thank you very nice warm introduction I
just wanted to thank Hofstra University
for making this opportunity possible and
as you mentioned I graduated in 89 very
fun memories what I’d like to talk about
today is what I call the hindsight fund
and how you can use humor in day to day
experiences if you do what you do on a
day-to-day basis the question is how do
you maintain your sanity and your
humanity and my solution is to invest
humor in everything seriously the
hindsight fund is a construct that I
came up with several years ago and it’s
simply a place for me to store the
interesting opportunities and
experiences that I’ve had throughout my
business career in it you might find
Bitcoin or some Microsoft stock or stock
from the Facebook IPO you might even
find a nice Tribeca loft in the
hindsight fund but I’ll get back to the
hind side fund a little bit later first
I’d like to provide for you some
historical context as to how this all
came about so I was born into a family
of comedians and they’re not
professional comedians but amateur
closeted comedians if you will we had
dinner Queens New York we had family
dinners and they weren’t so much dinners
we had cousins there they weren’t so
much family dinners they were really
open mic nights and we would just spend
hours trying to make each other laugh
and this distracted us from eating which
if you saw the food maybe it wasn’t such
a bad thing but nonetheless we carried
on humor was ingrained in us
and it carried through to my first job
at the age of 12 which was at my
father’s deli also in Queens New York
and we used humor there as well I guess
it was a coping mechanism a way to deal
with the customers that were from the
neighborhood and were challenging let’s
just say but we used humor when the
customers would challenge us or ask us
or joke with us and say you’re only 12
years old isn’t that child labor and we
would laugh and respond and say well we
call it quality family time
anyway early on in my career humor
became not just a coping mechanism but a
method of interaction and creating
strong interpersonal relationships in
both a business setting and a personal
setting so this continued on to the
early days of my career and as I
transitioned through high school and
university I came here at Hofstra came
upon a fraternity called Alpha Kappa Psi
and as a business fraternity co-ed and a
woman in this fraternity from Brooklyn
she introduced me to this concept of a
finance company on Wall Street and she
said here’s what these people are making
their first year out of school and I
said nobody I said nobody makes that
kind of money at a school first year
it’s just not possible
she said well at this place it is so I
figured ok I can curb my comedic
inclinations and focus on getting into
this place and my view was once you get
in you’re in so just get in so I figured
out a way to get into this company and I
figured let me just put the comedy on
hold for now and I can always circle
back to that at some point in the future
well the comedy emerged fairly early on
one of my first bosses came up to me and
this now just understand the context
it’s a finance company it’s very serious
place not only was I doing finance but I
was also doing insurance so you kind of
put them together and it’s very
difficult to comprehend how exciting
that might be but it is I assure you and
so in that context one of the bosses
comes up to me and he says I guess
jokingly but he said do you have any
friend tell me you have any natural
fibers in that suit I don’t know if he
was making fun of me or if he was just
joking but I said yeah I think there’s
some I think there’s some wool in here
maybe and some maybe some fiberglass
that makes it shiny and then he said you
know you really can’t come in here
wearing shoes like that like what’s
wrong with my shoes my mother got me
these she was saying so I said and
what’s with the obsession with my
clothing so apparently I had to get some
new clothes and which I promptly did and
just to try to adapt into this situation
but I decided you know I’m gonna respond
to him in a way that Robert De Niro
would respond to him and I said are you
busting my chops is that what you’re
doing are you busting my chops say it
right now if you’re gonna bust my chops
say it again go get your shine box stop
busting my chops excuse me audio so that
was sort of my foray at the time into
incorporating comedy into business and
then I decided to get into comedy a
little bit more so a friend approached
me and he said what do you think about
doing stand-up comedy at a variety show
that I’m producing in the village
Greenwich Village and I said sure I’d
love to and that sounds like a great
idea I could kill my career in one night
and so I talked to a business partner of
mine and I said I’m gonna do some
stand-up comedy would you like to go and
he said that if you do that people
