Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: Okay, you promised we talked to a serial entrepreneur who
Speaker 2: has a ton of experience in the fintech space. I
Speaker 2: want to bring in Bill Harris. He's a longtime fintech executive.
Speaker 2: He's founded or led several personal finance companies, think from
Speaker 2: companies such as into It, PayPal as well. He was
Speaker 2: the founding CEO there. He ran TurboTax, he founded Personal Capital,
Speaker 2: you remember just a few years ago that was bought
Speaker 2: by Empower, Right, so he knows a thing or two about, Yeah,
Speaker 2: how people are using these apps these days.
Speaker 1: All right, good to have you here. I got some
Speaker 1: time with you this morning, so it's good to have
Speaker 1: you back with us now that the event is underway.
Speaker 1: I'm just curious anybody you've talked to, any interesting conversations
Speaker 1: that you've had so far?
Speaker 3: Well, sure, you know. The most interesting fella here is,
Speaker 3: of course, Michael Lowe. And I've known him actually for now.
Speaker 3: I talked to him just a moment ago with forty
Speaker 3: years Wow, how forty years ago? We worked together in
Speaker 3: the magazine industry, which of course is no longer.
Speaker 4: But they did a subscription business, right, that Time Warner bought.
Speaker 3: That's right, But first we worked together at time Ink
Speaker 3: and then he left to go build the subscription business
Speaker 3: that he sold back to Time Ink.
Speaker 4: Kind of fascinating. I just can we just go there
Speaker 4: for a minute.
Speaker 1: Media, the changes that we have seen in content production
Speaker 1: where you get it, I don't know who'd thought. I mean,
Speaker 1: I used to do subscriptions right in terms of magazines
Speaker 1: and various newspapers.
Speaker 4: We don't do that anymore. What do you think it's
Speaker 4: all going?
Speaker 3: Well, it's you know, finance and media are the two
Speaker 3: industries most profoundly changed by digital technology. Yeah, because they
Speaker 3: are all just figments of our imagination and you can
Speaker 3: create them with no assets, just your mind. And so
Speaker 3: you know what happened though, is that media. The tsunami
Speaker 3: of digitization hit media fast, and old media came crumbling down,
Speaker 3: and new media obviously has just I've done nothing but
Speaker 3: the upward tilt. It has not yet happened generally speaking,
Speaker 3: in financials and services, and you still have the same
Speaker 3: fifty year old, one hundred year old, one hundred and
Speaker 3: fifty year old firms that dominate, and so that industry
Speaker 3: is now ripe for digitization.
Speaker 2: A lot of folks are working to digitize that industry.
Speaker 2: You've been working in that for decades at this point.
Speaker 2: But it's a very lucrative industry. It's also very sticky
Speaker 2: when it comes to the way people manage their assets.
Speaker 2: They don't want to move advisors, they don't want to
Speaker 2: move firms. I think, especially high net worth individuals still
Speaker 2: feel like they want somebody to talk to and that
Speaker 2: service comes with fees eighty basis points one hundred and
Speaker 2: twenty basis points. Those fees eat into returns. This is
Speaker 2: something that you've been working on for years. You did
Speaker 2: it at Personal Capital. What are you doing now at
Speaker 2: Evergreen Wealth.
Speaker 3: We're doing two things. We're doing wealth management. Wealth management
Speaker 3: for people who have let's say, investible assets of a
Speaker 3: million to and these are people who don't get the
Speaker 3: kind of white glove service that people who have ten
Speaker 3: twenty one hundred million dollars do. And so what they
Speaker 3: need is somebody who can take the tax and investment
Speaker 3: principles that the people who have more money utilize because
Speaker 3: they have tax attorneys and all the rest, and then
Speaker 3: look for someone who can use technology to make that
Speaker 3: scalable and in fact precision engineering to make it even
Speaker 3: better than traditional wealth managers deliver. If we do that,
Speaker 3: we can give them better pre tax return and then
Speaker 3: better after tax return, because that's the thing that everyone forgets.
Speaker 4: Can everybody benefit by this?
Speaker 3: Yes, absolutely, everyone who has sufficient resources that the tax
Speaker 3: impact is meaningful, and so a couple of one hundred
Speaker 3: thousand dollars to a couple of million dollars, Yes, you
Speaker 3: should absolutely be managing your investment portfolio in a tax
Speaker 3: way way.
