SALT Talks

Stergios Voskopoulos is the CEO of Kanoo Capital, the Investment Division within YBA Kanoo, one of the largest and oldest family conglomerates in the Middle East. As CEO of Kanoo Capital, Mr. Voskopoulos is responsible for the active management of direct and indirect investments regionally and globally.

Kanoo as an institution was incorporated all the way back in 1890 and after many decades of an oil-based economy in the region, YBA Kanoo leveraged its longstanding credentials in countries like Bahrain, Saudi and UAE to establish a wide-ranging professional investment practice. This shift to more diverse investing has created a regional entrepreneurial ecosystem designed to sustain into the 21st century and beyond. “I'm a believer of impact investing when you have the balance between impact and also economic and financial returns.”

Developing the local workforce is a key element in the mission to remake and support the regional economy. This means a strong focus on improving local universities so that fewer families feel the need to send their children to the United States or Europe for a top education.

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To learn more about this episode, including podcast transcripts and show notes, visit salt.org/talks

Moderated by Anthony Scaramucci. 

Jeffrey Sonnenfeld is the Senior Associate Dean for Leadership Studies at Yale University’s School of Management and The Lester Crown Professor of Management Practice, as well as the Founder, President of THE YALE CHIEF EXECUTIVE LEADERSHIP INSTITUTE– the world’s first “CEO College”. Previously, Sonnenfeld spent ten years as a professor at the Harvard Business School. He has been named one of the world’s “ten most influential business school professors” by Business Week and one of the “100 most influential figures in governance” by Directorship. He is also a winner of the Ellis Island Medal of Honor.

There are five qualities that make up an effective leader: personal dynamism, empathy, authenticity, inspirational goals, and boldness. Any CEO’s story involves plenty of setbacks that required resiliency and determination in moving past. That process involves honestly facing the problem, engaging your network of acquaintances, and ultimately rebuilding yourself into something better. “It's a failure that punctuates success. It's a defining moment… those who make it through are forever changed.”

It is important for a leader to demonstrate the ability to let go of grudges or personal slights. President Biden serves as an example of someone famously known for his willingness to move past temporary disagreements. This lays the groundwork for future compromise and collaboration between opposing sides.

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To learn more about this episode, including podcast transcripts and show notes, visit salt.org/talks

Moderated by Anthony Scaramucci. 

Michael Saylor is the CEO of MicroStrategy. He is a technologist, investor, business executive, philanthropist, and best-selling author. He has become famous in the Bitcoin community for purchasing more than $450+ million of Bitcoin using the company's balance sheet.

Bitcoin represents a similar transformation in the financial space. Similar to the likes of Amazon, Apple and Facebook, Bitcoin has proven itself the winner in the crypto asset space and will continue its inevitable climb. Institutions and major players in the financial space are already coming around to Bitcoin which will accelerate its adoption and growth.

As we approached 2010, companies like Apple, Facebook and Amazon were poised to transform the world. The analog world we once lived in would soon fit in the palm of a hand. Apple was replacing Canon; Facebook and Instagram were replacing Kodak; Amazon was replacing retail stores. In the process, these companies became exponentially more valuable than the ones they eliminated. “Software networks are dematerializing everything in the world.”

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To learn more about this episode, including podcast transcripts and show notes, visit salt.org/talks

Moderated by Anthony Scaramucci. 

Marlon Nichols is a founding managing partner at MaC Venture Capital (formerly known as Cross Culture Ventures), which finds the entrepreneurs who are building the future for the rest of America.

A career started in consulting eventually led to venture because as a VC, one has skin in the game for the length of that investment. It offers the ability to directly shape the nature of the companies, supports more diverse entrepreneurs and identifies opportunities to address traditionally underserved communities through entrepreneurialism. Slowly, there are signs of increased focus on diversity in the venture capital space with many groups reporting on their diversity numbers. “A nerve has been struck, and people are digging in and seeing the value; not only the social value but the economic value of diversity.”

Coining the term, “cultural investing,” it seeks to identify global behavioral shifts with potential staying power. Pop culture is the driving force, so it is used as a key indicator in predicting where major cultural movements are heading.

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To learn more about this episode, including podcast transcripts and show notes, visit salt.org/talks

Moderated by Anthony Scaramucci. 

Changpeng Zhao, also known as CZ, is a serial entrepreneur with an impressive track record of successful startups. He launched Binance in July 2017 and within 180 days grew Binance into the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world. An expert in blockchain and trading systems, CZ has built Binance into the leading blockchain ecosystem, comprised of Binance Exchange, Labs, Launchpad, Info, Academy, Research, Trust Wallet and Charity Foundation.

Moving all around the world, living in different major cities prevented a lack of connection or reliance on anyone government-backed currency. This set the stage for a life dedicated to cryptocurrency and Bitcoin and ultimately led to the creation of Binance, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world. Bitcoin has taken on only greater importance as governments issue more currency. “We're witnessing probably the largest amount of quantitative easing by governments all around the world. And when governments do that, everybody becomes poor because there are more currencies being printed, and you're not given much of that directly. Bitcoin has limited supply, 21 million of them ever [get made]… You know that's mathematically guaranteed. No one can change it.”

