Bloomberg Businessweek Weekend - December 13th, 2019

so cool because we were actually Monday. It was a big dinner, big celebration of those folks that are featured in the Bloomberg fifty list and in the magazine. We were live on the red carpet at the Morgan Library Museum in Manhattan. It was the third annual Bloomberg fifty

and it really was a celebration. And what I loved in terms of the conversations of the evening, it was people from all walks of life, and it was just this great representation of our world and truly from around the globe well and coming up in this special edition, we're going to hear from some of those folks we caught up with on the red carpet. The Gimblet Media co founders Matt Lieber and Alex Bloomberg. I've got a little bit of like a bro probrush on them. A

love podcast. Plus, we will hear my conversation with Joey Levin, the CEO over at I A C. I got to catch up with him before the event get his view of what's going on in the world of media. First up, though, we caught up with Joel Weber. He's the editor of Bloomberg Business Week. Of course, he told us how the

Bloomberg fifty issue gets put together. There's a guy named Brett Began who actually slaves away at this thing for weeks after week after a week to get to a point where we can actually have people that we can celebrate. So it's big ten team sport, and it's even bigger than Brett because we reach out throughout the newsroom to all of the journalists and analysts within Bloomberg to make sure that we can have a list that actually really

represents sort of the zeitgeist of the year. What's really cool too, is you guys start early in the year, right from what I understand, like back in the spring, Yeah, well, I mean, and we try and account for the whole year. So it's really a chance to recognize even things that happened in January and February we're kind of taking into account. And so when you sort of set this in motion in a year like this, how do you pick out the themes? I mean, how do you sort of break

it down? So it's a it's an evolving process um and it goes up until the last minute, right, but things start to stand out over the course of the year, whether it's a deal that especially in the oil m and A was one that really jumped out of us this year like that. That that kind of distinguishes stuff, and then you kind of like give it a little time and you come back to it and say, did that thing hold up or was it an anomaly right? Or did something else happen that got bigger than that, right?

Or was it just like you know, we we have we have a lot of people in the list. We also have a chicken sandwich and it broke. You know, this is a Popeye's chicken sandwich that broke the internet?

Is what what we realized. They had a three month supply run out in a matter of days, and you know, like something like that, it's just like even if you're like business business dreams this up, you have no idea that it's gonna like take off quite like that, right, And so we build into the process that there's opportunities to just embrace things that are slightly outside of our

our usual place. And I love folks like Kylie Jenner, right, who are on the list for a couple of things that they did a couple of things, and you know that's it's. Uh, it's a big money the self made billionaire gym Z's first building. Um, it's it's an amazing accomplishment. And that's why we do this and be able to recognize some of these people. It's gonna be very exciting. Joe Webber, editor of Bloomberg business Week, Thank you so much.

Thank you great. We want to talk about the cannabis industry, which was a big story, in no doubt about it, but there was a lot more focused, I felt like on some of the Canadian cannabis companies, and now we're really focusing a lot more on the US company because our next guest is from pure Leaf and he turned this into one of the world's most valuable cannabis companies. It's the biggest U S marijuana company by market value. We're talking about two point eight billion dollars, right, he

is Boris Jordan's congratulated sans on Bloomberg fifty. It seems like just a few weeks ago you're with us UH in studio. It's great to catch this is a nic I mean, our studio is nice, but this is a lot nicer. We generally don't serve booz but you know here we are. So why do you think you made this list? You know, I was surprised. I'll be very honest with you. I've in the past made some lists. I opened up the Russian privatization market, and uh I

was on the Global Leaders of Tomorrow. But the last thing I thought I'd make as a cannabis UH company. Listening to Bloomberg fifty for cannabis UM, I think what's great about it is that it sort of reflects the fact that people are starting to accept the fact that cannabis is going to be a part of our lives. In the United States, we have thirty three states that are that that have legalized cannabis in one form or another. More and more people are using it, and the fact

that Bloomberg has recognized that. I think it is a big deal and it shows that it's becoming mainstream. Well, Burson, I do think about you know, for a while, we just talked about the Canadian cannabis companies, and I do feel like nine was a lot more about the US companies and yours included, Um, what do you think is going to be when it comes to the cannabis story. We we're waiting for, you know, regulations to come out from the government, you know, so I'm just curious what

you think. I think it's gonna be a continuation of the U s story. And that's not to say anything negative about Canada, but it's just a bigger market. The US companies are alterning profitable. Um, you're starting to see more and more of them. I think the numbers that are gonna be put up by US companies next year are gonna be quite big and staggering, and I think that will get recognized not only, uh, you know, by Washington,

but I think also by the markets at large. And I think, you know, large the mainstream investors have largely avoided cannabis until this to today, and I think you're gonna start seeing a lot more of them get involved

as they see these companies start to put up significant numbers. Well, and talk to us about sort of the big companies getting involved, because there have been some twists and turns, shall we say, with some of the bigger US companies sort of dipping their toe in some making some investments. I'm thinking of consolation obviously, how does this sort of consumer package goods market more involved in this? How important is it that they get involved in order to grow

this business in a meaningful way. I think they're all going to get involved with for instance, purely on Bloomberg announced that we we hired um Joe Byrne, who ran uh DR Pepper Snapple. He built Voss Water. Before that, he was at uh um uh Seagram's company. So he's a real guy. These are guys that are built and run very big CpG businesses, that understand brands and understand supply chain. And you're starting to see more and more

of those people enter this market. And I think that's the first sign, and that's Cure Leaf chairman Boris Jordan. We've been hanging out with that guy a lot lately. He's so influential right now because as you have said a number of times Cannabis it was the story of nineteen and it's going to be the story of in many ways too well. And they made a bunch of acquisitions in twenty nineteen that's really changed their company, made

them such a bigger player in the industry. There's still a few hurdles which he got into, but he sounds like could be a big year for this industry. Jason. It was a big week, and we did kick off the week on Monday celebrating the Bloomberg fifty, the folks in the magazine, these individuals who stand out in measurable ways, and there was a dinner, a celebration, and we got to do a red carpet. The red carpet obviously was the thing. We were perched right there, grabbing guests as

they came in. They're stopping to get their photo taken and then sitting down with us. They all looked really great, So fashion clearly front of mind. Yes, we did talk fashion with on Katie Bow. She's the CEO of ze Lingo and this is a startup. It's now got about a billion dollar valuation, but it's all about the supply chain in retail. Man talk about disruption. She's doing it and this is a story we've been talking about in some form or wait for it, fashion all year long.

