YouSaid · the spoken record

Steve Schwarzman

lines on the record: 90
first: 2019-09-18
most recent: 2019-09-18
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Disruption, you know, revolutions being triggered. And the ones I talk to say, geez, if I could have this all back. I'm not sure what I would do. And so as a result of those people, because the internet seems old, but it's relatively so young, those people are all still around. So now that AI is coming, they basically say. We can't screw this up. A second time But nobody's figured out exactly how to control this yet. Oh”
2019-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And surprisingly, because I'm not a technologist, I'm like a generalist, they would say, in the old days, is that there's this reaching out that everybody is doing in the technology community to figure out how these technologies can be introduced without enormous disruption. I was surprised that if you talk to the founders of the internet, they think they did a very bad thing on balance. They thought it was cool to set up the internet. And it was going to... In terms of global connections, knowledge transfer, and so forth, there was almost none of them who understood the damage that would be done by social media.”
2019-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What's coming is much, much larger. And I have some exposure to what's going on in AI. I give a very large gift to MIT to start a new college of computing to deal with the ethical issues involved with AI as well as accelerated research. And I've done something with Oxford University, which was also quite substantial to deal with sort of the ethical elements of AI. And so I get to sort of hang around people who are the state of the art. It's quite fascinating for me because the whole field is evolving so fast. Absolutely.”
2019-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, how did you look at that? You invested in hotels, you've invested in all kinds of different things, but I don't think there's an industry that's not impacted by technology in terms of mostly negative, it seems, is like that whatever it's, whether it's cars, whether it's hotels, whether it's real estate, it's all affected by automation or robotics or AI or some new, especially the newer things that are coming down the pipe. Seems like most people think tech has already done a lot of damage and impact and what's coming is rather larger in comparison.”
2019-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You going to be a beneficiary or a victim of these profound changes. So it's really changed the way anybody who's informed looks at investing”
2019-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“While tech is the most profound force in investing today because it's so disruptive that there are very few companies that are not tech companies that will be able to withstand the changes that technology brings in terms of preserving their business model. So whatever you look at today in terms of the investment world, you could look at tech itself, and that's really fascinating and with very high growth. But you have to look at all other companies and say,”
2019-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The people who sell to China raw materials slow, our people get scared in the States. They start slowing. So it's a basic loser, you know, in terms of where we all are. And hopefully in the fullness of time, whatever that is, both countries will Recognize that there need to be changes. The Chinese understand this. The technology stuff is different. And the technology stuff, and maybe you want to talk about that in the next section, is looked at differently and treated differently between the two countries.”
2019-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, nobody wants to blow everything up. I mean, that's like a terrible thing at the moment because the negotiations have broken down. That doesn't mean they will stay down, by the way. Right, of course. It's just these things really ebb and flow that the whole world is slowing down. So you have a situation where China slows.”
2019-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Best product should always win. We should have systems that are roughly equivalent for entry and exit. We should have equal access to markets. There is all kinds of issues.”
2019-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, well, there are all kinds of things that people get stuck on. But to have a system that's more or less the best product should win or the cheapest product should win is fine.”
2019-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But their integration and what they can do from a policy point of view is something we can't do. And the playing field is not level. They recognize that and what these negotiations are trying to do, and it can't happen in a day because they've been doing this unbelievably successfully for 40 years, is to try and get these two countries on roughly equivalent types of foundations. And if you're Chinese, as you could imagine, It's been 40 years of the fastest growth in the history of the world. Why change? If you're American, where, and it's not just American, it's developed world You sort of look at this and say, but this isn't fair, we should really.”
2019-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To make it really simple is trying to have these tariffs equal. And the way the numbers work, tariffs and taxes were 9% for the Chinese entering and 27% if the US tried to bring a good. So the US is trying to do to make it simple. They don't care if the Chinese come down to nine for us or they go down to 18 and we go up to 18 or we go up to 27 Where they are because this tariffs and taxes. And so what's trying to be achieved is just sort of equality. At the moment, this is very unbalanced playing field in China's favor. There are a lot of reasons they're successful. They work really hard. They're really dead.”
