Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week inside from the reporters and
Speaker 1: editors who bring you America's most trusted business magazine, plus
Speaker 1: global business, finance and tech news. The Bloomberg Business Week
Speaker 1: Podcast with Carol Messer and Tim Stenebeck from Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 2: Hi, everyone, Welcome to the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week.
Speaker 2: Carol Masser along with Matt Miller, who's filling in for Tim.
Speaker 2: Coming off a holiday shortened trading week following Independence Day
Speaker 2: in the US, so some are off and running, and
Speaker 2: with that we have some great summer reads courtesy of
Speaker 2: the Heist Issue. The annual double issue is available now
Speaker 2: on newstanmds, online at Bloomberg dot com, slash Businessweekend, of course,
Speaker 2: always on the Bloomberg terminal. Now. A bit later on,
Speaker 2: we'll talk to Way's co founder and serial entrepreneur Ory
Speaker 2: Levine for his insight on how to find the best
Speaker 2: use cases for artificial intelligence technology. And speaking of entrepreneurs,
Speaker 2: the co founders of Duke and Dame Salted Caramel Flavored
Speaker 2: Whiskey detail their journey from finance to the spirit's business.
Speaker 2: All of that to come, though, We begin with that
Speaker 2: dive into the twenty twenty three Heist issue now and
Speaker 2: it's fifty year full of stories of intrigue, thievery and scams.
Speaker 2: Good guys, bad guys. We got an overview with Bloomberg
Speaker 2: BusinessWeek Features editor Jeremy Kean and the editor of Bloomberg
Speaker 2: business Week, Joe Weber.
Speaker 3: We go cover to cover in Heist.
Speaker 4: There are you know, sortied tales, There are cliffhangers, there
Speaker 4: are ongoing mysteries. There are bank rubbers who are bad guys,
Speaker 4: or a bank rubbers.
Speaker 3: Who are maybe not bad guys.
Speaker 4: It's got it all. Jeremie Keane puts it all together.
Speaker 4: We wrote these stories out over the course of a week.
Speaker 4: So if Business Week kind of a shark week, this
Speaker 4: is it.
Speaker 5: I think it's so cool.
Speaker 6: But the thing is, when I first thought about it,
Speaker 6: when I first heard the concept, I thought cool because
Speaker 6: I want to someday be part of a heist.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 5: I think we all you might regret that we all
Speaker 5: sort of do.
Speaker 6: But some of these thieves are really bad people, Like
Speaker 6: we talked about one of the stories yesterday made me
Speaker 6: very angry, like who steals benefits from the poorest people
Speaker 6: in America?
Speaker 3: Sad?
Speaker 7: Right?
Speaker 8: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Yes, And that and what feels really challenging about that
Speaker 4: one is all it would take is the government to
Speaker 4: put a little chip in a card and it would
Speaker 4: protect but because it's still a swipe, and we all
Speaker 4: know how vulnerable those ATM cards can be. Like some
Speaker 4: of the most vulnerable people don't have anybody having in
Speaker 4: their back. So the story's go in many different directions.
Speaker 4: Like I said before, Jeremy Keene is the architect of
Speaker 4: the issue and decide what goes what's not in the issue.
Speaker 4: One little fun fact, I know you read this one already.
Speaker 4: Jeremy did a story wrote for almost a year now. Jeremy,
Speaker 4: you've been working on this thing, right, put a filter
Speaker 4: in place to basically track all the crazy, weird stuff.
Speaker 3: That has been stolen since.
Speaker 4: Our last heist issue a year ago. Jeremy, what was
Speaker 4: your single favorite thing on that list?
Speaker 9: I think that would have to be foot statue of
Speaker 9: Gary the gorilla that was stolen from a garden center
Speaker 9: in Scotland. And one of the nice things when you
Speaker 9: drink you drill down into the into these news of
Speaker 9: the weird type stories and one of the things that's
Speaker 9: great is there's always additional little nuggets that are great.
Speaker 9: And one of my favorite things about that one was
Speaker 9: was after police asked people to call in with tips,
Speaker 9: people were saying, oh, I spotted this eight foot gorilla
Speaker 9: statue going down the highway, and they pointed out that
Speaker 9: in fact it was Gary's twin brother that was made
Speaker 9: by the same company, but not Gary. Gary remains missing.
Speaker 5: What about the morgue, Oh yeah.
Speaker 9: That's I mean, that's really quite a story. That's that's ongoing.
Speaker 9: In fact, I think one of some of the main
Speaker 9: people were just just pleaded not guilty in court a
Speaker 9: couple of days ago. This was the Harvard Medical School.
Speaker 9: The main morgue manager has been accused by the government
Speaker 9: of running a trafficking ring in cadaver parts, allegedly selling
Speaker 9: to other people who are using them. In one case,
Speaker 9: the allegation is in I think art might be a
Speaker 9: strong word for it, but some pretty grim crafts.
Speaker 5: And hey, one man's trash is another man's treasure.
Speaker 2: A law and order for you know episode, it's really cool.
Speaker 4: So I'm gonna do a thing here. One of the
Speaker 4: things I'm going to link this story to another story.
Speaker 3: You ready for this?
Speaker 4: Yes, there was an Oscar Mayer Wienermobile that lost a part.
Speaker 3: Matt, do you know what part it lost?
Speaker 5: It was stolen by thieves, the steering wheel.
Speaker 3: It was the catalytic converter.
Speaker 5: Ah, yes, because of the platinum and palladium.
Speaker 4: So they got that whole patch continued on to its
Speaker 4: scheduled event. I'm going to link this story to another
Speaker 4: one that was all about catalytic converter thefts, and we
Speaker 4: went big on this one. It's one of the longest
Speaker 4: stories we've ever published, definitely in the Heist issue.
Speaker 3: But I just.
Speaker 6: Tell you quickly, we don't call it the Oscar Mayer
Speaker 6: Wiener Mobile anymore. Oh it's been there's a new politically
Speaker 6: correct name. It's I think they really They renamed it
Speaker 6: the Frank Mobile.
Speaker 4: Okay, well, yes, yeah, so the Frankmobile lost its catalytic converter.
Speaker 3: That relates directly to this other story we did.
Speaker 4: We have for the past couple of years, keep seeing
Speaker 4: these headlines about all these catalytic converter thefts that have
Speaker 4: been happening across the country and in parking lot.
Speaker 3: After parking lot.
Speaker 4: Thieves were going in saws alls, climbing under vehicles, removing
Speaker 4: catalytic converters. And it turns out that was all because
Speaker 4: there are rare earths inside the catalytic converter that could
Speaker 4: be basically reprocessed, and thieves were making thousands of dollars
Speaker 4: off of them based on the.
Speaker 3: Model could be much more lucrative than others.
Speaker 4: What Evan showed wasn't just the trees that this had
Speaker 4: been happening in one off's all over the place. There's
Speaker 4: a forest of a story here. Tulsa Police Department brought
Speaker 4: down half a billion dollar crime ring that was built
Speaker 4: on your catalytic converters. I don't know for sure if
Speaker 4: the frankmobiles ended up there or not. That didn't affect
Speaker 4: it into that narrative. But Jeremy, what was so impressive
Speaker 4: to you about that story?
Speaker 9: First of all, it seems like almost every everybody you
Speaker 9: know knows somebody who's had the converter off their car
Speaker 9: stolen because they've become so valuable over the past five
Speaker 9: or so years, maybe longer. But it was also really
Speaker 9: fascinating to see the kind of illicit supply chain and
Speaker 9: the way that it ran, you know, through supposedly this
Speaker 9: a chop shop in New Jersey and then and then
Speaker 9: carrying on too Asia and possibly in Japan.
Speaker 4: I believe it was was It is like a scene
Speaker 4: out of remember the show Fargo. It's like a whole
Speaker 4: season of Fargo baked into this magazine article. For you, Jemy,
Speaker 4: what was another favorite of yours?
Speaker 9: Certainly one of the ones that stands out is the
Speaker 9: sneaker story that looked at a Ponzi scheme for sneakers,
Speaker 9: almost the you know the alledged Yes they they Essentially
Speaker 9: we had somebody who is taking options bets on sneakers.
Speaker 9: So when a when a coveted sneaker was about to
Speaker 9: be released four months down the road, one of the
Speaker 9: big shoe companies made an announcement. This is Michael Malexadae
Speaker 9: of Zade Kicks had a business where he'd say, Okay,
Speaker 9: we can place your orders now. This is how much
Speaker 9: we'll charge you, and in four or five months, we'll
Speaker 9: send you your shoes at the price. At a price
Speaker 9: that you know might be about what the company is
Speaker 9: selling them for. But because sneakers are now resold and
Speaker 9: their values go up depending how hot they are, if
Speaker 9: you can lock in a good price early on, you're
Speaker 9: going to be pretty excited. So he was selling people
Speaker 9: these pre sales, and eventually he reached a shoe that
Speaker 9: was so hot as the Air Jordan Cool Gray eleven.
Speaker 9: I believe that that they couldn't. He had so many
Speaker 9: orders that it was to be impossible to fill them,
Speaker 9: and the whole business came crashing down. He himself had
Speaker 9: to what basically went to the US attorney and said,
Speaker 9: you know, I'm in over my head, and.
Speaker 2: He went into hiding for a while, right yeah.
Speaker 9: I mean, because he was ahead, so many people mad at.
Speaker 4: Him, and we do not want to mess with sneaker
Speaker 4: and sneakerheads want their Air Jordan's and when they don't
Speaker 4: get them.
Speaker 3: They get very mad.
Speaker 4: So what's interesting about this one is he had like
Speaker 4: sixty thousand boxes worth of shoes, right Jeremy, and they're
Speaker 4: in the process of liquidating them.
Speaker 3: Still.
Speaker 4: The trial he got postponed actually to see how much
Speaker 4: they can actually make off his inventory that he did have.
Speaker 9: He's in bankruptcy proceedings and they have a receiver who's
Speaker 9: essentially going through the warehouse getting basically recovering as much
Speaker 9: value as it can. You can buy some of the
Speaker 9: sneakers on eBay.
Speaker 4: So I'll mention the other one that, I like, you're
Speaker 4: ready for this one.
Speaker 6: I'm amazed by the way to keep they go for
Speaker 6: such a high amount of money, such cheap, kind of trashy.
Speaker 2: We've been playing on stock x a little bit.
Speaker 5: Anyway, how did caare you? I mean, look, some sneakers
Speaker 5: are very cool. I'm not saying that.
Speaker 6: I'm just saying they're very inexpensive to make and often
Speaker 6: sewn together by like kids in Malaysia, I know.
Speaker 5: So it's unbelievable.
Speaker 4: Did they go to But then as you learned an
Speaker 4: air you know, my son steps into them and they
Speaker 4: go to a different place. Right, So I was a great, great,
Speaker 4: great movie. Okay, So the other story that I just
Speaker 4: while we were talking about the heist issue cover to
Speaker 4: cover bet reads we're trying to steal your summer here.
Speaker 4: The other one I will bring up is about the rhino.
Speaker 6: Yeah, but this is another one that's just for the
Speaker 6: bad people do this.
Speaker 5: Kind of stuff.
Speaker 4: Well, okay, so the rhino is now worth more dead
Speaker 4: than alive because of the value of its horn, which
Speaker 4: gets can get about forty thousand bucks in the black market.
Speaker 3: All this trade is illegal.
Speaker 4: So the effort that we write about in the story
Speaker 4: is the good guys tranquilize rhinos in Africa now, many
Speaker 4: of which are in Kruger National Park, South Africa. Tranquilize
Speaker 4: them and and then actually take a chainsaw and remove
Speaker 4: the horn.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 4: I know, it's okay, turns out horn. Just like your fingernail.
Speaker 4: It's going to grow back. Takes about five years to
Speaker 4: do so, and in that time you can keep the
Speaker 4: running a live because it's not enticing a poacher.
Speaker 2: That was Bloomberg BusinessWeek editor Joel Weber and features editor
Speaker 2: for the magazine, Jeremy Keen Joel sticking around for our
Speaker 2: next segment. Coming up more from the heist issue, including
Speaker 2: a primer on what may be the biggest jewelry robbery
Speaker 2: ever and a scheme that siphons money from recipients of
Speaker 2: public assistance.
Speaker 10: Because millions of dollars of those benefits are being transferred
Speaker 10: through that really outdated technology.
Speaker 7: A lot of it's very vulnerable.
Speaker 2: You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week. This is Bloomberg.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us
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Speaker 1: app or watch us live on YouTube.
Speaker 2: Five years Bloomberg BusinessWeek has put out a heist issue
Speaker 2: around this time on the sordid tales of robberies and schemes,
Speaker 2: along with the characters trying to both orchestrate them and
Speaker 2: thwart them. This issue is out now on newsstands, online
Speaker 2: at Bloomberg dot com slash Businessweekend of Course on the
Speaker 2: Bloomberg and the Magazine team brings our next story to
Speaker 2: life with a special comic style tale that explains what
Speaker 2: might be the biggest jewelry heist ever and the aftermath
Speaker 2: is still playing out in court with more Matt Miller
Speaker 2: and I welcome back the editor of Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Jill
Speaker 2: Weber and senior editor for the magazine, Brett Began.
Speaker 11: Now, a lot of this is still a mystery.
Speaker 5: It's still a tail that's unfolding. But what we do
Speaker 5: now is.
Speaker 11: Basically that last July, at a pretty standard jewelry show
Speaker 11: that travels around and it was in San Mateo for
Speaker 11: three days. You had the jewelers. At the end of
Speaker 11: the show, we're packing up and they put most of
Speaker 11: their wares onto a tractor trailer that was being driven
Speaker 11: by Brinks from the jewelry show in San Mateo down
Speaker 11: to the La area.
Speaker 6: So to be clear, this is many jewelers, like more
Speaker 6: than a dozen jewelers, but they all put their goods
Speaker 6: into one Brinks truck together, right.
Speaker 11: Yes, that's that's more or less correct. They all put
Speaker 11: the jewels together and they're loaded on in these bags.
Speaker 11: They're seventy three bags worth of jewels loaded onto this
Speaker 11: truck in San Mateo. But you know, as they're loading
Speaker 11: the jewels on, and this came out later in depositions,
Speaker 11: but both of the drivers, both of the Brink drivers
Speaker 11: sort of saying, you know, there sort of was like
Speaker 11: some sketchy, sketchy guy kind of watching me off in
Speaker 11: the distance. And in fact, the organizer of the show
Speaker 11: had even ushered somebody out of the show who was
Speaker 11: not supposed to be there because it was.
Speaker 9: After five o'clock.
Speaker 11: And the second driver sort of says, well, I also
Speaker 11: saw someone. It's not clear if it's the same person
Speaker 11: that the first driver saw. So basically they see people
Speaker 11: there who were giving them kind of like weird looks,
Speaker 11: they kind of, you know, put it to the side
Speaker 11: and get in the truck. And drive from San Mateo
Speaker 11: down to la and on the way there they stop
Speaker 11: at a at a rest stop.
Speaker 3: Climb J rest stop to be specific.
Speaker 11: The flying jaygress up, which and one of the drivers
Speaker 11: gets out and goes to get something to eat.
Speaker 3: We don't know where he went.
Speaker 11: There was either a Wendy's or I believe a dunkin
Speaker 11: Dunnuts there, We're not sure which one.
Speaker 3: He went to.
Speaker 11: Now he's gone for twenty seven minutes.
Speaker 10: Now.
Speaker 11: One thing that's interesting to point out here is that
Speaker 11: while he's going to get food, the other driver is
Speaker 11: actually in what's known as the sleeping birth So according
Speaker 11: to Department of Transportation rules, there are guidelines about how
Speaker 11: much time you have to have off as a driver.
Speaker 11: So the second driver wasn't just sitting in the passenger
Speaker 11: seat or didn't go with the first driver to get food.
Speaker 11: He's actually sort of in the back of the cab
Speaker 11: in the sleeping berth. Driver one comes back from getting food,
Speaker 11: has gone for twenty seven minutes, notices that the tamper
Speaker 11: seal has been broken on the back of the truck.
Speaker 5: And the lock's busted too, right, right.
Speaker 11: Right, tamper seals gone. Lock is busted, but there's no alarm.
Speaker 5: There's no car alarm on this truck.
Speaker 4: Nor and that's that's where the mystery goes back to,
Speaker 4: like the pages of BusinessWeek, and you're going to have
Speaker 4: to pick it up there. What we will tell you
Speaker 4: is that there's lawsuits, right, because that's where the hest
Speaker 4: issue comes in.
Speaker 5: A wide range of money.
Speaker 4: Well, it's either one of the biggest jewelry heights of
Speaker 4: all time one hundred million according to the victims, or
Speaker 4: if your Brinks maybe closer to eight point seven million.
Speaker 4: We're really sorry about that, but you didn't actually declare
Speaker 4: the real value of the dude.
Speaker 5: You can only get back what you declare.
Speaker 3: So well, we'll see that.
Speaker 4: We'll see about that, because maybe Brinks wasn't actually securing
Speaker 4: their vehicle like they were supposed to have, right, So
Speaker 4: this is why you have lawyers.
Speaker 2: Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Jill Weber and Brett began with us there.
Speaker 2: We turned out to another story in the Heist issue
Speaker 2: that focuses on a scam targeting some of the poorest Americans.
Speaker 2: It details the low tech, high stakes world of robbing
Speaker 2: benefits recipients and how state and federal authorities aren't doing
Speaker 2: enough to prevent the theft. Bloomberg BusinessWeek freelance contributor Jessica
Speaker 2: Fu explains.
Speaker 7: Those benefits are transferred on really really outdated and outdated technology,
Speaker 7: which is a very simple card that you might get
Speaker 7: from you like a Starbucks gift card, for example, or
Speaker 7: a bed Bath and Beyond gift card. No chip, no PAP,
Speaker 7: just magnetic stripe.
Speaker 10: Because millions of dollars of those benefits are being transferred
Speaker 10: through that really outdated technology, a lot of it's very
Speaker 10: vulnerable to being stolen through really a really old school
Speaker 10: kind of theft, which is called skimming or way.
Speaker 3: I just want to jump in.
Speaker 2: It amazes me in this day and age, Matt, Right
Speaker 2: where you think I think about trying to do anything
Speaker 2: in the amount of security checks, and certainly when I'm
Speaker 2: doing banking or investing like anything like, there's so many
Speaker 2: different levels of security, Matt, and it isn't here.
Speaker 6: Well on these EBT cards. There isn't right, these benefit
Speaker 6: cards that I don't know do all states use these?
Speaker 6: They're so simple and so low security, and I guess
Speaker 6: these are cards that so the state puts the money
Speaker 6: in your account and you can either use these crappy
Speaker 6: cards to withdraw money from your account in cash, or
Speaker 6: you can use them at like grocery stores to pay
Speaker 6: for formula and diapers, right, yeah.
Speaker 7: Yeah, basically, so depending on what kind of situation you're in,
Speaker 7: you might receive cash benefits, which you can use, you know,
Speaker 7: to get cash and pay for any living expense, or
Speaker 7: you can get food benefits, and that's for people who
Speaker 7: are like a low poverty level or below poverty and
Speaker 7: those are specifically for food products, which includes infit formula for.
Speaker 5: Example, well, crystal cork.
Speaker 6: You start this story with a woman, a mother who
Speaker 6: is traveling across country with her children to see family,
Speaker 6: and she's already been robbed a number of times. She
Speaker 6: goes to an ATM in the middle of the night,
Speaker 6: right when the benefits are going to go into her
Speaker 6: account to try and make sure she has enough money
Speaker 6: to get back to her home in California, and sees
Speaker 6: that it's gone. Was that also an EBT card because
Speaker 6: it seems like too low security to use at an ATM.
Speaker 7: That was an EBT card? Yeah, So all of these
Speaker 7: benefits they get transferred to their intended recipients through you know,
Speaker 7: what's called an electronic Benefits transfer card and the technology
Speaker 7: for just has never been updated since it was first introduced.
Speaker 2: It's amazing that there's this problem and it hasn't been fixed.
Speaker 2: Who's doing it? What do we know about the criminal
Speaker 2: side of this?
Speaker 7: Yeah, I spoke to a few different people involved with
Speaker 7: kind of trying to track down who's skimming, who's cashing
Speaker 7: out the money, who's buying and then reselling infant formula.
Speaker 7: And there's the general sense for agencies and task forces
Speaker 7: that are looking into this issue that it's very disconnected
Speaker 7: groups of people who sometimes don't even know who they're
Speaker 7: working with. It sounds like there's a real compartmentalized nature
Speaker 7: of skimming crime these days. There are people who are
Speaker 7: involved with installing skimmers on ATMs, other people who are
Speaker 7: tasked with retriating them, other people who are tasked with
Speaker 7: cloning cards using that skim data, and others who are
Speaker 7: responsible for cashing it out and then moving money. And
Speaker 7: there's not a lot of communication, a lot of transparent
Speaker 7: and see within these networks, which makes it really tricky
Speaker 7: to unravel any kind of scheme.
Speaker 2: That was BusinessWeek contributor Jessica fu At a reminder the
Speaker 2: heist issue pick it up on newsstands, online, and of course,
Speaker 2: on the Bloomberg Terminal. Still ahead, on Bloomberg Business Week,
Speaker 2: famed international investor John Kleinheinz details his early days in
Speaker 2: post Soviet Russia in the early nineteen nineties and how
Speaker 2: his experiences inspired a novel on the allure and dangers
Speaker 2: of a crucial period in that country's history. This is Bloomberg.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us
Speaker 1: live weekday afternoons from three to six Easter on Bloomberg Radio,
Speaker 1: the Bloomberg Business App, and YouTube. You can also listen
Speaker 1: live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station,
Speaker 1: Just say Alexa Play Bloomberg eleven thirty.
Speaker 2: New concerns emerging this past week that a Russian occupied
Speaker 2: nuclear reactor in southern Ukraine and could be the target
Speaker 2: of fresh attacks as Kiev in Moscow traded accusations over
Speaker 2: the threat of a radiological incident. As the war in
Speaker 2: Ukraine drags deep into its second straight summer, we wanted
Speaker 2: to look back at a time when a new democratic
Speaker 2: government in Russia had hoped to revolutionize the country for
Speaker 2: the better. We're talking about the early nineteen nineties just
Speaker 2: after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Our next guest
Speaker 2: arrived there hoping to get in on the country's new
Speaker 2: wealth and ended up finding some danger as well. John
Speaker 2: Kleinhinz is the CEO of Kleinhinz Capital Partners Full disclosure.
Speaker 2: He's also the father in law of our Bloomberg colleague
Speaker 2: Kelly Belknap. John's adventures inspired a book that he co
Speaker 2: wrote with Josh Haven called The Siberia Job, and he
Speaker 2: recently joined me and Matt Miller with the background.
Speaker 12: So I was one of the early investors in Russia
Speaker 12: during the voucher privatization in nineteen ninety four. And this
Speaker 12: was a program that was developed by the EBERD and
Speaker 12: the IMF to virtually or actually privatize all of Russian
Speaker 12: industry in one year. And it was a kind of
Speaker 12: a wild wooly time. They used the voucher program that
Speaker 12: they had developed in the Czech Republic in Hungary, and
Speaker 12: we were over there with probably one hundred investors, all
Speaker 12: trying to find the best companies. The you know, stocks
Speaker 12: were trading at one to two percent of intrinsic value
Speaker 12: of where they would have traded if they were on
Speaker 12: a Western exchange and well run oil companies or telecom companies.
Speaker 12: So it was just a fascinating time.
Speaker 2: And you know it's interesting is I used to do
Speaker 2: a show with Jim Rodgers, investor in commodities, and took
Speaker 2: his motorsp yeah, and who would take his motorcycle like
Speaker 2: to all the emerging markets. And I believe you went
Speaker 2: over to Russia as well, just to kind of get
Speaker 2: a scale of it, right, he was there, and you know,
Speaker 2: we would talk about it, what was that era, take
Speaker 2: us back there and what it was like to be
Speaker 2: at that very very early stage of a big change
Speaker 2: in Russia.
Speaker 12: So it was fascinating because my wife and I were
Speaker 12: there in nineteen ninety two, a couple of years after
Speaker 12: the Berlin Wall fell and the command economy in Russia
Speaker 12: had ground to a halt. The planned economy wasn't working,
Speaker 12: The currency didn't buy anything. There were no goods in
Speaker 12: the shops or no cars on the streets in Moscow.
Speaker 12: It was really a desolute time. And then flashed forward
Speaker 12: about fourteen fifteen months later in early ninety four, the
Speaker 12: free market economy is trying to take hold. You could
Speaker 12: buy anything you wanted with hard currency. There were hotels
Speaker 12: and restaurants opening up. Cars were on the streets, everybody
Speaker 12: had a deal, everybody was trying to either get a
Speaker 12: job or make an investment. And it was just in
Speaker 12: a very short period of time Russia just turned on
Speaker 12: and started on the road to free markets.
Speaker 6: So I know it didn't turn out terribly well, or
Speaker 6: at least my introduction to investing in Russia was in
Speaker 6: the early two thousands when I was interviewing Bob Amsterdam
Speaker 6: a lot who was a lawyer representing Mikhail Kodakowski after
Speaker 6: Putin was for some reason angry at him and decided
Speaker 6: he was liable for twenty billion.
Speaker 5: Dollars in tax fraud.
Speaker 6: How long did the period last before you realized that
Speaker 6: the rule of law was going to be a really
Speaker 6: big problem.
Speaker 12: So we put money to work early in nineteen ninety
Speaker 12: four through the voucher auctions, and by late ninety four
Speaker 12: most of those the stocks that we invested in were
Speaker 12: up eight to ten times, so it was a huge
Speaker 12: brief surge. In ninety four, ninety five, ninety six and
Speaker 12: ninety seven were great years in the markets in Russia.
Speaker 12: Companies were running themselves as much as they could, Like
Speaker 12: Western companies. Wall Street firms were opening up offices in Moscow.
Speaker 12: It looked like everything was going to plan. The ninety
Speaker 12: eight and ninety nine percent discounts. We saw Russia stocks
Speaker 12: closed to maybe sixty or seventy percent as the markets
Speaker 12: went up. What happened in nineteen ninety eight though, really
Speaker 12: through a curveball at Russia. There was an international financial
Speaker 12: crisis that started in Asia and then moved to Russia,
Speaker 12: and the IMF did a bailout of Russia in ninety eight.
Speaker 12: But Bob Ruben, who was Secretary of State, saw that
Speaker 12: a lot of the IMF money was being transferred from
Speaker 12: the Russian Central Bank to government officials accounts in Switzerland,
Speaker 12: and he quickly put a halt to the IMF bailout,
Speaker 12: and Russia collapsed and the banking system collapsed, and it
Speaker 12: really threw Russia into a bad spot. So that was
Speaker 12: sort of that honeymoon period for Russian markets kind of
Speaker 12: ended in nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 2: John, how do you see it today in terms of
Speaker 2: the Russian invasion of Ukraine? And as long as Putin
Speaker 2: is in charge, it can never go back, It can
Speaker 2: never go back.
Speaker 12: It's an interesting deal. So Putin was Prime minister in
Speaker 12: ninety eight. Jeltsen resigned in ninety nine and replaced himself
Speaker 12: with Putin, and after Putin became president, the security services
Speaker 12: in Russia, the KGB and other intelligence services kind of
Speaker 12: kind of started to flow into the business world and
Speaker 12: become part of the private sector, and from that moment
Speaker 12: on it became less and less of a Western style
Speaker 12: free market. You know, someone told me recently that there
Speaker 12: are two hundred and fifty thousand KGB agents in Russia,
Speaker 12: but there are only seven thousand judges. So you know,
Speaker 12: the rule of law doesn't work in Russia. The dispute
Speaker 12: resolution doesn't work.
Speaker 3: It's it's really.
Speaker 12: A state run economy by the security services.
Speaker 2: And from an investor's perspective, what a missed opportunity.
Speaker 12: Yeah, I think so, I think. You know, if Russia,
Speaker 12: you know, Russia, unfortunately, they didn't have the institutions in
Speaker 12: place after you know, sixty seven years of communism to
Speaker 12: deal with the bumps in the road, like the financial
Speaker 12: care in nineteen ninety eight. We fortunately in the US
Speaker 12: we do, in Europe we do, but Russia didn't, and
Speaker 12: so they reverted to their old ways and reverted to
Speaker 12: a corrupt system that they were familiar with, and all
Speaker 12: the people who were playing the rules, by the Western
Speaker 12: rules were kind of at a disadvantage, and you know,
Speaker 12: they were thrown for a loop.
Speaker 2: And I guess what I mean is just a follow
Speaker 2: is just an opportunity that Russia could be, you know,
Speaker 2: with the energy, you know component that it has in commodities,
Speaker 2: that it could really be a decent and big player
Speaker 2: on the global scale.
Speaker 12: So you know, Russia stocks continue to trade in Moscow
Speaker 12: and there continues to be a stock market. As an
Speaker 12: American investor, you can't participate in it, but it's still there.
Speaker 12: And you know, you know, Japan had a stock market
Speaker 12: before World War Two that stopped trading and then started
Speaker 12: trading again in nineteen forty nine or nineteen fifty. I
Speaker 12: think there's a chance that, right, we'll come back. And
Speaker 12: you know, these things go in cycles, these these corrupt
Speaker 12: totalitarian regimes there, they drain all the talent there, they
Speaker 12: force all the human capital out of countries, and eventually
Speaker 12: they fail. And once they fail, they don't really have
Speaker 12: any choice but to come back and try the free
Speaker 12: market way again. And I think that'll happen.
Speaker 2: Can I just ask you something. So when you say
Speaker 2: free market, then I know we're talking Russia. But then
Speaker 2: when you look at something like China, does it continue
Speaker 2: to kind of do this interesting capitalistic but not really
Speaker 2: you know, society, or does it eventually become more of
Speaker 2: a free market world.
Speaker 12: So so China is interesting because China is a command
Speaker 12: economy from a macro perspective, but on a micro basis,
Speaker 12: a lot of the economy works on a on a
Speaker 12: free market competitive basis, so it's it's sort of a hybrid.
Speaker 12: And I think I think China is now seeing the
Speaker 12: disadvantages of a command economy as as they try to
Speaker 12: deal with with the slowdown. So, you know, it's interesting.
Speaker 12: China could really go either way. In my opinion, Russia
Speaker 12: has has got to you know, fail before it can
Speaker 12: it can try the free market way again.
Speaker 6: Was there any ever a time when you were there
Speaker 6: that you felt like your life was threatened? I know
Speaker 6: that Bob told me at one point, you know, when
Speaker 6: he was defending Kotokowski. The KGV came to his room
Speaker 6: and said, like, you have two hours to get out
Speaker 6: of this country, buddy, and he had to leave.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 12: I think fortunately I was there early and the Russians
Speaker 12: were welcoming Western investors, and they were excited to have
Speaker 12: a stock market and a capital market where they could
Speaker 12: raise money. There there were at the time I was there,
Speaker 12: very few American investors had ever been hurt or threatened.
Speaker 12: It was early, It was early days. There was a
Speaker 12: little bit of innuendo, a little bit of threat but
Speaker 12: but and and we you know, we got a big
Speaker 12: could We controlled a big position in a cigarette company,
Speaker 12: and at one stage where we found out our partners
Speaker 12: were the mafia, and we were kind of forced out
Speaker 12: of that position. So I guess there were some implicit threats,
Speaker 12: but overall I wasn't too concern.
Speaker 2: You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week. Up next stories fit
Speaker 2: for the BusinessWeek heist issue. We continue speaking with John Kleinhins,
Speaker 2: the CEO of Klein Heights Capital and the man who
Speaker 2: inspired a fictional book about the early days of chasing
Speaker 2: money in post Soviet Russia. Stick around more to come.
Speaker 2: This is Bloomberg.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us
Speaker 1: live weekday afternoons from three to six Eastern Listen on
Speaker 1: Bloomberg dot com, the iHeartRadio app, and the Bloomberg Business
Speaker 1: app or watch us live on YouTube.
Speaker 2: More now from our recent conversation Matt Miller and I
Speaker 2: had with John Kleinhights, the CEO of Klein Heights Capital Partners,
Speaker 2: is a renowned international investor who both inspired and co
Speaker 2: wrote a novel called The Siberia Job about a lucrative
Speaker 2: period for investors in Russia on the fall of the
Speaker 2: Berlin Wall. In this excerpt, John explains some of the
Speaker 2: perils he encountered on his journey into a new post
Speaker 2: so fa it world.
Speaker 12: So, my community were just a lot of a lot
Speaker 12: of Westerners who were investors over there, and guys like
Speaker 12: Bill Browner, who's a good friend of mine, and Bernie
Speaker 12: Sucher who ran a bank and a securities company, owned restaurants.
Speaker 12: And for the most part that the Westerners who stuck
Speaker 12: around did not make a lot of money. It was
Speaker 12: it was a tough deal. The Russians. The Russians did great,
Speaker 12: and they did great by by getting control of the
Speaker 12: cash flows and taking money anyway they could and controlling
Speaker 12: the enterprise by whatever ways or whatever mechanism they could.
Speaker 12: You know, the Russians did well. The Western investors really.
Speaker 5: Did and did you have any.
Speaker 6: Interaction with Putin or the KGB, because I mean, who
Speaker 6: were the king makers there? Who were the ones who said, like, Okay,
Speaker 6: you're going to own the steel industry, and you're going
Speaker 6: to own the grain industry, and you're going to be
Speaker 6: the shipping magnate.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 12: Yeah, So a lot of that happened after the nineteen
Speaker 12: ninety eight after I was gone. So and I you know,
Speaker 12: I was very fortunate that I ran a Russia fund
Speaker 12: for a while, but when I when I set up
Speaker 12: my own business, it was not a Russia specific company,
Speaker 12: So I just wasn't there when when that was going on.
Speaker 12: I did see a couple of early what I would
Speaker 12: call stars, people who did it right. You know, veggiet
Speaker 12: Alex Spirov and Leonid Fadune who ran Luke Oil, were
Speaker 12: fantastic operators, and you know, took a three hundred million
Speaker 12: dollar company in nineteen ninety four is now I think
Speaker 12: it's got a sixty billion dollar market camp. So there
Speaker 12: were some people who did it the right way, but
Speaker 12: a lot of people did it by sort of murky
Speaker 12: murky methods.
Speaker 2: So tell us about Josh Haven coming to you and saying, hey,
Speaker 2: I want to write a book. How did this come
Speaker 2: to be?
Speaker 12: So I've always wanted to tell this story and it's
Speaker 12: been on my to do list for thirty years. And
Speaker 12: about two years ago, my partner in this book and
Speaker 12: in this story was killed in a helicopter ski accident,
Speaker 12: a guy named Peter Kellner who was one of the
Speaker 12: richest men in Eastern Europe. And so when he was killed,
Speaker 12: I decided I wanted to write this story. I was
Speaker 12: introduced to a literary agent in New York who helped
Speaker 12: me meet a number of authors, and I met Josh
Speaker 12: Josh Gilertner, and Josh and I interviewed about a dozen
Speaker 12: people that were involved in this deal, and we did research,
Speaker 12: we told stories, we told anecdotes, and Josh did just
Speaker 12: an amazing job putting all of this together in a
Speaker 12: way that makes it very readable and very fun. It's
Speaker 12: a quick story. It's about a three and a half
Speaker 12: four hour read. It's a total page turner. It's a
Speaker 12: true story, and almost all the stories in it are true.
Speaker 12: They're put together in a way that I would characterize
Speaker 12: this somewhat fictional. So we decided we opted for a
Speaker 12: fictional formats just because it would be too difficult to
Speaker 12: go back thirty years and get all the facts right.
Speaker 8: Correct.
Speaker 6: Did you, John, leave part of any of your heart
Speaker 6: in Russia? I mean, is it something that made you
Speaker 6: sad that it turned out the.
Speaker 3: Way it did?
Speaker 12: Absolutely? Absolutely, I mean it was And I talked to,
Speaker 12: you know, all these people that I interviewed for the book,
Speaker 12: we interviewed for the book. You know, we all felt
Speaker 12: the same way. I mean, it was going so well
Speaker 12: in the mid nineties and it looks so positive in
Speaker 12: the Russians. A lot of Russians wanted to do it
Speaker 12: the right way, and it's just it's a sad and
Speaker 12: disappointing era that they didn't achieve liftoff in the free
Speaker 12: market world.
Speaker 2: That was John Kleinhinz, the CEO of Kleinhinz Capital Partners.
Speaker 2: Even more of that conversation can be heard on our
Speaker 2: Bloomberg BusinessWeek podcast. Feed the book based on his experience
Speaker 2: in Russia. It is entitled The Siberia Job. It's available
Speaker 2: as well now. And that wraps up the first hour
Speaker 2: of the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. Ahead,
Speaker 2: in our next hour, we're talking to entrepreneurs and change
Speaker 2: makers Matt and I speak with Way's co founder Aurie
Speaker 2: Levine on whether artificial intelligence presents us with more problems
Speaker 2: than solutions, and a pair of former financiers break down
Speaker 2: their path to market in the world of high end spirits.
Speaker 2: We'll talk to the co founders of Duke and Dame
Speaker 2: salted caramel flavored whiskey, plus a seasoned executive with credentials
Speaker 2: from some of the world's most influential firms on diversifying
Speaker 2: corporate boards. This is Bomberg BusinessWeek.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us
Speaker 1: live weekday afternoons from three to six Easter on Bloomberg Radio,
Speaker 1: the Bloomberg Business app, and YouTube. You can also listen
Speaker 1: live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station,
Speaker 1: Just Say Alexa play Bloomberg eleven.
Speaker 2: Thirty Carol Master along with Matt Miller, who's filling in
Speaker 2: for Tim this week. Plenty head on our second hour
Speaker 2: of the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week, including a
Speaker 2: dive into the highly competitive business of alcohol and how
Speaker 2: two friends left Wall Street with the dream of creating
Speaker 2: a one of a kind whiskey. We'll hear from the
Speaker 2: co founders of Duke and Dame, plus board member The
Speaker 2: Not Worldwide Carolyn Everson on the booming global wedding business
Speaker 2: and creating more equitable representation in the boardroom. First up
Speaker 2: this hour, we welcome back Ory Levine, co founder of
Speaker 2: the satellite navigation platform Ways. Last time around, he joined
Speaker 2: us to talk about his new book, fall in Love
Speaker 2: with the Problem, Not the Solution, a handbook for entrepreneurs.
Speaker 2: He's got plenty to say about how that philosophy applies
Speaker 2: to our use of artificial intelligence, and about whether he
Speaker 2: wishes he stayed on at Ways, which Google bought for
Speaker 2: one point one five billion dollars a decade ago.
Speaker 8: People have regrets of the stuff that they haven't done.
Speaker 2: I think we might have talked about this, but you don't.
Speaker 8: You know, I am moved on. I left after the
Speaker 8: acquisition so I can build more startups and and I
Speaker 8: am very happy with the decision back then. And at
Speaker 8: the end of the day, Look, when you're making a decision,
Speaker 8: it's the right decision, the right decisions, or no decisions,
Speaker 8: And this is it.
Speaker 2: So you've got a T shirt on that says fall
Speaker 2: in Love with the Problem, not the Solution. So those
Speaker 2: on our streaming service and YouTube can see this. You've
Speaker 2: also got a book out with that title AI. Is
Speaker 2: it a problem? Is it a solution? Is it both?
Speaker 8: Is it yet to be determined? But it's definitely a solution.
Speaker 8: We just not clear what is the problem yet.
Speaker 6: Well, as a startup guy, you've got to look at
Speaker 6: a technology like that and automatically start thinking of applications,
Speaker 6: right of ways to use it for progress or profits.
Speaker 6: What do you think about the potential of AI?
Speaker 8: So in general, my approach would we start with the problem, right,
Speaker 8: start with the use case, and only then build a solution.
Speaker 8: I mean this key is because the generative language is
Speaker 8: very powerful.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 8: If we ask one hundred people on the street, have
Speaker 8: you tried that? Then probably all of them are going
Speaker 8: to say yes. The challenge is that if you're going
Speaker 8: to ask them are you still using it? And very
Speaker 8: few are going to tell you yes, which basically means
Speaker 8: that we are not a product market fit yet, or
Speaker 8: it's not applicable for the consumer market, for the mass market. Yet.
Speaker 8: There are some cases that I would say this is awesome, right,
Speaker 8: So if you are if you are in the business
Speaker 8: of generating content, this is going to be very helpful
Speaker 8: to you can generate way more content.
Speaker 2: Based on that or are you investing in it?
Speaker 7: No?
Speaker 8: Not yet. Many of my companies are actually using AI,
Speaker 8: but not that generating language yet.
Speaker 2: Why not?
Speaker 8: Because you know, it was not available until recently. And
Speaker 8: now I have one company in the medical space that
Speaker 8: is actually having the knowledge and requires the language generation
Speaker 8: for that, and this is going to be a leapfrog
Speaker 8: for them.
Speaker 6: Do you still think about I know WAYS was ten
Speaker 6: years ago, but do you still think about navigation and
Speaker 6: the possible the possibilities that AI could help in that space?
Speaker 6: I mean, my first thought when I heard your name
Speaker 6: and AI was I wonder if this could help me
Speaker 6: avoid speeding tickets more often?
Speaker 5: Because that's one of the.
Speaker 6: Fits of Ways is that I can see where others
Speaker 6: have pointed out that the costs because waiting. So do
Speaker 6: you think AI could help at all in making you know,
Speaker 6: Google Maps a better product for example?
Speaker 8: So so Ways is based in a lot of cases
Speaker 8: on crowdsource on one hand, than AI on the other hand. Right,
Speaker 8: and so we can understand, we can use the they
Speaker 8: you know, we can look at different users and from
Speaker 8: their behavior understand what is going on and so we
Speaker 8: have built the AI system before we even knew how
Speaker 8: to say that, right, And I think that many companies
Speaker 8: have built an AI capabilities into their product before we
Speaker 8: actually had the region or the generation of the language.
Speaker 2: Do you think of generative AI as akin to some
Speaker 2: other tech development? I mean, I don't know. I think
Speaker 2: folks have been talking about the creation of the Internet.
Speaker 2: I don't know, how do you think about it?
Speaker 8: People are saying that this is the biggest revolution every
Speaker 8: right that I would say, no, no, no, wait a minute,
Speaker 8: It's not there yet. It's definitely not as big as
Speaker 8: the Internet itself. It's definitely not as big as the
Speaker 8: mobile phone itself. It's definitely not as big as the smartphones.
Speaker 5: Right, yeah, the PC yet?
Speaker 2: Is it a yet?
Speaker 8: Or is it might be yet? But because at the
Speaker 8: end of the day, what all the other tools that
Speaker 8: I've mentioned did is that they interconnect people and they
Speaker 8: enable people to become better, better, to communicate, better, to
Speaker 8: access the information better for anywhere, anytime, anywhere, And this
Speaker 8: increased the abilities of the people. Now we are looking
Speaker 8: into a system that may be able to generate content
Speaker 8: by itself, but less likely to be creative.
Speaker 6: Well, you know, if you're talking about falling over the problem.
Speaker 6: All of the things that we just talked about, the Internet,
Speaker 6: the mobile phone, the PC. Right, they were solving the
Speaker 6: problem of I guess connectivity in some ways, but now
Speaker 6: those things are the problem.
Speaker 5: Or connectivity is the problem.
Speaker 6: I have how many email accounts, I have three cell phones,
Speaker 6: I have you know, IB and Facebook, and I want
Speaker 6: to be less connected. So for me, the problem that
Speaker 6: AI could solve is helping me deal with all of
Speaker 6: this connectivity that I have.
Speaker 8: Absolutely, I agree. Right, So what you're basically saying is
Speaker 8: that I'm overwhelmed with information and I would like something
Speaker 8: to you know, scan out from this information and figure
Speaker 8: out what is really important and bring that to me
Speaker 8: in a better way.
Speaker 5: Just the signal no more noise please?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 8: Definitely yes. And is that something that the current engine
Speaker 8: can do, probably with enough training, Definitely yes. Is that
Speaker 8: the use case that we will end up with? Maybe yes?
Speaker 2: So would you say, and I'm thinking about our audience
Speaker 2: and investing audience, you know, who have just watched this
Speaker 2: AI euphoria and we've seen something like an video but
Speaker 2: some other names just go kind of off off the charts.
Speaker 2: Would you say it's too early to make that investment play.
Speaker 8: No, I think that if you don't play in this game,
Speaker 8: then definitely you are going.
Speaker 2: To lose, right, So it's not too early to go into.
Speaker 8: Some of the It's not too early. And to a certain extent,
Speaker 8: what I would like to also mention is, look, we
Speaker 8: look at it and we say, Okay, wait a minute.
Speaker 8: That chat GPT just appear in our life about six
Speaker 8: months ago. So you look at it and you say,
Speaker 8: in six months, it's done so much. Right, Wait a minute,
Speaker 8: open AI is seven years old. It takes a lot
Speaker 8: of time to create value. And the first part of
Speaker 8: this value or the value generation journey was about creating
Speaker 8: the technology, and now we are looking for the use
Speaker 8: case that will make it valuable. In some cases it's
Speaker 8: already there, but in some cases it's not there yet.
Speaker 6: Do you have an overarching investment strategy?
Speaker 3: I mean you've.
Speaker 6: Created and sold to billion dollar businesses. Probably people come
Speaker 6: to you with pitches left and right all the time.
Speaker 6: There is there one kind of overarching strategy that you
Speaker 6: use to drive your investments.
Speaker 8: I do, right, because at the end of the day,
Speaker 8: my mission in life is to create value, and I
Speaker 8: can create value through different Ways. One of them is
Speaker 8: you know, building solutions to a problem that will help
Speaker 8: you to become better. And so this is Ways or
Speaker 8: Movie or pont Era or Zunka or C three or
Speaker 8: Fairfly or many of my startups. And the other one
Speaker 8: is through guiding and mentoring and teaching others. Right, And
Speaker 8: the book is about fulfilling my destiny of creating value
Speaker 8: as sharing the know how and to a certain extent,
Speaker 8: when you share the know how, when I go into
Speaker 8: a company and I help them, at the end of
Speaker 8: the day, what happens is that they sign up to
Speaker 8: my know how and that increased their likelihood of being seccessful.
Speaker 8: So my methodology is not about guessing what's right, is
Speaker 8: creating what's right.
Speaker 2: So for entrepreneurs, you might grab your book and kind
Speaker 2: of get you know, fall into your philosophy and benefit
Speaker 2: from it. I do wonder or what you think is
Speaker 2: one of our biggest problems today that needs solving.
Speaker 8: You know, we can look at many problems, right, So
Speaker 8: a lot of us are speaking about wait a minute,
Speaker 8: we are way too much connected.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 8: You look at the younger generation and they are connected
Speaker 8: into social media and the levels that are beyond imagination. Right,
Speaker 8: and in some cases they're not happy, right, And so
Speaker 8: happiness of younger generation is a challenge. Right. You look
Speaker 8: at medical services, right, medical services in the US are
Speaker 8: five times more expensive than they are in Germany.
Speaker 2: Now, it's not right to live in Germany, he talks
Speaker 2: about all the time.
Speaker 8: And it's not that they're better in Germany. In here
Speaker 8: that in Germany. Right, it's simply five times more expensive.
Speaker 8: So you look at it and say, okay, wait a minute,
Speaker 8: this is waste of resources. Right. We started weighs in
Speaker 8: two thousand and seven in order to help people to
Speaker 8: avoid traffic jams. There are more traffic jams today than
Speaker 8: they're work in two thousand and seven, right, So obviously
Speaker 8: this problem is not done yet and we will need
Speaker 8: to address that as well. And so that's a lot
Speaker 8: of big problems that needs to be addressed. And I
Speaker 8: think that at the end of the day, it's the
Speaker 8: entrepreneurs that are going to change the world, and our
Speaker 8: role is to encourage them.
Speaker 2: That was Aory Levine, co founder of Ways, also an
Speaker 2: investor in move It, which Intel bought for one billion
Speaker 2: dollars back in twenty twenty. His book out now, Fall
Speaker 2: in Love with the problem, not the solution. A handbook
Speaker 2: for entrepreneurs. You're listening to Bloomberg business Week. Coming up
Speaker 2: the story of two friends who left Wall Street behind
Speaker 2: for a chance to create their own brand of whiskey
Speaker 2: with a personal twist. The co founders of Duke and Dame,
Speaker 2: salted caramel flavored whiskey joins us on the other side.
Speaker 2: This is Bloomberg.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us
Speaker 1: live weekday afternoons from three to six Eastern Listen on
Speaker 1: Bloomberg dot com, the iHeartRadio app, and the Bloomberg or
Speaker 1: watch us live on YouTube.
Speaker 2: Up next, we have the story of two friends who
Speaker 2: left the financial world for a chance to feel what
Speaker 2: they felt was avoid In the Fine Spirit segment, Amani
Speaker 2: McCauley and Shima Bury are the co founders of Duke
Speaker 2: and Dame, an award winning salted caramel flavored whiskey which
Speaker 2: has grown into one of the elite, black owned and
Speaker 2: independent alcoholic brands on the market today. The duo recently
Speaker 2: joined me and Matt Miller in studio to talk about
Speaker 2: their unique journey. Amani kicked it off for us.
Speaker 13: I started my career at Lehman Brothers many years ago, remember.
Speaker 2: Them drink I do, I do, I do.
Speaker 13: And you know, after about eleven years on Wall Street
Speaker 13: doing investment banking, got to a point where I realized
Speaker 13: it was time for change. You know, I wanted to
Speaker 13: go work different parts of my brain. I wanted a
Speaker 13: different type of adventure and challenge. I wanted a new life.
Speaker 13: Left investment banking behind and packed up all my stuff
Speaker 13: and went traveling for a little bit, and then ended
Speaker 13: up in Miami hanging out with Chima. And you know,
Speaker 13: we'll get into we'll get into that point.
Speaker 2: And you have a finance background.
Speaker 14: Yeah, so you'm talking about be a commodity and currency
Speaker 14: trader for many years as well. So we we both
Speaker 14: loved finance. We actually met through a mutual friend at
Speaker 14: her going away party who also worked in finance. So
Speaker 14: I had recently moved to New York and Amani was
Speaker 14: here working and she's like, you guys are similar.
Speaker 8: You guys should definitely connect.
Speaker 14: And uh so, not only you know, obviously working in finance,
Speaker 14: but socially we had a lot of similar interest and yep, yep,
Speaker 14: a lot of that and it led us and traveling,
Speaker 14: traveled out a bit, and we definitely honed in our
Speaker 14: ability to notice great spirits. So we decided to make one.
Speaker 5: That's pretty cool.
Speaker 6: I mean, how do you make that leap from we
Speaker 6: like to travel and we like.
Speaker 2: To drink because I like to travel and I like
Speaker 2: to drink and I love my job.
Speaker 5: I mean, it is it is?
Speaker 6: You know now, I guess in twenty twenty three, you
Speaker 6: could look back and say, man, people are making so
Speaker 6: much money in liquor. Yes, but that wasn't the case then,
Speaker 6: that was it? So how did you decide like we
Speaker 6: could do this better or there's not you know, I
Speaker 6: like this whiskey and that bourbon, but there's nothing that
Speaker 6: really hits it.
Speaker 5: For me, and I'm gonna need to make it myself.
Speaker 13: By the way, it's not the case now, like some
Speaker 13: people are making money in liquor, but it's a.
Speaker 14: And if you've got a great product like we do,
Speaker 14: you know, I mean, you definitely have the potential to
Speaker 14: make a good amount of money. So so the idea
Speaker 14: to answer your question, we I was at dinner one
Speaker 14: night when I was working and with a bunch of
Speaker 14: buddies and this was when Fireball first came out that whiskey.
Speaker 5: I know it well, and I've done a shot ski
Speaker 5: we all have.
Speaker 3: We all have.
Speaker 14: We all know it very well, and it had just
Speaker 14: come out, so it was the biggest craze. And we're
Speaker 14: at dinner and when my buddy's brought around for the table,
Speaker 14: so we take the shot. Starts well, it starts a conversation.
Speaker 14: If you could start your own flavored whiskey, what would
Speaker 14: it be. Conversation comes to me and I say I
Speaker 14: would do something reminiscent of a Werther's original sugar.
Speaker 5: Sugar Daddy's candy. And everybody's like, wow, what a great idea.
Speaker 3: But of course we all went back to work.
Speaker 8: Nothing happened.
Speaker 14: Many years later, I had left New York, moved back
Speaker 14: to South Florida, where'm from. As Amani mentioned, he had quit,
Speaker 14: traveled around the world, came to hang out with me
Speaker 14: in Miami, and hey, remember this idea, Well, let's look
Speaker 14: into it.
Speaker 3: He went back to New York.
Speaker 14: Our kitchens looked like chemistry labs, you know, beakers, pipettes.
Speaker 5: And things like that.
Speaker 14: Coming out with this, You're playing in the kitchens literally
Speaker 14: sampling with our friends. Everybody's like, what is this and
Speaker 14: why is this amazing. We met and a couple distilleries
Speaker 14: and left saying, wow, we could do this. Now we've
Speaker 14: won ten International Spirit Awards read a third best Flavor Whisky.
Speaker 3: In the World.
Speaker 2: How difficult, though, was it? From taking it from your kitchen,
Speaker 2: coming up with something that everybody's like, hey, this is
Speaker 2: really cool, then to actually the bottle you brought in
Speaker 2: and edited out the kitchen part.
Speaker 15: That's anytime you have an idea and you're considering, you know,
Speaker 15: taking it from the idea stage into something actually actually tangible,
Speaker 15: it's it feels difficult, but.
Speaker 2: Do you just play around with the recipe? Is it
Speaker 2: literally it?
Speaker 13: And even when Shema first proposed the idea, I was like, huh,
Speaker 13: that's that's interesting. Uh, you know, salted caramel whiskey. But
Speaker 13: I think you know. One of the first things we
Speaker 13: did we found a distillery, as Chima mentioned, and went
Speaker 13: to go hang out there. We spent four hours, they
Speaker 13: opened the doors to us, spent four hours asking every
Speaker 13: question under the sun. I remember walking out of that building.
Speaker 13: We looked at each other like hm, hm, this might
Speaker 13: not be as impossible as it might have thought a
Speaker 13: week or so ago. And so that's really when we
Speaker 13: started thinking, all right, let's let's keep exploring. So we
Speaker 13: started doing research and then we started prototyping. So we
Speaker 13: we we had an idea of what we wanted to create,
Speaker 13: right because at the time, a lot of the options
Speaker 13: in the flavor whiskey space, you know, consumers felt where
Speaker 13: overly sweet, syrapy syrup, you know, had an artificial element
Speaker 13: and taste, the after taste, and we thought, you know,
Speaker 13: if we're gonna do this, it has to be a
Speaker 13: whiskey first that happens to have amazing Roman flavor. It
Speaker 13: has to be one natural, right, nothing artificial at all.
Speaker 13: It has to be it can't be sweet like you're
Speaker 13: drinking cought syrup or something like that. And so Duken
Speaker 13: Dame has only one gram of sugar per serving.
Speaker 2: I was shocked when I read that, and that's amazing, right.
Speaker 13: And it's in how we formulated it really kind of
Speaker 13: leads to how we're able to accomplish that, and you know,
Speaker 13: to put in perspective. Jack Daniels, Tennessee honey has five
Speaker 13: grams of sugar preserving five times and the world.
Speaker 2: Is aware of it, and they want I'm going past
Speaker 2: the bomb, Well, I'm going to open it up and start.
Speaker 6: But so money, what you're saying is initially, initially it's daunting,
Speaker 6: but you put one foot in front of the other.
Speaker 13: And so by the time so by the time we
Speaker 13: started playing around in our kitchens, and you know, we
Speaker 13: weren't you know, just full disclosure, we were not breaking
Speaker 13: the law. We did not have little this, you know,
Speaker 13: little distillery sets in our kitchens. But we were sampling
Speaker 13: different types of whiskeys, different types of flavoring. It's kind
Speaker 13: of formulating what we imagined our whiskey would be.
Speaker 3: We did.
Speaker 14: We did it, but deconstructed, not officially, but a couple
Speaker 14: of a couple of months later and I'm in New
Speaker 14: York teams in Florida.
Speaker 13: We were taking notes. We're like, all right, man, try this,
Speaker 13: one milli liter of that, one mill of this. And
Speaker 13: then eventually we got to a point where like, oh,
Speaker 13: I think that that's it. Then you know, we took
Speaker 13: some old whiskey bottles, scraped off whatever label was on there,
Speaker 13: made of batch filled it up, and then we run
Speaker 13: around and have people sample. And so it was at
Speaker 13: that point when our friends are sampling and our family
Speaker 13: sampling it that we're getting this feedback that blew us away, like, wow, man,
Speaker 13: this is amazing. Dude, you've made this in your kitchen. Dude,
Speaker 13: you have to make this and get on the phone.
Speaker 13: You're like, waitmen, you're getting the same feedback.
Speaker 8: Well, what do you want to do?
Speaker 13: And it was at that point that it actually became real.
Speaker 2: That's Amani McCauley and Shimaburi. They are the co founders
Speaker 2: of Duke and Dame and they provided the backstory and
Speaker 2: up next they're going to talk about the hurdles they
Speaker 2: faced as they tried to turn whiskey stardom into profits.
Speaker 13: You know, we're not check right, but in the VC
Speaker 13: world nowadays, no one's just giving you a check for
Speaker 13: one idea, right. They need proof of concept. You have
Speaker 13: to go build it first, show that it works. Yeah,
Speaker 13: the income ask for money. So we took the same approach.
Speaker 13: Let's go build it first. We created this great product.
Speaker 13: You know, we got some validation from the market that
Speaker 13: it was good, and we created a bit.
Speaker 2: You're listening to Bloomberg business Week. This is Bloomberg.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us
Speaker 1: live weekday afternoons from three to six Easter on Bloomberg Radio,
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Speaker 2: All right, let's continue our conversation with Mommy McCauley and
Speaker 2: Shima Beory, co founders of Duke and Dame, an award
Speaker 2: winning salted caramel flavored whiskey. Matt Miller and I just
Speaker 2: pumped open one of their bottles, and a money is
Speaker 2: walking us through the tasting process.
Speaker 14: So the nose, you're getting that really robust caramel rome.
Speaker 14: You want to describe it a little bit.
Speaker 5: It does smell like caramel like, it really smells delicious.
Speaker 6: And by the way, this are this flavor has gotten
Speaker 6: very big. Also, probably wasn't as big when you started
Speaker 6: as it is now because now the caramel is a thing.
Speaker 8: It's a thing.
Speaker 2: So your first loves salt the camel.
Speaker 8: All right, let's take the first step.
Speaker 5: Very smooth, very smooth.
Speaker 13: There you go, getting that harsh whiskey. A lot of
Speaker 13: people to whiskey, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 6: I was actually worried that I was going to look
Speaker 6: a little bit more feminine because I have a difficult
Speaker 6: time drinking whiskey.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 13: I always tell people, Notice you just took this very sick.
Speaker 13: You're smiling and yeah, it's.
Speaker 2: Not like you don't get that bit exactly.
Speaker 14: So take your second ship and we'll talk about it.
Speaker 8: Mm hmm, less sweet.
Speaker 14: You're getting more tenants from the from the bourbon that
Speaker 14: we use, so.
Speaker 2: We don't hate me, but this would be great. All
Speaker 2: support over vanilla.
Speaker 14: Ice, absolutely, we have a lot of customers that love
Speaker 14: it over vanilla and an old fashioned Yeah. Well, actually
Speaker 14: one of our many of our accounts are switching from
Speaker 14: using vodka to us in the espresso martini.
Speaker 2: It has such a nice like after feel and warmth.
Speaker 13: Yeah like it.
Speaker 3: I forgot this.
Speaker 5: Are you okay?
Speaker 3: I like it? Now?
Speaker 13: Are you getting the oakiness and a little spy on
Speaker 13: that second sip?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 5: It was definitely a little different.
Speaker 3: Yea.
Speaker 13: Yeah, so it was just this beautiful layer it taste
Speaker 13: profile that really makes Duke and dam unique.
Speaker 2: So one of the things we wanted to talk to
Speaker 2: you about. We had a great conversation off air while
Speaker 2: we were doing some news funding you guys bootstrapped it. Yes,
Speaker 2: talk to us about that.
Speaker 5: How hard was it.
Speaker 13: Yeah, Well, our plan was to you know, you know,
Speaker 13: we're not check right, But in the VC world nowadays,
Speaker 13: no one's just giving you a check for one idea, right,
Speaker 13: They need proof of concept. You have to go build
Speaker 13: it first, show that it works, and then come ask
Speaker 13: for money. So we took the same approach. Let's you know,
Speaker 13: we didn't feel comfortable asking our friends and family for
Speaker 13: money on just some crazy idea. Okay, let's go build
Speaker 13: it first. We created this great product. We you know,
Speaker 13: we got some validation from the market that it was good.
Speaker 13: Just wasn't us that thought it was good. And we
Speaker 13: created a business and a few years later we were
Speaker 13: able to go to friends and family door a raise
Speaker 13: and it was much more successful than we thought. But
Speaker 13: because we could show hey, first you can touch and
Speaker 13: feel and taste the product, it's good.
Speaker 2: The two of us like shooting the breeze.
Speaker 13: We can show the retailers that we got into whether
Speaker 13: it was Total line ABC in Florida, Mark Classico at
Speaker 13: the time, so we could show the hey, look at
Speaker 13: what we've done a cruise. So that made the rays easier.
Speaker 13: It happened a little bit later than anticipated because of
Speaker 13: COVID right parts to ask people for money when this
Speaker 13: stock before.
Speaker 5: You tw twenty seventeen.
Speaker 2: Was that when you guys do.
Speaker 13: We started a business in twenty seventeen, We launched a
Speaker 13: product in twenty eighteen, and.
Speaker 2: Then during the pandemic, did you think, oh my god,
Speaker 2: this is it. We're going to be killed Nobody everybody
Speaker 2: was drinking well?
Speaker 3: Or was that a boom when.
Speaker 14: You well, the global brands and the big guys were
Speaker 14: doing great, right. The lifeline of smaller companies or craft
Speaker 14: spirit companies like ours, especially just a year and a
Speaker 14: half in, is what we call liquid lips. So when
Speaker 14: you go into liquor store and you see the brand
Speaker 14: ambassador giving you samples, that shut off. We couldn't do
Speaker 14: events and activations because that shut off. So people couldn't
Speaker 14: sample this new bottle, this spirit. If they knew Tito's,
Speaker 14: they would go and buy it because they just knew
Speaker 14: it already. But we definitely did some creative things that
Speaker 14: where we actually grew during the pandemic. Most brands that
Speaker 14: started off actually fell off or folded because they didn't
Speaker 14: have that already brand recognition. But we pivoted. We did
Speaker 14: some things within our supply chain which mattered. We really
Speaker 14: used our connections, our network where everyone was listening to
Speaker 14: streaming radio. We networked and found a whole bunch of
Speaker 14: on air DJs, had them wearing Duke and Dame shirts
Speaker 14: and bottles and giveaways and things like that.
Speaker 13: It really forced us to transition to digital. Yeah that's awesome,
Speaker 13: which we had not done or now that was a
Speaker 13: part of it, but really just how do you reach
Speaker 13: the consumer exact right?
Speaker 14: Yep, yeah, So we had to pivot and do that
Speaker 14: instead of relying on the traditional way of introducing customers
Speaker 14: through experiential marketing, and that was the big thing. So
Speaker 14: for us, we could tout the awards. We won a
Speaker 14: bunch of awards actually before we launched, so in fact
Speaker 14: we had this great product, but we had to compete
Speaker 14: against Tennessee Honey and Crown Apple and things like that.
Speaker 8: Now I'm on and I we were talking.
Speaker 3: We're like, all right, we.
Speaker 8: Need to hang a medal on the bottle similar to this,
Speaker 8: you know.
Speaker 14: So we applied to four contests. We actually won were
Speaker 14: placed in all four, which was insane. We actually got
Speaker 14: the top award at the Consumer Choice Award, which is
Speaker 14: the SIPs Award, And when we hit the market right away.
Speaker 14: Within two weeks, we got into total Wine.
Speaker 2: That's pretty cool, which is huge.
Speaker 6: Did you apply for any funding, I'm a small business,
Speaker 6: loans or anything like that.
Speaker 8: No, no, no, no, we had a couple of nig.
Speaker 3: You're right right.
Speaker 14: So we were fortunate that we were able to to
Speaker 14: do something while we were working and say, can I.
Speaker 2: Ask you are you profitable?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 8: Not yet?
Speaker 13: Okay.
Speaker 14: Liquor industry is very tough, as we as we continue
Speaker 14: to expand our distribution. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but but the
Speaker 14: model will prove yeah that way. But right now when
Speaker 14: five market is Florida, New York, Michigan, Maryland, DC, as
Speaker 14: I mentioned, and we shipped thirty eight states, seven Caribbean markets,
Speaker 14: every kind of a cruisive in the world.
Speaker 5: We just started with the Royal Caribbees.
Speaker 2: They drink a lot.
Speaker 8: Yes, we like the fact that they drink. It helps.
Speaker 2: So what's next? Do you expand the line or how
Speaker 2: do you think about it?
Speaker 13: So I think we're at a point now where we're
Speaker 13: really ready to invest in that next stage of growth.
Speaker 13: So we were able to bring in a large investor
Speaker 13: earlier this year, and so we're really now starting to
Speaker 13: do all the things you wish you could have done
Speaker 13: that you couldn't do before, so investing more marketing and
Speaker 13: promotional activities. Of course, Chiem and I have done everything
Speaker 13: from day one. Staff sounds like we have zero full
Speaker 13: time employees other than us, but we're actually now starting to,
Speaker 13: you know, think about building a staff. We're interviewing for
Speaker 13: a marketing role and for sales roles on the ground,
Speaker 13: so we're really trying to kind of take Duke and Dame.
Speaker 8: To that next level.
Speaker 13: So that's what we're focused on now in terms of
Speaker 13: portfolio and brand extensions. You know, let's just say we're
Speaker 13: in the lab.
Speaker 2: You're in the kitchen.
Speaker 6: To find a distiller or did you have to go
Speaker 6: through many or.
Speaker 13: Well it was funny, so before we started on research,
Speaker 13: you know, you think it's hard, right, but then once
Speaker 13: you get into it, you find out that, oh, you know,
Speaker 13: buy versus build. You can go build your own, but
Speaker 13: there's a lot of capital investment required for that if
Speaker 13: you wanted to work with a third party distiller. We
Speaker 13: were very surprised to learn that, oh, some of our
Speaker 13: favorite brands you actually don't distill.
Speaker 8: Their own whiskey.
Speaker 11: It's amazing, Like, wait a minute, you can do that.
Speaker 13: So we were able to find We spoke to a
Speaker 13: few and we found one who was actually based in
Speaker 13: Florida that they make amazing whiskey, and they make amazing
Speaker 13: whiskey for us.
Speaker 2: Such a fun conversation with Ammy McCauley and Schiman Bury,
Speaker 2: co founders of Duke and Dame salted caramel flavored whiskey.
Speaker 2: You're listening to Bloomberg business Week coming up. Online wedding
Speaker 2: planning platform than Not is enjoying record revenues well also
Speaker 2: ensuring that people from every demographic can enjoy its services.
Speaker 16: I think the goal is to have boardrooms represent a
Speaker 16: diverse set of individuals because that's the customer base that
Speaker 16: these companies are representing.
Speaker 2: More on the changing landscape of the corporate boardroom. When
Speaker 2: we come back, this is Bloomberg.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us
Speaker 1: live weekday afternoons from three to six Eastern Listen on
Speaker 1: Bloomberg dot com, the iHeartRadio app, and the Bloomberg Business app,
Speaker 1: or watch just Live on YouTube.
Speaker 2: Women hold a third of S and P five hundred
Speaker 2: board seats for the first time ever after scores of
Speaker 2: men gave up their directorships in May, a long elusive
Speaker 2: goal that's been touted as a baseline for lasting change.
Speaker 2: Caroline Everson is a board member of the NOT Worldwide,
Speaker 2: the global wedding marketplace operating in sixteen countries, and right
Speaker 2: now business is booming.
Speaker 16: The wedding industry is a two hundred and fifty billion
Speaker 16: dollar industry. It is extremely robust. Twenty twenty two was
Speaker 16: considered sort of the super Bowl of weddings because there
Speaker 16: was such pent up demand. We had two point six
Speaker 16: million IDs in the United States alone this year'll it'll
Speaker 16: go back to pre COVID levels at about two point
Speaker 16: one million, and then NOT have achieved its highest revenue
Speaker 16: and its history in twenty twenty two with four hundred
Speaker 16: million dollars in revenue, and it's been profitable for ten years.
Speaker 16: So it is a very strong business. And yet one
Speaker 16: of the reasons why I joined the board is I
Speaker 16: think that we are going to go through a pretty
Speaker 16: massive transformation. When you think about the advent of AI
Speaker 16: and what it can do for wedding planning, I think
Speaker 16: it's going to be a phenomenal user experience. So I'm
Speaker 16: very bullish about the opportunity. We've got a lot of
Speaker 16: growth globally, and also it's a very nascent advertising business,
Speaker 16: and having been part of the team that helped build
Speaker 16: metas advertising business, I think there is a pretty significant
Speaker 16: opportunity for us to do that at the NOT.
Speaker 2: You know, it's interesting that you went there in terms
Speaker 2: of advertising and Meta, the evolution of ads maybe as
Speaker 2: a result of AI, Is it going to change dramatically?
Speaker 2: Should we all be kind of ready for something very different?
Speaker 16: I think so. I mean I'm already seeing significant change.
Speaker 16: So when you think about the scale at which companies
Speaker 16: do advertising these days across digital platforms, AI has actually
Speaker 16: been utilized by companies like Meta and Google for years.
Speaker 16: What I think you're going to see a big difference
Speaker 16: is in the creative development. What we're seeing now is
Speaker 16: using generative AI, marketers can literally put together thousands, if
Speaker 16: not hundreds of thousands of varieties of campaigns in a
Speaker 16: much more efficient and effective way than NOT has been
Speaker 16: experimenting with some of that. Marketing has already seen a
Speaker 16: twenty percent lift in conversion. So I think that's going
Speaker 16: to be a pretty transformational trend in digital advertising.
Speaker 2: You talk about transformational and boards are transforming. You are
Speaker 2: part of that. I am curious though, when you in
Speaker 2: a week where we saw Supreme Court rulings dealing with
Speaker 2: affirmative action, you rejecting the use of race in university admissions.
Speaker 2: We've been talking about, well, how does that maybe impact
Speaker 2: ultimately the business community. What are the conversations that boards
Speaker 2: or companies are having as we see these changes.
Speaker 16: My experience through all the companies that I have the
Speaker 16: privilege of serving on is that the you have an
Speaker 16: unwaivering commitment to the principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion,
Speaker 16: and that is not going to change. I think the
Speaker 16: goal is to have boardrooms represent a diverse set of
Speaker 16: individuals because that's the customer base that these companies are representing.
Speaker 16: And so each search that I have been part of,
Speaker 16: either for myself or in looking at new colleagues that
Speaker 16: could potentially join the boards that I'm on, there are
Speaker 16: a lot of criteria that the board of directors goes
Speaker 16: through and really thinks about what skill set does the
Speaker 16: boardroom need in order to help advise management, and that
Speaker 16: can span many, many different areas.
Speaker 2: That's Carolyn Everson, board member of the not Worldwide. She's
Speaker 2: also on the board of the Walt Disney Company and
Speaker 2: under Armor. Carolyn is former president of Instacart, former VP
Speaker 2: of Global Business Group at Meta, and a former corporate
Speaker 2: VP at Microsoft. Her full interview available on our podcast feed.
Speaker 2: And that wraps up the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business
Speaker 2: Week from Bloomberg Radio. Thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 2: Be sure to tune into Bloomberg Business Week Monday through Friday,
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Speaker 2: Matt Miller, I'm Carol Masser. Stay with us today's top
Speaker 2: stories and global business headlines. Are coming up right now.
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