LIVE! Find your Trojan horse, w/Robert F. Smith
Masters of Scale
WaitWhat
4.6 • 4.4K Ratings
🗓️ 5 December 2019
⏱️ 65 minutes
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Summary
Recorded live at Summit LA: Every great founder has a second purpose — something outside their main business they're trying to get done in the world. And every successful company is like a Trojan horse, carrying this second purpose forward. No one knows this better than Robert F. Smith. You may know him for his legendary Morehouse commencement speech (in which he promised to pay off the student loan debt of the entire graduating class), but Robert's scaling success and philanthropic work go far beyond that. As founder, chairman and CEO of private equity firm Vista Equity Partners, Robert finds profound ways to serve both his business and his second purpose — liberating people to reach their true potential — at scale. Cameo appearance: Sir Ken Robinson.
Live stage photography: Jaime Fernandez (@jaymoxias)
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, it's Bob Safian. You've been hearing me as the host of rapid response in this feed for a few years now, |
| 0:07.8 | with short newsy interviews alongside the deeper dives of Masters of Scale. Well, I'm excited to share that rapid response is expanding into its own feed. |
| 0:17.0 | We'll be putting out shows twice a week, focusing on the urgent issues that business leaders are dealing with in real time. |
| 0:24.7 | So search for rapid response in your podcast player |
| 0:28.0 | and subscribe to make sure you get all our episodes. |
| 0:31.2 | I'll see you on the other side. |
| 0:33.0 | You got to have incredible talent at every position. It's like this is a huge push. |
| 0:43.0 | There are fires burning when you go on home. |
| 0:45.0 | Can you believe it? |
| 0:46.0 | Such an idiot. |
| 0:47.0 | And then you go back to this is totally going to be amazing. |
| 0:50.0 | There are so many easy ways. |
| 0:52.0 | So I have no idea what to do. |
| 0:54.0 | Sorry, we made a mistake. |
| 0:55.0 | But you have to time it right. |
| 0:57.0 | Oops. Working out of a free bed of a partner. |
| 0:59.0 | Stuff that just seems absolutely not balls. |
| 1:01.0 | Ten years later, well, that's just how you do it. |
| 1:03.4 | We haven't made it just how you do it. |
| 1:08.6 | This is Masters of Scale. |
| 1:10.6 | We'll start the show in a moment. scale. |
| 1:19.0 | We'll start the show in a moment, afterward from a Premier Brand Partner, Capital One Business. I woke up in the middle of the night because I had this nightmare that we were front-page news, that we've done the stupidest mistake of our life by making best pivot. |
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