2019-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Economy that's highly protected where its tariffs and taxes, people forget why this is all going on, were three times the United States. So it costs somebody in the United States three times just higher to sell a product into China as the exact same product manufactured in China taken back to the United States. And so what the U.S. government is trying to do”
2019-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it's now in a theater near you. You know, what's happening now, and so one of the things that is fascinating about this is the role that the Schwarzmann scholars can play and also as a result of things like this and some other stuff, I get to have a very unusual position between the two countries just because I'm trusted by both of them. And I'm an American first, that's for sure, but you'd like to work out something where there can be a transition from a very particular kind of emerging markets.”
2019-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I had the right concept. I just got the timing wrong. In other words, I thought this problem was going to take at least 10 years. To manifest”
2019-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In these types of situations, and that that kind of transparency and glue and understanding with a group of people developed over time is one way that you make sure the world remains a peaceful place. And a non hostile place. And so my vision was that based on lifespan, you'd probably have somewhere around 13, 14,000 Schwarzmann scholars steady-state that they would form a network. Would be one of the most extraordinary networks in the world by the character and expertise of the people spread around the world each going back to where they came from. Be future leaders”
2019-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Or to create certain policies. That they think will be at least popular. Usually what happens with those types of policies is they don't change anything. And those people stay in a bad financial situation. And so what happens is they start running out of domestic targets. And then they look for foreign devils. And so I was pretty sure that China would be. That target for America. And the reason was that the wealth was being transferred to the emerging market countries, and China is the largest by far. The jobs were moving there as well because it was so much cheaper to manufacture there. And so the combination of jobs plus wealth was going to lead to a lot of anger. And it became clear to me that if you didn't set up links between these two countries, if you didn't explain what was going on to each because nobody is a saint.”
2019-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The reason was quite clear that in America was the start of populism And you could see that as a result of the financial crisis, that regular people were having a very difficult time. And usually that's the start of populism. Politicians typically use that anger to either get elected. Sure.”
2019-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We have a maximum of 200. We started with 110. We're now at 140. This will be the fourth year. We're playing with the curriculum to get it just right. And we'll get up to our 200.”
2019-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because it's the first academic program any president of China has ever endorsed. And so with that, we built a building I thought it would be nice to have everybody living together in the program, sort of like an Oxford Cambridge type of college. And it's turned out to be an amazing success. These students are.”
2019-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There was a new president of China Called President Xi I had met him in 2007. He was the party secretary of Shanghai. And so we got the letter over to President Xi. And of course, he wrote an endorsement letter. So I had two presidents. Endorsing this non existent program. And in China, that's a big deal.”
2019-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“15 to 1 Chinese coming here compared to American studying. And all of a sudden, the best in the world were going to China. We accept about 3-4% of the people who apply, so it's much more selective, if you will, than at Stanford or Harvard. And I got President Obama because he was somebody I knew. I happened to be in Washington. I was chairman of the Kennedy Center. There. So I would see him a lot. And he said, Hey, what's going on? I said, Well, I'm starting this thing in China. He said, what a great idea. He said, How can I help you? So I said, Well, you can either do a video or you can do a letter of endorsement or something. He said, fine, I'm glad to do that. So I got that letter and they were about to announce this at the Great Hall of the People in China. And I knew if I had a letter from the president of the United States.”
2019-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I said, yeah. So I said, Look, I think we need like $300 million. I'll put up $100 and I'll raise the rest of the money. So, you know, I was like door to door salesman. Anybody I met in that period, including Ray Delio, who gave me $10 million to start in and ultimately went to $25 million. And houses and apartments, when you renovate them. Takes twice as long, costs twice as much. So by the time we finish this exercise, it actually needs $600 million for this Schwarzmann scholars. So we're up to $575 million. But what's important”
2019-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“As well as get a master's degree. So, with that as the concept, the president there said, sounds great. That's expensive.”