You think back to Danta Thomas's fantastic book fashion Opolis, about the fast fashion world the effects that it's had on the environment and on labor. That is really very much at the heart of what a Keti is doing. We started by asking her to tell us a little bit about So, you know, everybody wears clothes and u UM the apparel industry. The apparel in textile industry is

almost five percent of global GDP, so it's huge. But despite that, very little digitization, very little technology is really touched the entire industry, which is which is remarkable exactly so unlike pharmaceuticals, industrials, h the way your iPhone is made,

unlike any of that. Uh, there is very little traceability, um, sustainability technology, or really any amount of transparency in the supply chain in apparel, and that leads to all these problems that you hear often that fashion is accused of,

which are all true. By the way that we're filling up the landfills, there may be little children working in factories in Vietnam or in Indonesia or in Bangladesh making clothes for you that you're buying here um or that the clothes are not sustainable, people are buying too much. All of that is true, and all of that can be solved with technology by creating a lot of transparency across the supply chain. So that's where we come in.

We we've provide a technology platform for mills, factories literally as upstream as the farmers to interact with the brands that want products made by these people and make sure that it's done in a sustainable, transparent But that part of it, I have to think that lack of transparency though existed for a reason people don't want you know know how hard was it to sort of crack into that?

So you're exactly right. Today the fashion supply chain has about twenty players, uh, and you only need five of them, which means that about fourteen or fifteen of those guys or girls are just there because they are agents. Their agents there traders. They're not adding a lot of value in the value chain, so they're really either holding inventory health the amazing it's like they're there are twenty and there need to be five. Incredible, So about fifteen of

them don't like us a lot. But the five that are adding value, we are adding an immense amount of value to their business and just economics and then making sure that they're held account able if they're not following the right. But to Jason's point, like, how tough was it like making your in roads and so on and so forth, because I feel like it's such an established the supply chain or supply you know that was out there.

How tough was it to do this? Actually, once you go beyond the big manufacturers and you really go into the world of Asian manufacturing or South American manufacturing, or even right here in the US, it's quite fragmented. So uh, you know, most of fast fashion is made within a

very fragmented manufacturer base. And then once you start giving them technology and bringing them online, it becomes much more easy for them to find their suppliers and their buyers and you know, transact without agents in the little So it's it's maybe it's hard in the beginning to get a critical mass in the new country or in a new area or in a new in you know, subcategory like Denim's or or something, but once you do it, there's so much of a network effect that it spreads

quite fast because businesses see the value very quickly. I wonder about the trade wars, specifically the US on a trade war, and what that has done for your business. So what's interesting is that I think there has been definitely a lot of volatility, or at least the fear of what might happen in the minds of brands the world over, and many of whom that sourced a majority of their products from China did they wanted to oversify

that portfolio a lot. So they want us to um, you know, they're not saying no China, They're saying, hey, can you de risk my business right by helping me understand how I should source and from where and making that transparent along the way. We're hearing that from a lot of the Stadio as we talked about that they want to be having kind of manufacturing in the markets that they sell. They want to, as you said, deleverage

that risk exactly, some optionality. Absolutely. So if you build your business, where are you now, fresh infusion of capital, you're growing like crazy. Look like I think twenty twenty is going to be super exciting for us. We recently launched in the United States, we started working with brands over here where now just recently started working with manufacturer

in the U S as well. Um, so it's it's looking like is going to be very, very busy because we do have a business in eight countries in Asia as well. And uh. While I spend most of my time in the Green Singapore in New York, now we have an office in l A, uh and we have lots of customers there. So it looks like it's going to be a crazy exciting I was just gonna say, it is interesting sort of this idea of an American manufacturing l A does seem to be a little bit

of the center of that. And yet even the American manufacturing is not immune to some of the issues that we've run into overseas exactly. So in fact, it's a myth that those problems don't exist in the US as well. Um, maybe maybe the practices are better, but they're not exactly optimized. We can use a lot more technology here as well. We can use a lot more transparency, digitization, uh, you know, QC and line efficiency tools can be automated. So there's

a lot that can be done. And it was a bit of was a price to me personally when I came in and saw that there was just there was just so much to be done, even domestically here in the US. But now it seems like develop and developed. I have to ask you, because I love talking to folks like you, because I feel like you're traveling the world, You're seeing smaller business, midsized businesses, all kinds of businesses.

What's the global economy looks like? I think, you know, despite despite every fear that people have in their minds right now about where the economies are going, where the economy is going, UM, I think there's a lot of opportunity in the adversities that we're seeing as well. So of course this is a very colored view from my viewpoint where you know, Um, on the one hand, we're saying we've hit peak apparel and really people should be

consuming less and consuming better. All of that seems like such a huge opportunity to us because consumers is starting to ask questions and whole brands and businesses responsive conversations, which is exactly where we come in and say into the brand that listen, you don't know how to do this. That's okay because We're gonna help you. We're gonna help you. That's a lingo CEO on Key Ti Bows and Jason.