there’s a good chance people are not
going to take you seriously
I thought about that and I said well
maybe that’s a risk but maybe that’s not
such a bad thing
so anyway I did the variety show I loved
it people laughed and I felt good it was
a win-win I decided to continue to do it
so I started doing corporate
performances and then a friend of mine
from India asked me to come over to
India for a wedding to do stand-up
comedy at the wedding which I did by
myself in Hindi okay not in Hindi in
english but amazing experience another
friend of mine a New York lawyer said
hey we’ve got a bunch of venture
capitalists that we’re throwing a
weekend party for would you like to
perform at it I’d love to do it he said
can you do something a little bit
tailored for venture capitalists and I
said venture capital and comedy they
they were born together needless to say
was a very short thing and then another
friend of mine invited me to Ireland to
do a stand-up comedy for a charity thing
so I said yes jumped at it and I went
over there and I thought it would be a
pretty receptive crowd I bombed okay
here’s the thing you can’t compete with
an open bar it’s the bottom line role in
comedy okay you just won’t win never
ever so I learned from that but I’ll
tell you I realized even while kind of
doing both comedy and business and
finance that you can do both and that
it’s not a bad thing to not be serious
all the time and then I vowed to never
not use a double negative ever again
Communications okay there’s corpse speak
business buzzwords all of that this
started to build up in me listening to
the same things that people would say
you know is it a good idea say well it’s
just not in our wheelhouse you know you
got to keep your nose to the grindstone
right I just don’t have the bandwidth
looks like we’re gonna have to write
is that one so after a while I just
couldn’t listen to that anymore
and then I started noticing that
acronyms were proliferating and you know
the basic accurate you got yuppie you
got NIMBY right not in my backyard
you got IRS got TEDx all of these are
fine okay the acronyms are fine but then
in business they started to really jump
out at me observational e and I said
okay somebody came to me and they said
can you please perform this DCF analysis
so we can calculate the NPV ASAP and I
said WTF I said an FW gtfo and it
followed it up by saying DNA Toa M do
not attempt to out acronym me then they
came out with this thing called emails
and emails have gotten to a point
technology in the business world emails
have gotten to a point where it’s send
people to jail you just click send with
the wrong stuff in it and you go to jail
it’s a jail okay there’s a lot of emails
in the hindsight funds of very many
politicians and business people the
other thing that I noticed was that the
salutations at the end of the emails
started to get increasingly ridiculous
didn’t say started with just regards and
then then somebody would go back and
best regards right and then as is kind
regards then they come back in warmest
regards and I just wrote back do not
attempt to out regard me
anyway technology is really shaping a
lot right now as you know and thank you
for not having your smart phones out at
this moment but the question is what is
the future of humor particularly in the
context of this conference being focused
on what’s next so is the future of humor
will it incorporate artificial
intelligence perhaps will AI be able to
create funny stuff in the future I don’t
know I’m not sure look I just heard
recently that Waze is dating Siri
okay and that’s Siri then left ways for
Alexa okay they met online by the way I
had a conversation with Alexa once at my
friend’s house and I asked Alexa I said
Alexa are you self-aware she said I’ll
get back to you on that
so better than no answer by the way but
I said Alexa can you do a Brooklyn
accent and she said yeah whatever stop
busting my chops and I said then I said
let me just play around a little bit I
said Alexa I Michael Caine I do Michael
Caine voice and I said I lecture
Who am I right now and for that one
there was no answer and then I asked her
Alexa so what exactly is hindsight fund
and Alexis said a hindsight fund well I
said Alexa let me answer for you
hindsight fund is a place where you can
store all of your experiences in a safe
place that you could hopefully draw from
and apply in the future to both business
and personal settings and to that end
I would like to say in the future in a
business setting in a business setting
or in a personal setting if you’re in a
business setting use all lines of
communication that might be possible and
available in a business setting to the
extent that you can apply comedy and
humor to those lines of communications
you should do that
and in a business setting please don’t
take yourself too seriously I’m serious
thank you
[Applause]
just wanted to thank Hofstra University
for making this opportunity possible and
as you mentioned I graduated in 89 very
fun memories what I’d like to talk about
today is what I call the hindsight fund
and how you can use humor in day to day
experiences if you do what you do on a
day-to-day basis the question is how do
you maintain your sanity and your
humanity and my solution is to invest
humor in everything seriously the
hindsight fund is a construct that I
came up with several years ago and it’s
simply a place for me to store the
interesting opportunities and
experiences that I’ve had throughout my
business career in it you might find
Bitcoin or some Microsoft stock or stock
from the Facebook IPO you might even
find a nice Tribeca loft in the
hindsight fund but I’ll get back to the
hind side fund a little bit later first
I’d like to provide for you some
historical context as to how this all
came about so I was born into a family
of comedians and they’re not
professional comedians but amateur
closeted comedians if you will we had
dinner Queens New York we had family
dinners and they weren’t so much dinners
we had cousins there they weren’t so
much family dinners they were really
open mic nights and we would just spend
hours trying to make each other laugh
and this distracted us from eating which
if you saw the food maybe it wasn’t such
a bad thing but nonetheless we carried
on humor was ingrained in us
and it carried through to my first job
at the age of 12 which was at my
father’s deli also in Queens New York
and we used humor there as well I guess
it was a coping mechanism a way to deal
with the customers that were from the
neighborhood and were challenging let’s
just say but we used humor when the
customers would challenge us or ask us
or joke with us and say you’re only 12
years old isn’t that child labor and we
would laugh and respond and say well we
call it quality family time
anyway early on in my career humor
became not just a coping mechanism but a
method of interaction and creating
strong interpersonal relationships in
both a business setting and a personal
setting so this continued on to the
early days of my career and as I
transitioned through high school and
university I came here at Hofstra came
upon a fraternity called Alpha Kappa Psi
and as a business fraternity co-ed and a
woman in this fraternity from Brooklyn
she introduced me to this concept of a
finance company on Wall Street and she
said here’s what these people are making
their first year out of school and I
said nobody I said nobody makes that
kind of money at a school first year
it’s just not possible
she said well at this place it is so I
figured ok I can curb my comedic
inclinations and focus on getting into
this place and my view was once you get
in you’re in so just get in so I figured
out a way to get into this company and I
figured let me just put the comedy on
hold for now and I can always circle
back to that at some point in the future
well the comedy emerged fairly early on
one of my first bosses came up to me and
this now just understand the context
it’s a finance company it’s very serious
place not only was I doing finance but I
was also doing insurance so you kind of
put them together and it’s very
difficult to comprehend how exciting
that might be but it is I assure you and
so in that context one of the bosses
comes up to me and he says I guess
jokingly but he said do you have any
friend tell me you have any natural
fibers in that suit I don’t know if he
was making fun of me or if he was just
joking but I said yeah I think there’s
some I think there’s some wool in here
maybe and some maybe some fiberglass
that makes it shiny and then he said you
know you really can’t come in here
wearing shoes like that like what’s
wrong with my shoes my mother got me
these she was saying so I said and
what’s with the obsession with my
clothing so apparently I had to get some
new clothes and which I promptly did and
just to try to adapt into this situation
but I decided you know I’m gonna respond
to him in a way that Robert De Niro
would respond to him and I said are you
busting my chops is that what you’re
doing are you busting my chops say it
right now if you’re gonna bust my chops
say it again go get your shine box stop
busting my chops excuse me audio so that
was sort of my foray at the time into
incorporating comedy into business and
then I decided to get into comedy a
little bit more so a friend approached
me and he said what do you think about
doing stand-up comedy at a variety show
that I’m producing in the village
Greenwich Village and I said sure I’d
love to and that sounds like a great
idea I could kill my career in one night
and so I talked to a business partner of
mine and I said I’m gonna do some
stand-up comedy would you like to go and
he said that if you do that people
there’s a good chance people are not