Speaker 2: You're the founding CEO of PayPal. We talk a lot
Speaker 2: about the PayPal mafia, those folks we've spoken to Read Hoffman,
Speaker 2: David Sachs. These guys really don't need any introduction. Elon Musk,
Speaker 2: of course, is among them. To what extent are these
Speaker 2: folks still in your universe right now?
Speaker 3: Well, for the most part, we've gone separate ways. Even
Speaker 3: many of the people within within so called mafia. I've
Speaker 3: moved from Silicon Valley to Miami, so I have sort
Speaker 3: of a new set of people that I'm.
Speaker 2: Working them have too somehow, Yes, that's right. And some
Speaker 2: of them have moved back to San Francisco too. There
Speaker 2: maybe Texas some of them as well. Yeah, Okay, so
Speaker 2: on that and sort of on payments. Yes, I thought
Speaker 2: of you the other day because the crypto firm Kraken Yes,
Speaker 2: is launching this competitor to Venmo into the cash app,
Speaker 2: essentially using the blockchain to transfer money. And I'm wondering
Speaker 2: how you look at that as somebody who really pioneered
Speaker 2: technology for sending money over the internet. Is the blockchain?
Speaker 2: Is crypto really going to disrupt that?
Speaker 3: I think the blockchain is very good for some purposes.
Speaker 3: I don't have much use for cryptocurrency because we have
Speaker 3: plenty of currencies that are very good. But the blockchain
Speaker 3: can do a heck of a lot, particularly on international
Speaker 3: money movement, because we're looking at Swift, you know, which
Speaker 3: takes at least a day, sometimes multiple days to get
Speaker 3: significant money moved from America to Singapore. And with the
Speaker 3: right crypto networks, you can do it like that, that easy, sure,
Speaker 3: and that fast.
Speaker 2: So that sounds like Western Union gets disruptive in a
Speaker 2: situation like that. That's what it sounds like to me.
Speaker 3: Not quite, because Western Union. Western Union is all about
Speaker 3: the last mile, and Western Union is doing lots of
Speaker 3: little payments and for most in most of the world,
Speaker 3: it's actually agents physical agents who are who are taking
Speaker 3: the money and giving out the money. So that's a
Speaker 3: very different thing. But if you're doing bank and bank
Speaker 3: payments or business to business plan.
Speaker 4: The big guys, the big guys. Yeah, So does it
Speaker 4: happen eventually?
Speaker 3: Oh yes, yeah, yeah, there is no reason whatsoever. And
Speaker 3: to day and age, it should take multiple days to
Speaker 3: get money from here to there.
Speaker 4: Amen.
Speaker 3: But Amy we're doing twenty five years ago, we were
Speaker 3: moving money instantly, skittering it around the world at PayPal.
Speaker 3: It's not that hard.
Speaker 4: So are there going to be big players in it?
Speaker 3: I don't know. I don't follow. I don't follow what's happening.
Speaker 3: You know, Ripple took a stab at it for a while,
Speaker 3: but I haven't heard anything about that in a while,
Speaker 3: So I don't know what.
Speaker 1: You know, just got about thirty seconds here. I mean,
Speaker 1: AIS have obviously the trend that everybody talks about in
Speaker 1: terms of its impact.
Speaker 4: Is there anything else though outside of AI? Or is
Speaker 4: it really just.
Speaker 1: About artificial intelligence which is not a new thing but
Speaker 1: it's certainly on a different level too.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So I'll just say quickly, in what I'm doing Evergreen Wealth,
Speaker 3: we're doing two things. First of all, we're using AI
Speaker 3: to revolutionize how financial advice can be delivered. But the
Speaker 3: other important thing we're doing is bringing tax considerations into
Speaker 3: investment management, because it's not what you earn, it's what
Speaker 3: you keep that counts.
Speaker 4: Increasingly, right and really, yeah, no, it's huge. We always
Speaker 4: talk about that in terms of the market.
Speaker 1: You don't want to be Yeah, it's not just about
Speaker 1: gain what you gain, but it's also making sure you
Speaker 1: minimize your losses. Right, great, thank you so much. Thank
Speaker 1: you really appreciate Bill Harris, former CEO of PayPal and
Speaker 1: so much more. Currently founder and CEO of Evergreen Money,
Speaker 1: which we talked about Evergreen Wealth as well. So delighted
Speaker 1: to have him here an uncharted community summit.