2019-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So he said, Look, I'll be really open. What would you like to do? So I said, I'd like to. He said, Would you like to do a student exchange? I said, well, there are tons of student exchanges. That's pretty boring. I said, I'd like to do something different. I'd like to use in effect the Rhode Scholarship model. I'd like to bring the best people from around the world to come to China to spend a year to learn about China, all things Chinese, whether it's Chinese history, politics. Sort of travel around the country, I thought it would be really neat if they had a mentor Was a famous person in China who could take them home to their families, have them do special travel, also work at a Chinese ministry or not-for-profit or company for a little bit.”
2019-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then the next president showed up I was living in Paris, and he flew to Paris. If you're Chinese and you work for university, you just don't fly to Paris. You just don't buy a ticket like an array of dialogue. You need special permissions. So I realized this was a big deal. He wanted me to support the university.”
2019-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The Schwarzmann Scholars, that's a pretty amazing thing. I'm going to Beijing next week because it's the opening of the school year and I always go over and meet all the new students and give a lecture and things of that type. But this was started as a result of a university there called Chenhua, which is their number one university, having its 100th anniversary. the president was soliciting me for money in the midst of the financial crisis so his timing was awful so he actually retired and i thought i was safe”
2019-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. And, you know, not only do I do this in business in my charitable activities, I don't typically give money to something that's existing. I usually like to identify a really, really important Problem and then I'll have a solution. To implement that, you have to build an organization. And unfortunately for me, if you have to build an organization, you have to pay for a bunch of it because the organization doesn't exist. And I love doing things like that.”
2019-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What you learn in life is that most people don't like to change. And you're there as a change agent. And so usually they say no. So you have to have enormous tolerance for rejection and pain. It is painful for people to tell you what you believe in. Is from their perspective irrelevant or worthless. And so the tenacity that it takes and the loneliness that it takes is what most people who go into entrepreneurial activities are not prepared for. It's not like regular life. And it's a 24 7. It extends almost seven days a week if you really want to be successful. And it's a journey.”
2019-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Into the pursuit. And, you know, I talk about what it's like to try and start something and get people to join you because usually that's a tough thing because usually great people are already working somewhere else. They're getting paid a lot. You don't have so much money when you start, so you have to convince people. And the people you hired at the beginning, you often outgrow. Normally, we're all kind. We don't want to let somebody know who has been with us. But if they can't keep up and you don't, you know, sort of replace them with somebody who's better for the next phase, then the whole organization bogs down. So you have to make those choices, and you have to recognize that when you're selling your new product or service, whatever it is, you usually fail. The first time you think it's great.”
2019-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, that's part of it, but basically, I'm trying to tell people how they should be thinking about things if they want to achieve things. And, you know, there's a way of looking at something new. And if you're going to start something, for example, you know, you're in the entrepreneurial world. Don't start something that somebody else has already done. Just hoping you could do it a little bit better. Come up with something really grand, really big. Really new and make sure it's going to work because we only have so many shots on goal. If we're pursuing one thing, we can't be doing something else. So it has to be, I call it a worthy fantasy. And once you have that. It's time to put 100% of your efforts.”
2019-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And how this was before Ray. Okay. And who's a good friend of mine? And that way I don't have to tell everybody the same story. And that was the Genesis.”
2019-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He wanted advice from you. He said, don't waste your time. We buy your products anyhow. I don't want to talk about that. I need your advice. So I did that. And then sort of strangely, it started happening all over the place. And so, you know, for me, it's pretty easy to talk about things like that because I've done that with my life. And nobody wanted to hear about me. In terms of individual products. And so after doing that for a few years, I said, boy, this is starting to get boring. Maybe I ought to write a book. That Ray Dalio has one.”
