Ronald Cohen
The Pioneer
The frontier and an appetite for the unknown, goes first.
Ronald Cohen emerges in this interview as a quintessential Pioneer, having built entirely new fields rather than joining existing ones. He co-founded Apax at 26 into a European venture capital vacuum, explicitly stating he had to 'build the field' alongside the firm.
“And yet there's no transparency On the impact that is being created by companies, and so I'm saying that as we should I say, in 1933 in mandating generally accepted accounting principles, we now need to mandate generally accepted impact principles.”
“You're building up experience ahead of others. You're building up your team ahead of others. And so you end up building up your firm and the field at the same time.”
“Well, first I have to say, Simon, that I feel the huge depth of gratitude for the help that I got to be able to go to Oxford with my education paid for by the state to get a scholarship, to pay for my first year at Harvard. We were really a very important moment in my life. Now, how did the two institutions differ?”
“We arrived in Britain, a new country, of course, much more developed than Egypt was, London incomparably bigger than Cairo. And it was all And then learning a new language. I remember my mother baked a chocolate cake as soon as we moved into our rented apartment to make us feel that the home was the same as it had been in Cairo.”
Money Maze Podcast: “Sir Ronald Cohen: From Venture Capital and Private Equity to Impact investing, A conversation with the man who leads the charge!”
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