I feel like our conversation with her about the supply chain when it comes to retail in the fashion industry. This is something we've been really tackling a lot in our daily radio show. Well and they'll be fascinating to see where this company goes, because, as she pointed out, this is a supply chain that is actually too long and really needs to be shrunk down. You have to think that is not an easy task. So, Carol was a rainy night in New York. I feel like I'm

setting up a novel here. But we were there at the Morgan Library on the red carpet, and despite the bad weather outside, people were pouring in really excited to be there because it was just buzzing with big ideas, innovation, and it wasn't just about the people who were accomplished in nine. There was a bit of a look ahead to Yeah, and that's important. I mean it's innovators, entrepreneurs, leaders who have changed the global business landscape and as

we said, it's measurable ways. But we didn't only just think about twenty nineteen, we did think also about and one of those individuals, one of those that we're gonna be watching for is Sema Hungarani. She's the founder of Girls Who Invest. This is about getting more women to be managing money in the future. Well, and she knows what she's talking about. She was in the c i

O for New York City's pension plan. She's now shifted to the not for profit world to really change not just the pipeline, but the decision makers and really adding some diversity to the mix. Yeah, it's been fantastic. In four years we have put through three d and fifty college when we were through our ten week on campus summer program where that's four weeks training in the classroom and then a six week paid internship at one of

the leading asset maniti firms in the world. It's been incredible and eight of those women are staying in the investment business there staying. Are they moving up the ladder? They are. It's fantastic. Well and seem one of the things that I love talking to you about is the fact you were on the other side of the table you were or you were distributing money and the ways you were picking a manager. So you saw that from

the other side of the table. Why is it taken so long for the rest of the world to sort of get on board with this. I think it's just coming up and saying, you know, maybe we had to rethink this. We've been having trouble recruiting women in particular into our business. Uh, and yet we do the same

thing over and over again. So when I talked to a lot of the large investment firms around the world, I would ask them, so, what do you do when you recruit And they would say to me, oh, we go to these four colleges and we go to these investment banking programs. And I thought, well, you guys, I wonder how we're having a problem with diversity. Let's go bigger,

broader and so find I'll do the work. I'll go find women across the entire country, from colleges all across the US, the different majors of study, different ethic backgrounds, different socio economic backgrounds, and I'll run a program through the summer and we'll train them up so that when we send them to you to these internships, they hit

the ground running the same. I do wonder, though, if they're something different because I feel like there's been a lot of talk for years about getting more women into kind of the financial industry. Is there something that's changed in the last couple of years. Is it finally understanding that the studies and the importance of diversification that it makes a difference in terms of financial difference, that all of a sudden everybody's awakened. Yes, I think that's right.

I think, um, while the research has been out there, there's more research that shows and proves that more gender diverse teams get better outcomes. There's actually research now that shows that more mixed gender investment teams get better investment results, which goes to the heart of girls who invest in

what we're trying to do. And I think honestly, in this country now, with movements such as Time's Up and hashtag me Too, it's certainly raised uh, you know, more attention on this issue and more firms are paying attention. And I think the final push has really come from the big institutional investors, so you know, have big public pension plans in particular, saying to these investment managers, you know, if you don't have more diversity on your investment team.

I've read the research too, and I believe the research. I don't believe you will get long term consistent investment returns, so I might pull my money from you and put it across the shoe. I'm so glad you brought that up because it feels like that's what has to happen. And again going back to uh your time in New York City, like the money has to speak here like that nothing's going to change. I mean we talked about this with the s G as well, you know, and

start ups. The source of the money essentially says no or change, nothing's going to happen. So you think that that is starting to happen. Yes, And it's certainly it's a combination. I mean, there are amazing leaders in our industry who do get it, and I've been trying to push to get it as broad based as we needed to get. Yes, we're going to have to have the big investors out there saying this isn't gonna work and standing up and actually pulling their capital and putting it elsewhere.

So much of what you're doing is creating that pipeline, and I do think that's so important. But we've got to make sure that there's the support along the way, and that really speaks to a company's culture and making sure that there's those folks to do that. So how do we get to that? Is it just by getting more and more women into the industry or what? Well,

so that's part of it. UM. You know, back when I was at the City of New York and I was the c I O, and I had these conversations with the leaders of the business UM and I looked down at their organizational charts and say, you guys, were all the women on your investment team. And so what they would say to me is, well, we don't get resumes from women, so clearly a pipeline issue, which I agreed,

maybe we do have that and let's fix that. But I did say to them, then, you know, I'd like to have the other part of the conversation, no judging, no blaming. But there's still firms out there in our business set of cultures that are not so welcome to women. So let's have that conversation to and tackle it from both ends. Make a lot more progress, a lot faster.

So what I'm really encouraged by now is we are sitting down with the leadership of the industry and and talking about their cultures and why is it that once these women come in, they don't stay, And how do we help get these women to a position where they're getting promoted for these new opportunities, new growth opportunities that right now they're not really getting quit in most positions. And that's Seema hing Garani, the founder of Girls Who Invest.

So they're on the red carpet, Carol Master. Earlier this week in New York City, we grabbed a couple guys whose voices candidly, very familiar to us, and a story I followed very closely. You know, I love podcasts. I'm always coming into the office saying you gotta listen to this, you gotta listen that most of the time you don't,

but sometimes you do. I do sometimes listen. And you have to listen to these two individuals because they sold their company to Spotify for hundreds of millions of dollars. It was the largest deal in the podcasting industry. We're talking about Gimlet Media co founders Matt Lieber and Alex Bloomberg. So Carol, we asked them to start by telling us a little bit about the podcast world. I mean, it's Nason,

it hasn't been around for that long. Their origins in public radio and how they stand out from the pack, Well, I think Matt and I were we started the company, uh and and uh, we're both sort of coming at it from separate perspectives. I was, I was working in podcasting already, I worked at this American Life, and I had uh started planning money with my co founder at Adam Davidson, and so I was seeing sort of like this excitement building around this new on demand way that

like audio is getting delivered to people. And I just saw the excitement building, and I was like, we just somebody should make more of these. And then Matt had was like in the on the other side of the sort of like uh of the of the of the scene, looking and seeing the same sort of thing. That. Yeah, our insight was that if you look over the whole history of media, every time a new medium comes about,

new a new media company gets built. And so a hundred years ago, the new medium was radio, and that's when CBS got built, and that's when NBC got built. And we felt on demand digital audio podcasts were a new medium and we wanted to build a defining brand for this new medium, and that was gimma. But isn't it fascinating because it is like radio in terms of, you know, just listening to a great story being told. And I just think the simple part, it's just such