2019-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And probably around five years ago, I was in the Middle East meeting with the head of a very large sovereign wealth fund, and there was a new royal family member who was in charge. I was supposed to shake his hand five minutes and disappear. And he started asking me some questions. Like, how do you do what you do? We're not as good as you. How do you think about investing? How do you think about growing your firm? How do you think about who you hire? How do you think about the world and how it's changing? So we ended up spending two and a half hours. And I thought that was interesting. I tried to sell him some of our products and he said, He wanted advice from you.”
2019-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so we buy companies. We buy real estate and we fix it up. We fix up the companies too. We're the largest investor in hedge funds. And we also are in the credit extension business. We lend money to lesser rated credits. So we do other things within that, but it's four big buckets with 548 billion dollars. We're the largest in the world doing this type of work by far. No one else is close really size-wise. And so in Wall Street, you kind of had an enormous reputation. You've obviously extended that to politics and other areas where you try to influence different policies and things like that. But one of the things recently I want to get into, so I don't get a sense that you're extraordinarily powerful, but you're also a very close advisor, President Trump or have been.”
2019-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He said, I'll teach you how to write, and I'll give you the answers because you can't think and write at the same time. Right, okay. And then after you learn how to write then, you can learn how to think. I'll teach you how to think. And instead of failing out, my first year I ended up on Dean's list. But it was really because of him. Right. Oh, fascinating. So teachers, we're going to get to the topic of teachers because you have some interesting proposals around that. So you obviously you're extraordinarily famous as a private equity. You're one of the most successful. Blackstone invests all over. Give people a sense of what you all have invested in, especially lately. Well, we do a variety of things. We're in what's called the alternative asset business. That's like a funny kind of name for things other than just stocks and bonds.”
2019-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To review my papers. And he said, I'm here to review the papers. I said, well, there's not much reason for a meeting. And so he said, why is that? I said, because I had nothing to say. And I said it poorly. And he said, My God, you're not stupid. So you're not stupid. So there is some chance for you, young man. So he taught me.”
2019-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, today we have a market capitalization of 60 billion. So that's a good run, but it doesn't happen instantaneously. And before that, I worked at Lehman Brothers. That's where I started my career. And I finished up as head of the Merging Acquisition Department. We were the most active department on Wall Street doing that. And before that, I was at Harvard Business School. I was in the Army for a while. and went to Yale before that, which was really fascinating. My first English paper, I got a 68. It was Melville, Bartle B. the Scrivener. Oh, my God. And then my second English paper, I got a 66. So the trend was not looking good. Right. And my professor called me in for meeting.”
2019-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Initiation into retail. And that's why I'm in finance. Right. Okay. Of course, you're not in retail. I work in retail too. And then you came up through, you went to amazing schools. You served and everything. So talk a little bit about sort of your journey to the Blackstone, which you started in 1985 with Peterson with just a small amount of money. You were starting it as. Yeah, we started with $400,000.”
2019-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Hi, I'm Kara Swisher, editor Large of Recode. You may know me as someone who's buying as much real estate in Iceland as I can before someone tells President Trump it's greener than Greenland, but in my spare time I talk tech and you're listening to Recode Decode from the Vox Media Podcast Network. Today in the red chair is Steve Schwartzmann, the chairman and CEO of the private equity firm The Blackstone Group, which he co-founded in 1985. He's also the former chairman of President Trump's Strategic and Policy Forum and the creator of the International Scholarship Program called the Schwartzmann Scholars, which aims to help future leaders understand China better. I'm very excited to have him here because he's also author of a new book called What It Takes, Lessons in the Pursuit of Excellence. Steve, welcome to Rico Decode. Well, thanks. Thanks for having me. Well, I have a lot. There's so much to talk about right now. I'm not sure where to start. Besides Greenland, Iceland, wherever the heck you want to buy, we'll get into that because you can explain it for the people that it's understood.”
2019-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT