the photographs be up right thank you
so last year I went to an extraordinary
startup gathering this is the kind of
thing you’ve all been to before 5,000
young people gathered to brainstorm and
network and do all the things which we
love here in New York California and
Austin the thing that was remarkable
about this one is it took place in Cairo
Egypt more extraordinarily was the day
before 24 hours before that another
group separate group of young people
were gathered in Beirut Lebanon for the
same reason now I think that if 10,000
young Arabs were gathered in 48 hours to
discuss the Muslim Brotherhood we’d all
know about it it would be on the front
page of the New York Times I suspect
many of us in this room never heard
about this or that last year I went to
three similar events of thousands in
Saudi Arabia just came back from one in
Dubai because it’s happening all the
time all across the Middle East in North
Africa and in Bangkok and in Vietnam in
South Africa Nairobi across Latin
America what gives
now I can’t tell you what Syria is going
to look like in a year I don’t know what
a softening China is going to look like
in three but I can say with 100%
certainty that by the end of this decade
two-thirds of humanity is going to be
walking around with some kind of smart
device in their pocket by the way right
now in the Middle East that’s already
number been exceeded particularly in the
Gulf and the GCC now a lot of times when
people think I talk about a smart device
doesn’t really mean much it means an
ever better ever lighter ever flatter
screens and features but I think what
they truly miss is that billions of
people are going to be walking around
who have got more computing capacity in
their pocket than all of NASA had in
1969 to put a man on the moon this means
that a new generation that never knew
otherwise has a political economic
cultural societal voice but more
importantly the capabilities to
implement that voice by the billions it
means people have universal access to
the world all of human knowledge at our
fingertips essentially for free we have
unprecedented sharing of ideas and
collaboration a true sense of
empowerment which is when you see
someone like you or in your situation or
someone you aspire
to be or even just someone you connect
with and they do something that succeeds
that means you can do it and succeeds
and you’re going to pass it around as
well it means less fear of centralized
Authority and the ability for problems
will be solved the bottom up by the very
people have the greatest stake and
wanting to solve them
this phenomenon is amazingly organic and
self taught year and a half ago I was in
Iran take a look at these fixtures every
course every blog all best practices all
connectivity is available there as it is
everywhere and everywhere this is
driving rises of middle class around the
world
there is no precedence for this in
history now I’ve been spending a lot of
time in the Middle East in recent years
and it is undoubtedly a tough
neighborhood but the fact is we in the
West only hear about the tough
neighborhood we only hear about this one
narrative and what I just described is
often viewed at best when it is talked
about as unimportant trivial to the
great political macroeconomic challenges
of our time but tell that to a woman who
historically and culturally has been
limited and opportunity now how many of
you can guess what is the largest viewer
I’ll be in on a per-capita basis but the
largest viewer of YouTube on the planet
that is Saudi Arabia the largest content
category that they’re watching is
education the largest demographic
watching our women tell that to a child
in a classroom of 70 students drilled in
rote learning barely able to keep up
graduating barely literate how many of
us have heard of naathan it’s a start-up
in Cairo Egypt which is a little bit
like Khan Academy in Arabic to help kids
have supplemental education to their
core in Egypt in other parts of the Arab
world in writing reading mathematics and
so on in two years of operation over
30,000 videos have been posted over 80
million classes have been viewed last
week sook comm the largest e-commerce
player in the Arab world was bought by
Amazon for almost 700 million dollars
now I can assure you that that was a
lightning bolt in the ecosystem for all
the obvious reasons but it was more than
that sook employs in their own right
thousands of people but more
interestingly it’s also a platform for
over 85,000 regional
small businesses hiring thousands of
people more and it’s a flywheel a spin
off of the next generation of startups
we in Silicon Valley call it the PayPal
effect because when PayPal got very
successful its spun off literally
hundreds of other of entrepreneurs you
know people like Reid Hoffman who
founded LinkedIn people like Elon Musk
who I think pretty much has founded
everything I feel convinced that we’re
going to be talking about the sukkah
calm effect when dozens and hundreds of
young entrepreneurs kick off and do
things which are very powerful last fall
the ride-sharing company in the Middle
East is called Karim was valued over a
billion dollars it’s bigger than uber
it’s faster growing than uber likewise
it’s creating thousands of jobs and
drivers feel like business owners
because in kareem they call their
drivers captains so it’s a sense of
pride it’s a sense of ownership and what
they’re doing so get this in saudi
arabia is one of the fastest growing of
korean captains now anyone knows knows
anything about saudi arabia knows that
ten years ago no man would want to drive
a car but now they are entrepreneurs in
a cream world takes friction out of
people’s lives all across the way
hundreds of thousands likely millions
this day whether big enterprises or
small crafts women who are looking to
sell their wares are using Instagram to
promote it and reaching audiences they
could never reach before and by the way
everything I’ve been talking about and
I’m only talking at the tip of the
iceberg right now according to the
Economist almost a third of these
startups in the region are run by women
which is a much higher proportion right
now than you’d see in Silicon Valley
hopefully not for long now some say that
technology is a plaything for the
wealthy in the elite and I want to tell
you a story
fadi Gondor is a remarkable dude he was
the founder of aeramax which is the
largest logistics company in the Middle
East and our and Africa Fadi also is one
of the great venture capitalists in the
region is really the go-to guy for
mentoring in this period that I’ve been
describing you overall he also started
something called roulade and reward was
started ten years ago in Amman in one of
the Palestine refugee areas and it’s a
community center built of and for the
community where people can engage meet
with each other learn civic discussion
and dialogue and also meet women and men
who come and visit robot to give ideas
of things that they can do and go in