going to take you seriously
I thought about that and I said well
maybe that’s a risk but maybe that’s not
such a bad thing
so anyway I did the variety show I loved
it people laughed and I felt good it was
a win-win I decided to continue to do it
so I started doing corporate
performances and then a friend of mine
from India asked me to come over to
India for a wedding to do stand-up
comedy at the wedding which I did by
myself in Hindi okay not in Hindi in
english but amazing experience another
friend of mine a New York lawyer said
hey we’ve got a bunch of venture
capitalists that we’re throwing a
weekend party for would you like to
perform at it I’d love to do it he said
can you do something a little bit
tailored for venture capitalists and I
said venture capital and comedy they
they were born together needless to say
was a very short thing and then another
friend of mine invited me to Ireland to
do a stand-up comedy for a charity thing
so I said yes jumped at it and I went
over there and I thought it would be a
pretty receptive crowd I bombed okay
here’s the thing you can’t compete with
an open bar it’s the bottom line role in
comedy okay you just won’t win never
ever so I learned from that but I’ll
tell you I realized even while kind of
doing both comedy and business and
finance that you can do both and that
it’s not a bad thing to not be serious
all the time and then I vowed to never
not use a double negative ever again
Communications okay there’s corpse speak
business buzzwords all of that this
started to build up in me listening to
the same things that people would say
you know is it a good idea say well it’s
just not in our wheelhouse you know you
got to keep your nose to the grindstone
right I just don’t have the bandwidth
looks like we’re gonna have to write
is that one so after a while I just
couldn’t listen to that anymore
and then I started noticing that
acronyms were proliferating and you know
the basic accurate you got yuppie you
got NIMBY right not in my backyard
you got IRS got TEDx all of these are
fine okay the acronyms are fine but then
in business they started to really jump
out at me observational e and I said
okay somebody came to me and they said
can you please perform this DCF analysis
so we can calculate the NPV ASAP and I
said WTF I said an FW gtfo and it
followed it up by saying DNA Toa M do
not attempt to out acronym me then they
came out with this thing called emails
and emails have gotten to a point
technology in the business world emails
have gotten to a point where it’s send
people to jail you just click send with
the wrong stuff in it and you go to jail
it’s a jail okay there’s a lot of emails
in the hindsight funds of very many
politicians and business people the
other thing that I noticed was that the
salutations at the end of the emails
started to get increasingly ridiculous
didn’t say started with just regards and
then then somebody would go back and
best regards right and then as is kind
regards then they come back in warmest
regards and I just wrote back do not
attempt to out regard me
anyway technology is really shaping a
lot right now as you know and thank you
for not having your smart phones out at
this moment but the question is what is
the future of humor particularly in the
context of this conference being focused
on what’s next so is the future of humor
will it incorporate artificial
intelligence perhaps will AI be able to
create funny stuff in the future I don’t
know I’m not sure look I just heard
recently that Waze is dating Siri
okay and that’s Siri then left ways for
Alexa okay they met online by the way I
had a conversation with Alexa once at my
friend’s house and I asked Alexa I said
Alexa are you self-aware she said I’ll
get back to you on that
so better than no answer by the way but
I said Alexa can you do a Brooklyn
accent and she said yeah whatever stop
busting my chops and I said then I said
let me just play around a little bit I
said Alexa I Michael Caine I do Michael
Caine voice and I said I lecture
Who am I right now and for that one
there was no answer and then I asked her
Alexa so what exactly is hindsight fund
and Alexis said a hindsight fund well I
said Alexa let me answer for you
hindsight fund is a place where you can
store all of your experiences in a safe
place that you could hopefully draw from
and apply in the future to both business
and personal settings and to that end
I would like to say in the future in a
business setting in a business setting
or in a personal setting if you’re in a
business setting use all lines of
communication that might be possible and
available in a business setting to the
extent that you can apply comedy and
humor to those lines of communications
you should do that
and in a business setting please don’t
take yourself too seriously I’m serious
thank you
[Applause]
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