The bromance that rebuilt Detroit: Dan Gilbert and Mayor Mike Duggan

Masters of Scale

WaitWhat

Entrepreneurship, Business, Management, Reid Hoffman, Mindset, Diversity & Inclusion, Jeff Berman, Bob Safian, Startups

4.6 • 4.4K Ratings

🗓️ 16 August 2025

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

As we gear up for our 2025 Masters of Scale Summit, we’re revisiting one of the stellar on-stage conversations that happened at the 2024 event. Hear Rocket Companies’ Dan Gilbert and Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan reveal how their unique public-private partnerships have transformed the struggling city into a growing hub for everything from tech companies to electric vehicle manufacturing.

Note: this conversation was recorded in October of 2024, before Duggan announced he would not seek another term as mayor and is instead running for governor of Michigan as an independent.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey listeners, we're launching a new Masters of Scale survey, and we'd love your input.
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1:03.6	JustWorks for your people. Hey folks, Jeff Berman here. As we gear up for our next Masters of Scale summit in October,
1:13.6	we wanted to share one of the best conversations that happened on stage last time we gathered for this event.
1:19.7	Our friend Naima Raza, now the host of the Smart Girl, Dumb Questions podcast,
1:25.3	interviewed Rocket Company's founder Dan Gilbert and Detroit Mayor Mike
1:28.9	Duggan. They reveal how their unique public private sector partnership has fueled an
1:34.3	incredible rebuilding of this iconic Midwestern city. I hope you enjoy the conversation as much
1:40.8	as we did.
1:52.2	I was just in Detroit. You guys have done a ton with the place. I want to find out what are the lessons that are translatable to other cities like San Francisco, what you've learned and how
1:57.0	does it translate. I want to know how you two work together, the public, private,
2:01.6	thoughts of it all. Does this been faster than you expected or slower than you expected?
2:06.7	The change in Detroit, I mean, you moved your headquarters there in 2007. So did you expect
2:13.5	that Detroit would be where it is right now? Is it on track, or is it? Well, we announced it in 2007. We didn't move to 2010 and then we kept moving people after that.
2:22.3	We were, we had thousands of people in the suburbs of Detroit spread all over the place and
	...

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