many
different ways now robot is in Tripoli
Lebanon and Cairo
boudreaux’s and more are coming by the
way all the proceeds of my book startup
rising I’m donating to robot because
such a remarkable thing each year they
give out scholarships and Fadi
introduces and interviews every one of
the kids and here’s what he learned
every one of them this year has a
smartphone not a regular phone but like
a $300 phone because their families
pulled their money together in order to
have it so that their kids could have a
broader view of the world they all have
access to Wi-Fi because families pooled
their resources for one note in their
apartments so that people would have
access to this overall now when he asked
the kids why do you want this why do you
want your mobile device they didn’t skip
a beat
they said for face facebook or for whats
whatsapp they engage in social media in
all the ways that we do sharing pictures
connecting with friends videos and the
like but what is very very important and
I think more important is their
worldview which up until facebook was
maybe a few city blocks from where they
lived is now the world and they’re
tasting it because they see people like
them in situation like theirs well
people they connect with for whatever
reason and they see the power and
potential of what they do and believe
they can do it as well and we’ll pass it
along incredibly incredibly powerful one
of these robot kids was an extremely
talented young man in mathematics and
technology I think 10 or 15 years ago he
would have been lost but he wasn’t and
his name is Al Salam today you cannot
buy a book online in Arabic and
progressively in English in the Arab
world without going to the platform he
built called Gemmell on and he recently
raised millions of dollars in financing
it to duke it out in the e-commerce
world’s there it’s extraordinary
everything I’ve seen in the Middle East
is happening everywhere guess the
largest mobile payment country on earth
in aggregate dollars not per capita
dollars but in aggregate dollars how
many of us would guess Kenya they have a
company called m-pesa which is actually
a texting capability of moving cash and
now over 45% of the entire GDP passes
through and paisa now what if I were to
ask you about another company that was
completely tech moving forward the
government all its interactions are done
online 3G and 4G were skipped
over at all went to LTE computer
programming is required in the schools
kids have tablets smartphones and more
this place is Rwanda this is happening
across Africa Southeast Asia Latin
America Eastern Europe everywhere
there’s no going back it is the greatest
opportunity for rising societies in
history the naysayers in American
politics miss all this of course and
they miss the speed of it they miss that
we are in the infancy of new
technologies to solve problems
everywhere blockchain genomics AI and
more are solving enormous problems in
health education environment logistics
transparency of government
accountability and more they miss every
company today is a software company
think about it next time you buy a cup
of coffee the next time you look under
the hood of your car that is a software
transaction now and the skills that are
required for big companies and small
companies alike are all the same the
naysayers miss that every problem has a
software application therefore to remedy
and disrupt that problem and they miss
this change forces us to see ourselves
and the world as open opportunity no
longer can my generation and older say
wait a generation to fix the problem
because the problem can be fixed now we
can act now and it compels us to ask
very central new questions how’s the
next decade going to be different than
the last decade we neurologically are
structured true to think that the next
decade will be like the last decade we
like a continuum of narrative but it
never is so what in what I’m talking
about is different what happens when we
can all easily connect with each other
and collaborate what is a world where
everyone can transact value digital
goods services music content safely
transparently instantly no middlemen
billions of whom are all but unconnected
today but won’t be who are on a banked
today but soon will not be what human
expression may be opened up anywhere in
the world when people do not have to
labor impossible hours for impossible
wages what lives can be saved with
instant and affordable genetic diagnosis
of disease cancer treatments that will
make chemotherapy seem to our kids
what bloodletting seems to us
too often we think of innovation as the
bright shiny new thing and thank God for
the Elon Musk’s of the world who push us
into new errors and beyond our wildest
imaginations but we cannot forget that
putting a smart device in the
individuals hands for the first time
taking friction out of their lives in
any form and helping them leapfrog their
expectations is exponential innovation
as well what problems do you want to
solve here that could solve problems
anywhere
what new markets right now a click away
no harder to engage than a state away
are now available as the next billion
come to digital
do I sound too optimistic I like to
think and use often a great quote by
Czech leader in fact he was the first
president after the Berlin Wall fell
václav havel and he makes a wonderful
distinction between hope and optimism
hope he says it’s definitely not the
same thing as optimism it is not the
conviction that something will turn out
well but the certainty that something
makes sense regardless of how it turns
out it is not the conviction that
something will turn out well
it is the certainty that something makes
sense regardless of how it turns out and
here’s what makes sense and it’s
certainly not conventional wisdom in the
doom we hear only in the news today we
are living in an age of Wonders we are
living longer we are killing each other
less we are feeding each other more we
are seeing unprecedented class around
the world and it completely
unprecedented rate historically and for
all the terrible problems we face and
they are terrible never ever we had more
tools to go at the world’s challenges
old and new and have those tools but in
more people’s hands than today this new
age requires a lot of us it asks a great
deal of us it asks us to check our bias
it asks us to embrace these new tools
but more importantly new applications
and new versions and ideas that come
from different parts of the world around
these tools it requires us to go and see
these new worlds in person physically
not just virtually here and abroad and
realize what we’re talking about is not
us bringing something to someone else or
they bringing something to us
co-authorship shared expertise in
learning all in the goal to solve
problems do this and we are joining for
the first time in history a true and
global participation revolution I and I
think all of you are hopeful people
thank you [Applause]