a simple thing, but it's great. But it harkens back to radio, right, hearkens even further back to that. I mean, I think what if you think about, like what we're doing in podcasts. A lot of times, what we're doing is is one of the oldest forms of media in human existence is telling stories to one another. And we've been telling stories to one another before there was any other media available. We like, many of the oldest stories in in human history were oral stories before they were

ever written down. They were they were telling them before human languages, even written language was invented. And so it's very deep and very primal. And uh, And I think that was one of the issues when we were sort

of like s first starting this company. Every was like, but it's just talking, right, and we're like, no, no, no. But it's also on the backs of this new of new technology and and all these new tools that we bring to it, and so where are we sort of in in the evolution here because you guys, as we said, we're early, a lot of people have sort of piled in. It feels like, I mean, we have a podcast, everybody has like you know, everybody sitting around is probably has

a podcast, Like where does it go next? We think we're just at the very beginning. And the term that um, I think you you've been using is that we're at the dawn of the second Golden age of audio. The first golden age of audio was in the nineteen thirties and nineteen forties. It was when broadcast news was born. It was when you saw fiction like The Shadow with Orson Welles called about and Now. And you know, audio hasn't evolved that much in the last sixty seventy years

until now. And now. What you have are a couple of big technology changes. So you have smartphones in every pocket, you have connected cars coming online. A lot of listening happens in the cars, and you've got smart home devices that people are listening at home and even talking to their dashboard when they're in their car. And so all these things have combined for this whole new um listening kinds of listening experiences to come out and new sorts

of storytelling. So there's a whole generation of creators being born now to work for this medium. It's a more intimate It's like radio, but it's more intimate. Um, there's something about putting on your headphones or something and just kind of going. When you listen to a podcast, it feels like you're listening to your best friend hang out with you, tell you a story that's just made for you. Yeah. But as Ja said, well, as you mentioned, everybody's got

a podcast, what is it that makes a podcast stand out? Well, are there's so much content out there? Yeah, I mean if we told you that, then you would just start your own. Well, actually, is it just a great story? I mean you're asking the question that is at the heart of every content company, which is like what people want? Right, and that and and and and and The scary truth

is that like that is an essential mystery. We can do our best, and we have been very successful so far, and we will continue to be successful, like eventually, you know, getting that right a bunch of times, but it's like it's it's really hard. I think the thing that like is true about audio though, is that it prizes two things above everything else. Like, there's a very simple way

that it is just it thrives on narrative. And so if you can just tell a simple story, like just for example, if I say to you, I got up this morning, I looked out the window, and then I stopped. You're like, well, wait that all I did was say two sentences to you, and all of a sudden you want to listen to the third one. There's something that there's something that deep in in terms of like hearing a story that people it really grips you. So that's I think that is one of the key things that

audio can deliver. And if you get that right over time, that's what people want to listen to. All right, So let's talk a little bit about the business side of all of this, because storytelling is great. We all love telling stories, we like listening to them, we like telling them. We certainly like hearing ourselves talk because we do it for hours a day every day. But you guys figured out a way to make a real business out of this, something that Spotify was able to and willing to pay

you a lot of money for. Clearly they see a business here. How does distribution ultimately work in a profitable way not UM. Yeah, that's a good that's a good question. We UM. We did build a business here and so Gimlet is UM. It was mainly an advertising business. It turns out podcasting, this intimacy that happens in audio makes it great for storytelling. It also makes it great for advertising. And we're reaching a very unique consumer. They tend to

be younger and more affluent, more educated. They're very hard to reach. Our name for them is the unreachables, and we're getting them with this very um, direct, personal kind of ad product that really work for us. And so

so we built a business around that UM. And then about a year ago we we started having more serious conversations with Spotify, and in Spotify we saw a really a global giant music company that you know today reaches over a quarter billion listeners around the world every month UM. And in that we saw distribution. We saw the opportunity

to take gimblet and reach a global audience. We thought that together we could solve what is one of the fundamental problems for the medium and also for the business, which is discovery. So if you ask UM, if you ask people what podcasts they listened to and how they found out. They're still basically finding out because their friend told them. They may have read it in media. But the kind of discovery that Spotify has unlocked to tell you about the right song, the right album, the right playlist.

We thought that could work for a podcast too, and in doing so get too many many more people. Does it continue to be an advertising model that gets it to profitability? Today? Podcasts are mainly, uh an advertising business? Does it continue to be that way? Um? I think there's gonna be I think there's gonna be other all kinds of other forms of monetization. And Spotify is primarily a subscription business. The vast majority of Spotify's revenue comes

in the form of paying subscribers. And um, we think we're gonna unlock new monetization models for for podcasts that will realize the true value of the media. All Right, So I have to ask you, knowing your story, knowing that you both worked in public radio. Public radio, people who you know must be like, they're happy ish for you, right, I mean that before they like slave away, like here they are, They're like and like you guys go and

create this like Juggernaut. I mean that's amazing. Yeah, I mean, I think so. I think I think it was like a pretty big a pretty big shock in the industry when the sale happened. I think just because, like you know, it was like it made real this thing that up until that point had not had just been sort of theoretical. And so anytime, anytime, even if people were I think, you know, we know lots of people in the industry

and many of my closest friends are in public radio. Uh, and I'm still very very tight with everybody, and so everybody knew what was happening. They were excited, they were rooting for us, yeah, fighting mostly. Uh, but it's like, yeah, it's a big shop when that when that thing happens, and it's like and they're like wow, they were like Alex, why didn't you like cut me in a little it. No,

they're just making sure you're buying right. But the thing that I think it was, um, I think it was like what was ratifying I think for all of us in there, is that it really we were slaving a way of doing this thing that we saw value end, like we believed in this, like the product that we're making, and what the sale did wasn't legitimized that value that we saw in it for everybody, and I think that's

a great thing for the entire discute thing. I mean, it was a I mean I think when we look in one of the reasons you're on the Bloomberg fifty is it was a seminal moment, you know, in a lot of ways of saying, because I think a lot of people who had dabbled in this were like, yeah, you know, I sold an ad to whoever, and like it's barely covering my costs. Like this is something that that really legitimized it in a really big way. So what podcasts and for you guys is just blowing up

even more. Like it's just like, I think what we're gonna see is we're gonna see lots and lots of new forms, lots and lots of new formats, lots of new people coming into into podcasting that haven't been here before. Um, more, bigger, better, more creative, more exciting stuff, more stuff that we haven't imagined. Do the elections kind of make it an interesting year in terms of content? Yeah, I mean you guys think about that, well, yeah, I mean we're storytellers and this

is it's kind of exciting. Yeah, you know, it's super exciting, and and and the way and how how you cover that, you know, in all the different ways that we're thinking about covering it, We're excited. That's Matt Lieber and Alex Bloomberg, the co founders of Gimlet Media and speaking of visionaries. First up, we caught up with Stephanie Kelton. She's an economist from Stony Brook University's got a new book coming out.

I should point out, The Deficit myth Modern Monetary Theory and The Birth of the People's Economy that comes out in June, but we caught up to talk to her about MMT well, and we started by saying, why are people talking so much about this year? MMT certainly having

a moment. It is kind of astonishing, right that. I think in a lot of ways, what's happening is that people are coming to some sort of terms with the idea that when the new downturn comes um policymakers are going to be able to reach for the usual toolkit and do what they've done in the past, that we're going to have to start thinking, maybe more creatively, more ambitiously about what policymakers can do in response to a growing weakness in the economy, and I think um for

many people, m MT is just increasingly viewed as that alternative that can help us to um, you know, think about ways to to be more ambitious when so we don't have to suffer a kind of long protracted recession that we had last time. And so, Stephanie, were you surprised that this was a year where a lot of people from Alexandro Carassio Cortez to Bernie Sanders who Carol mentioned,

you know, they introduced it. We talked about the Overton window all the time, right, you know that this sort of moved in m MT favor makes me story, But it was a moment, you know, and honestly it entered into the political and and I dare say even at least the mainstream business zeitgeist, to quote our colleague Tom Keane. Yes and no, if you've been pushing hard to get that breakthrough moment for a set of ideas, and you've really worked as a scholar and as an academic and

with a number of other people as well. I mean, this is a team effort, and you know, we put heart and soul into this project for more than two decades now, and so at some point you do expect

it to pay off, I guess, you know. But then when you have that moment and you have politicians of the type that you're talking about giving some oxygen to these ideas, it really is remarkable for everyone like a Bernie Sanders and some other individuals high profile who are supporting him and to you know, you've had a lot of high profile names. I know, Paul Krugman, you've had a little bit of a battle, you know, certainly a

ward words. I'm curious if you're having more and more conversation with more folks that maybe we're against it, that are starting to say, hey, you've got an idea here. Yeah. I mean so for me, some of the most fun conversations and communications I have are those that aren't public. It's the people who reach out to me privately. And you know, were it known who these people are, I think the shock waves would reverberate in you know, much

more dramatic fashion. But it's just encouraging to know that there are people who are really out there willing to take the scholarship seriously, ask questions when they're not sure, Um, you know, do the ideas justice and not sort of caricature them and and created an atmosphere of fear and concern where these are really just, I think, very sensible

and sound economic principle remind our world. I mean, I know our audience knows, but m m T is essentially a government in their own currency can just print the money they need. So I never use those words because okay, everybody everybody in the journalist world does. But the idea

is fairly simple. It's that in countries like the US that issue their own currency that's not tethered to gold or convertible into anything else, that the rules are just different for currency issuing government as opposed to you know, somebody in the Eurozone, Griefs or Italy or Spain that now borrows in a currency that they don't control. It certainly different from a household or an individual business that has to spend in a currency that it can't issue.

So it does free up some policy space. And what MMT is trying to remind us is we're not on a gold standard anymore, not in a fixed exchange rate world. So let's recognize that, let's try to take full advantage of the policy space. That's available to us. It's not a free lunch. It's not a carte blanche. You can go out and spend that. Yeah, you can't. You're still supposed to make wise investments, be judicious with the public purse.

But recognize there is a difference between the issuer of the currency and what we would say are the users of currency. The government's not like a household. But continue to have debates and policy conversations that are rooted in this old thinking of the federal government as if it's gotta played by the same set of rules that you and I have to play by, And that's just not right. So I gotta ask you before we let you go, sort of looking ahead a bit, all the attention that's

been paid to you into and two m MT. Do you feel like there is a well spring of sorts of new scholarship that's coming up. Are you hearing sort of students, grad students and others sort of coalesced around this a little bit, because often that's what it takes for an idea to move even further into the industry. Yeah. Absolutely, I mean I taught at the University of Missouri in

Kansas City for seventeen years. I'm now at Stony Brook University here on Long Island, but we had one of the largest graduate programs PhD programs in the entire university. There are universities training students, are students are now out hiring their own economics departments. I just saw university on the East Coast advertising for a faculty position where they say, what we're looking for is someone who can teach, mm teach,

So they're actually hiring, and that's economist Stephanie Kelton. And if there's such a thing as a rock star in the world of economists, she is certainly. When it was so interesting to see her work the room because people recognize her. They certainly recognize her work. They recognize her from her Twitter account, her little embro leo as it were with Paul Krugman. Yeah, exactly. I mean this so much attention, don't forget. You know, she has been an

advisor to Democrats on the Senate Budget Committee. She's also been an advisor to Bernie Sanders presidential campaigns. You know, everybody's talking about this because maybe the world is a little bit different. So the Bloomberg Fifty this week, Carol, we kicked off the week with a bank, to say the least, a dinner, a celebration, drinks. Also our favorite part the red carpet because we were able to grab and chat with some of the honorees. That's right, Jason.

