Many of us can remember when Captain Sully Sullenberger landed a U.S. Airways Airbus on the Hudson River.

How would you react if you were on the plane that day?

Rick Elias, who's a super successful venture capitalist, was on that plane. I wanted to talk to him to

understand the lessons he learned from a near-death experience and how it

transformed him. This is a bit of optimism.

I wanted to start January 15, 2009, flight 1549 from LaGuardia to Charlotte. This is the plane that landed on the Hudson River and you were on that plane. And one thing I know because you've talked about it is how that experience

changed you. Can you tell us what happened that day and how it affected you?

Yeah listen it was January 15th, so it was very cold in New York.

I had had a good dinner the night before for work.

I got up early, went to play hoops on the upper west side and I remember walking with

snowing this big flakes and I'm like I was so beautiful I'm just gonna walk through the

gym and I had a couple meetings went to LaGuardia it was coming. I've taken that flight a hundred times.

And I was coming home and I have my son's basketball game

when we landed and I needed a coach.

And you know, that was it. I was coming home. It was a normal day. It was it was gloomy and rainy and cold in in New York City.

But to get to the crux of it, I was given the ultimate gift Simon near-death experience with zero suffering

where no one died, so you can talk about it freely,

where you had a hundred percent certainty of death. So to me the question was,

am I going to blow up or am I going to drown in freezing waters? And with 90

seconds to really look at life and say goodbye. So all that combination to me made it. It wasn't too long, it wasn't too short, kind of the right kind of parameters to really change your perspective in life.

And I was given a massive gift, which

was the chance to come back and live differently.

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