing energy with people,
is really essential to starting businesses.
And at the time, I didn't realize that.
Any time we pretend that we don't need that,
that we are doing things in isolation, is when we pretend we are not being human.
And we are all human, right?
It is really essential to have these strong networks.
So, the things that I talked about today, about sharing your ideas,
having diverse perspectives, and strong networks,
are the three essential things you need,
to have a strong entrepreneurial ecosystem.
That is why organizations that support this,
like the accelerator programs here in Brazil,
or the Unreasonable Institute that Daniel talked about earlier,
are really essential for making these things happen.
Because by doing this, this is what creates this dynamic.
To wrap things up and to finish my talk, I want to talk about something
that impacted me in a huge way just a few months ago.
At one of our programs in Silicon Valley, at Singularity University,
we had a presentation by a doctor who came.
And this doctor works a lot with cancer patients,
who are at the end of their life, nearing their death.
It is a hard job.
And he was explaining that as people are close to dying,
the things that are most difficult are their regrets.
They think about the things that they didn't do in their lives,
that were important to them, but they just never got around to it,
or they couldn't figure out the right way to do it.
And they didn't do it before they died.
That really had a profound impact on me,
because I know now that looking back on my life in the future,
if I have not done all the things that I think are really important,
that will be really difficult for me.
So I encourage you to think along those same lines.
What is important to you and meaningful for you,
that you should do in your life?
What I think this means for entrepreneurship,
is that almost the definition of being an entrepreneur
is having a dream and trying to make that reality.
That is what entrepreneurship is about.
And I think for a lot of people, if they don't make that happen,
if they are not able to fulfill that in their lifetime,
they will have regrets at the end of their life.
Through building these entrepreneurial ecosystems,
that is what really enables entrepreneurship to happen.
That is what I was missing when I was in China.
So by all working together, creating these networks around the world
to make entrepreneurship happen,
we are working together to fulfill all of our dreams,
and make a better future for all of us.
Thank you.
(Applause)