And one of them that we spoke with James Mwangi. He's the CEO of Equity Group Holdings. We asked him, after thirty five years in the industry, how was it getting started. Yeah, the first ten years were very difficult, couldn't break even, so we became technically insolvent by the seventh year. Right, very tough track record where the losses we had accumulated were thirty times the capital we started with.

But essentially we developed a business model that was appropriate for the individual entrepreneurs and we became a bank for the small, micro and media enterprises. And essentially the models knitted with the entrepreneur so well that now we are the largest bank in Nairobi Stock Exchange in terms of market cup and the largest bank in Eastern and Central Africa and with the sixteen million customers nine countries. And so when you think about your customer, help us understand

who they are. You know, you described their size, but are they in all types of businesses and as you look down down the list, what are the fastest growing areas that you see? Yeah, we are very inclusive bank because people graduate up, they missed that very micro. They becomes more, they become medium, they become a larger. The same with the individuals. They start occasionally as peace and farmers, they become a growth businesses and the individual as well

being continuous to grow. But the biggest growing segment, UH is the medium mental prices. That's where you find the scale size is becoming really significant. I have to say, James, what I love about this? And I remember talking to Bahammed Units about microloans and what you could do with a small amount of money, the impact you could have on a family, and I think about what you're doing

multiplied many times over. That allows people to have a financial identity, create a means for themselves and their family, and then even kind of work up the value chain. It's pretty remarkable and it in hacks the country that they're in as well. That's true because the African entrepreneurship capitalism in Africa is at the individual level, the entpren whatever and that individual supports the immediate family and sometimes

they extended the family. So when they started the small enterprise, they provide the jobs for the entire family, They take care of the education of the entire family, and essentially they become a catalyst. So small loans have very significant impact because of the individual capitalism. Africa is not compily tized, so we don't have mutual copy. It is a small

businesses that aggregate to the African economies. So speaking the African economies, let's talk about Kenya because an ambitious plan underway. You're an architect of it, Keny Kenya's Vision twenty thirty. I believe it's U tell us what's underneath that because the indigenous Huge Vision twenty thirty is a long term strategic plan to to see Kenya transformed from a least

developed country to a midle income economy. I've been the chairman Vision twenty thirteen now for the last thirteen years, and we have seen the economy move from a ten billion US dollar size economy to a hundred billion dollars growing ten times within a period of thirteen years. In the process, we have created numerous jobs, thousands of jobs for young people because the country is very young, with a miniage of eighteen years, so the need for jobs

is normal. But more importantly we have seen the law of the private sector have preyed and that is where equity have prayed a very significant role in providing credit, uh financial or support. But more important foundation provides capacity building. We do financially, trust, we do enterpregnewership training, and so once you're combine credit and competence and capacity, we see they cannot be being moved. And in the process Kenya has have moved now to position five in the continent

from position sixteen within that vidiod. What was interesting because you started this to think around two thousand eight, which I think was an interesting time obviously around the world, a tough time, but it's fascinating kind of some of the things that you've done, like a fiber after cable project, but you also had to deal with governance and rule of what I mean you to get some basic things in place to be able to grow this right, and and and and kind of grow the businesses. Yes, we

broke them the espilation of the people into three. The first one was governance, get it light in the way we have governed and yeah, and get transparency, get accountability and get a structure of governance that is reliable and the prey digtable. The second one was look at the economy and enable the private sector. Invest in fiber optic, invest in lords, power, lad ways, airports and pots so that the cost of doing business is reduced and private

sector is facilitated. We called all that enablement of the private sector, so massive investment in UH. And then the last one was invested in the socio aspects of the people. Focus on education. We started with free primary education that now it's free UH day school education and on all the way to university and we now have a hundred percent transition from primary to secondary education. So you keep

children to school for at least eighteen years. And when you think about sort of the future, part of it is creating these financial hubs like Dubai is a great example of something that really came to the form pretty quickly that really galvanizes people. It's a transportation hub, it's an economic hub, it's a financial hub. Do you have that same vision truly? UH. The aspilation of the vision

was to make a financial sector. Kenya is not endowed with the nationality sources like all menals, so we focused on people and said what would people be good debt and we forecast on services. So you find Kenya is the hub for banking in sure lance, companies, telecommunication, health and education. That's James Mwangi. Here's the city of Equity Group Holdings. And I do find it fascinating. I've always loved the area of microfinance, go back to uh the

Grommin Bank and Muhammad units. But you know, James reminding us that you know, a little bit of money gives somebody an individual financial identity, brings them into the financial system, and it all starts small. Now they've got millions of customers, they've got billions on their balance sheets, so pretty remarkable. And he's doing more to change Kenya and its future well exactly. And that idea of changing the future has so much to do with the financial infrastructure of Kenya too,

really positioning Nairobi as a new financial hub. That's been a limited opportunity there in Africa that could be changing largely owing to his work. So this week, of course all about the Bloomberg fifty. We caught up Jason with a lot of them at the Red carpet on Monday, but we also caught up with a few you did specifically before the event, Well, that's exactly right. I headed across town and downtown over to i a C headquarters. Anyone who's driven on the West Side Highway has seen it.

It's iconic. CEO Joey Levin agreed to spend some time with me, and I asked him to go all the way back to the beginning. He started as a banker. Yeah, I don't like to admit that that's true. I was. I was a banker, and actually I learned a tremendous amount. I'm I don't. I don't at all regret having done it.

I didn't. It wasn't my favorite thing I ever did, but I learned a tremendous amount, and I think it opened up a lot of opportunities for me in terms of just how to think about things and and uh, I didn't know what I wanted to do out of college, and there was where I went to college, there was a lot of banks that did a lot of recruiting, and they pulled me into uh the sort of tech bubble, which sort of the peak of the tech bubble, which is when the recruiting started. It was a fall two

thousand when things were just about to crest over. And by the time I started, they had the bubble had burst. And uh, they offered me thirty thousand dollars not to show up to the job, but I decided to show up anyway. Yeah. Wow, Yeah it was. It was a really interesting time. And I think it's a great time to get started on a career, because you could if I had started two years early, I would have thought

you could do nothing wrong. Uh, And I started, uh two years later, and it was you could do nothing right, and you really had to grind out to figure out how to make things work. And uh, I'm actually pretty I'm grateful for that. But so I came to I See to do mergers and acquisitions, which is what I was doing as a banker. Uh. And really Barry had told the market he wanted to spend ten billion dollars on acquisitions in the Internet, and I thought that that is, uh,

that sounds like a lot of fun. And the This was two thousand three and the Internet was not popular. It was people said, we we advertising doesn't work on the internet. We were not buying eyeballs anymore. And and this thing's overdone, and we thought there's still a lot of opportunity here, and uh we did. We went and spent most of that money in travel, but we we were very active in that. And and M and A was very sort of core to the center of I C. And so I got to know Barry and the vice

chamber of Victor Coffin very well. We're all very involved in this process. Uh and UH and and Dara was there. Then who's who's now at uber And it was a great group of people who I learned to try his tremendous amount from and uh started doing acquisitions, then started doing some finance stuff, and then started running my first business in two thousand nine. And so go back to sort of joining and I mean at that point, Barry Diller is capital B capital D Verry Dill. I mean

like he's he's not an unknown at that point. What were your first impressions of working for him? It was funny. People had all these things of Okay, you're going into your first meeting with Berry, or you're going into a meeting with Berry. Don't look at him. I don't look directly at him, but don't look away from him. I was like, what there was all these like rules that people were trying to give me, and you go into

the meeting. He's he's the regular person. He's very intense, and he's very sharp, and he gets to the point on everything very quickly, and and sort of intolerant of kind of nonsense or waste. But he's just the person in a meeting. And uh. The thing that I appreciated right away and still appreciate today very much is is culture of debate and discussion and challenging and it's it's

it's a lot of ways. It's it's hard to do as a leader because you say to everybody you know, essentially everything I say, you should challenge everything I say, you should disagree with everything, and and to make sure that that you get to the right answer. And it is a definitively a better way of getting to the right answer. But it is a hard thing and something that Barry has has always embraced. And it doesn't work for everybody, you know, some people don't don't like that

kind of culture. But but it worked well for me and my personality and and we end up getting along. But I didn't really get to nobury even though I was in meeting with Barry. I probably didn't get the no bury until several years into being a dizing right, And did you anticipate when you got here that you would be here for for this long? Because you know, in today's day and age like it's a pretty long tenure at one place, it is, uh. And did I

anticipate it? No, I definitely did not anticipate it. But did I desire that? Yeah? I remember when I was interviewing for jobs out of investment banking, I very quickly knew I didn't want to be an investment banker and I was learning a lot, and I was grateful for all the people that I was working with. I just knew that that wasn't for me long term. So I started doing interviews. And one of the things that investment bankers frequently interview for his private equity or st maan

fncial alternadvances. And I was uh. So I was interviewing with a private a great private equity fund, and they said, what do you want to uh, you know, talk to us about what you want to do or where you want to be in a few years. I said, I'd like to be, you know, in a company, running a company, you know, driving business, building a product. And they said, well,

then what are you doing here? I said, A good point, and so I left and I actually started talking to I see then, and I thought, when I went there, I want to be a part of building something and uh, Barry is very much a builder, and I see as a company very much about building and building companies and uh.

And so I got very lucky in that sense. And that's the first part of my interview with I a C CEO Joey Livin part two that's coming up, we'll talk a little bit about how M and A it's really been at the more of what he and Barry Diller have been doing at that company. So let's get to part two now of my interview with Joey lived In the CEO of I A C. I headed down to see him at his office. He was in the

midst of a bunch of board meetings. Because you get a real sense of the scope of what they're trying to do. It's everything from Tinder to Angie's List. How's that for a couple ends of the spectrum. It's quite arrange. And so you started by asking how M and A defines the culture at that company. We like the friction, um, we like that things challenge themselves and each other. We frequently have multiple businesses in the same category competing with

each other. Our view is we'd rather disrupt ourselves than have somebody disrupt us, and so so we're we're often if we have a thesis on a category, we want several teams going after it and several businesses going after it, and it's okay if they compete with each other and challenge each other in in going after that um and result. Because in many ways you can you can predict some components of the future. No one can predict the future, but you can say there's here's one way of doing something,

and here's a better way of doing something. Five years from now or ten years from now, our people are gonna be doing it the better way or the worst way. Well, they're definitely gonna be doing it the better way. Right. You don't know where you're going to get the right team that that's going to figure out how to do the better way better than the other people figuring out the better way, but you you do know that that's

what the future is going to look like. And so what we try and do is put a lot of bets against that future so that that we can meaningfully participate in it. And uh that that sometimes leads the conflict that sometimes leads to multiple bets in the same category or friction in your words. And that's something that's okay with us, right. It feels like it's baked in

it is. I was we uh, one of our board members, Chelsea Clinton, we we did a town hall with a bunch of employees, so I was, you know, I was in your seat interviewing her, and she said something which I thought was very interesting. It's it's a sort of revolution on something or a turn on something that we say internally, which is inertia is a very powerful and the most underrated force in business, both for good and

for bad. And what Chelsea described said from her observance as a board member is that we go out of our way to reject inertia, you know, and again for good and for bad. Don't don't overestimate a tailwind. Uh, don't don't believe too much that that a tailwind is your own brilliance. Um. And also don't be sort of intimidated by those those headwinds and figure out how to

push through that. And I think that that is an important point in there, and so you know, going back to two thousand three and sort of fast forwarding to the present, the Internet is a very different place than it was in two thousand three. How do you define the Internet? It's a big question, but how do you define the Internet from a business perspective of in twenty nine mind blowing thing in the beginning of the Internet, the sort of I don't know if we'll call it

the first phase. I'll call the first phase for now of the Internet was choice and breadth. You recall when Google came out, people that they're big thing was one of you know, one million results when when you do a search and people's minds were blown by that appropriately, I mean, it was just amazing that you could ask about some Nike shoes of some particular year and see ten million results about that. That was the first and really interesting phase of the Internet. And in a way,

it's gone the complete opposite of that today. So today it's actually about how do you narrow the choice right? How do you get to the one answer because now always ten million You can't really do anything with ten million choices. You you that that's not that helpful as much as it is fascinating. It's not that helpful. You need to get to the answer right, the one answer. And so now all the platforms are about not giving choice but giving a solution, and we're thinking about that

in a lot of our businesses. Take Angie Home Services for example, where we are matching consumers with home service professionals. Right now, we match you with with several and uh, to the extent someone wants that, we will continue to match them with several. But what we see is many consumers want to be matched with just the right one. Just just tell me. I We've grown up knowing platforms, knowing the Internet, and we know which brands we want to trust and which brands we don't want to trust.

And if it's a brand retrust, just save me the trouble, give me the answer. And that's what we're trying to do now with Angie and with other of our businesses too. I mean, it's it's it's harder in dating. I'd like to say that we could find a person and we can say, okay, boom, here's a person for you, get married next week, and and off you go. I don't

think that's realistic ever in that category. But we can get better with our algorithms, we can't get better at matching people as we learn more, so that you don't have to go through, you know, hundreds of conversations, maybe you go through dozens of conference stations or less than that, and to get to find people that you might be

compatible with. And when you think about sort of the Internet again broadly defined in twenty nineteen, it feels like if we went back to two thousand three, or certainly even in earlier, there was a lot of enthusiasm, you know, a lot of just excitement about what it could be. Today it feels like there's more skepticism, you know, whether it's from regulators, whether it's from some of the companies themselves,

whether it's from consumers. How do you read this moment where we are, you know, sort of broadly defined as this sort of tech lash for lack of a better term. It's funny because it's the exact same thing that was what everyone was so excited about in the beginning, which was the the the monopolies of the duopolies or the or the the power that was concentrated in the hands of a few. The Internet came through and said no, no more, We're gonna distribute this and anyone could do anything.

Anyone's empowered. You can start a business, you can reach consumers. You don't need to go through a privately owned platform to reach end users. You don't need an infinite amount of money to reach end users. You can open your shop on your neet and boom, you can reach the world. And that distribution was phenomenal and led to so much innovation and so much excitement. That's why people were so said. What happened is that power got reconcentrated again in a

handful of hands. Uh. And those are the companies that are in the headlines and part of that tech lash. And those companies do have enormous power. They're kingmakers of other companies, of individuals, of of UH, politicians for not necessarily by design, but sometimes by accident. UH. That is a you know that that goes back to that scary thing. And people don't like to be in that position where there's a handful of people with a very significant amount

of power. It's a sort of more American democratic thing to see that distributed. And I think people want to see that happen again. And what do you see as I A c S role in essentially combating that. Well, our biggest thing is having great independent products and having those products resonate with users. If we are UH, if we can communicate a very compelling product experience in our category to a user, I believe we can win, and I believe we can we have historically, and I believe

we can continue to defeat the giants. UM. The giants can compete with us, sometimes over implicitly, sometimes explicitly, but they do compete with us. We also benefit hugely and have benefited usually from their scale UH knowing how to use those platforms to to acquire audience, to to interact with customers or potential customers, and those platforms have been

hugely helpful to us in building our business. But also increasingly as they look for growth, they are competing with us, and that's something that we have to do and you just win that on on a better product. So help me understand. One of your strategies seems to be keep me honest here sort of a build, build and spin or build and sell. Obviously that happened with with Matches in the process of happening with match and I think you've said that you want things only to get so big.

You're not empire building to something, said, help me understand the thinking underneath that. Sure, so I'll correct One small thing, which is build and sell is rarely something that we do. We don't think of a spin as a sale. We have sold companies that generally, when we're selling a company, it's just because we haven't figured out how to make it work for us. Um, it doesn't sort of fit and we we can't. We can't get it going in in our ambition, and somebody else may be able to

do it better. Uh. Spinning is different spinning, it's our shareholders get it. We just give it to our shareholders and they can continue to hold it forever. And when we look at our track record over time, we we presume that somebody comes in and from the moment they come in, they continue to hold everything forever. They can just hold it in separate pockets and out of all

in one pocket. Uh. And the reason that we do that is it there's lots of micro reasons and sometimes there's tactical reasons, but the main reason that we do it is we like the process of building. We like

the process of starting over. And when you have something huge, it overshadows everything else, and Match is such a good business, is doing so well right now, and and and investors care tremendously about it, and anything else we do is basically irrelevant relative to how many subscribers Tender had in a quarter. And when you get to that level, at some point you say, Okay, this thing has the ability to be off on its own and if we if we put that thing on zone, then we can focus

again on the smaller things. Because when we're focused on the smaller things, you put that kind of energy in it, there's nowhere to hide and you you've gotta you gotta make those work. And we like that process. That's Joey Livin, the CEO of I see great interview. I love watching a C because they are invested in so many different companies, some of them related, some of them not. But I

just think it's fascinating. Well. And one of the things that really struck me about both reading Eric Schatzker's piece in the Bloomberg fifty issue and then my conversation with Joey was this notion that they sort of grow things only to a point and then they spin them out. That's happening with Match. You wonder if it's going to happen with Angie's list as well. He sort of alluded

to that a little bit. But this notion that they're not building a massive empire, They're really a startup machine, right. It's all about unlocking value eventually and then moving on to the next investment opportunity. And that wraps up Bloomberg Business Week's weekend podcast. Thanks so much for joining us. I'm Jason Kelly, I'm Carol Masser. Be sure to tune into Bloomberg Business Week Radio Live Monday through Friday. It

all starts at two pm Wall Street Time. And if you can't catch us live, get our daily podcast for the Ride Home at Bloomberg dot com or wherever you get your podcasts. And of course you can get this week's edition of the magazine that is on newstands now. We'll be back right here next week at the same time. This is Bloomberg