Binance aims to use its company to further build the foundation of crypto and grow its adoption. The goal is to use cryptocurrency to deliver freedom of money in the same way we view freedom of speech.

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To learn more about this episode, including podcast transcripts and show notes, visit salt.org/talks

Moderated by Anthony Scaramucci. 

Peter Baker and Susan Glasser. Peter is the Chief White House Correspondent for the New York Times, political analyst for MSNBC, and author of Days of Fire and The Breach. 

Susan is a staff writer for the New Yorker and author of its weekly Letters from Trump's Washington, as well as a CNN global affairs analyst. Susan and Peter are married, and their first assignment as a married couple was as Moscow Bureau Chiefs for the Washington Post, after which they wrote Kremlin Rising.

Jim Baker sits relatively under-discussed considering the enormous influence he wielded from the end of Watergate to the end of the Cold War. Baker ran five different national presidential campaigns, served as Chief of Staff in both Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush’s White House, Treasury Secretary and ultimately Secretary of State from 1989 to 1992 during which time the Soviet Union collapsed. “Jim Baker as a subject turned out to be, I think, sort of oddly relevant to the moment… Donald Trump had yet to appear on the scene in terms of Washington politics at least… our interest was in a big subject about Washington and understanding ‘how had Washington become such a dysfunctional gridlocked place?’”

H.W. Bush urged Baker to get into politics and started Baker’s multi-decade political career that shaped Washington and how it’s operated in the decades that followed. One can trace the kind of deal-making politics, in which Baker played a major role creating, all the way to today’s climate that has seen a rejection of the status quo, exemplified by President Donald Trump’s ascendency.

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To learn more about this episode, including podcast transcripts and show notes, visit salt.org/talks

Moderated by Anthony Scaramucci. 

Top voices in venture capital provide insights into how startups are leveraging and driving the revolution in working, communicating, and staying healthy brought about by COVID-19. This second installment of the SALT Talks: Pandemic Venture Investment Series, presented in partnership with OurCrowd, includes a look at the mobility sector in the current COVID-climate, how top entrepreneurs and their mobility startups are navigating the unprecedented business challenges and opportunities in our era and what we can expect for the future mobility revolution. Moderated by Yakir Machluf, Mobility Lead, OurCrowd

Featuring Michael Dick, Chief Executive Officer of C2A; Graham Gullans, Vice President, Business & Corporate Development of Superpedestrian; and Adi Pinhas, Chief Executive Officer of Brodmann17

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To learn more about this episode, including podcast transcripts and show notes, visit salt.org/talks

Moderated by Anthony Scaramucci. 

Philip Bagdasarianz has been working with wealthy families from Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Asia for over 18 years. This year he joined PWA Private Wealth Advisors AG, a swiss multi-family office boutique as a managing partner.

Our identities play a central role in our personality and it ultimately has a huge effect on how we work and interact professionally and personally. Identity can be categorized into three pillars: DNA, culture and upbringing, and our purpose. Understanding different identities and how they manifest themselves is important to consider when evaluating investment decisions. For example, western societies place more emphasis on individualism. “They are generally the individualists who are generally what we call overconfident. Meaning they have the illusion of being in control of what they're doing in the markets.”

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To learn more about this episode, including podcast transcripts and show notes, visit salt.org/talks

Moderated by Anthony Scaramucci. 

Dr. Taghreed Al-Saraj is currently working as a Post Doctorate fellow at University of California, Berkeley. She is the first Saudi female Post Doctorate in the history of UC Berkeley. Dr. Al-Saraj earned both a Bachelor and a Masters in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) from the University of Miami, Florida. She earned her Ph.D. from UCL Institute of Education, University of London.

Learning a language creates its own type of anxiety in students. Something that should be seen as a positive opportunity, it often fills students with dread and shame. In fact, foreign language anxiety is a real condition that exists in the same way as math or public speaking anxiety. Students described the full range of anxiety symptoms experienced when they walked into the foreign language class. “I learned a third language, and that's when I started connecting my experience with what I heard the students were saying.“

Upskillable was created to match a person’s cognitive personality and skills with jobs. Resumes often do not accurately depict a candidate, reducing the likelihood of success in a role. By taking a personality assessment, candidates are offered more effective assessments of their skillsets and even how to improve in certain areas.

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To learn more about this episode, including podcast transcripts and show notes, visit salt.org/talks

Moderated by Anthony Scaramucci. 

Raoul Pal is the co-founder of Real Vision Finance, a financial media company offering in-depth video interviews and research publications from the world’s best investors.

Bitcoin appeals to three different types of people: Libertarians like its decentralized and anonymous nature; technologists see its potential as an engineering solution to the financial system; early adopter investors identify its value as an uninflatable store of value. Bitcoin serves as a hedge against inflation caused by fiat currency. “What's clever is this money can't be devalued. You can't create more of it. There are only 21 million Bitcoins.”

Bitcoin basically amounts to a mathematical formula that guarantees there will never be more than 21 million Bitcoins. The decentralized structure, run on about 10,000 different nodes and recorded on the blockchain, ensures it can never be changed. Bitcoin is the only asset with a completely knowable supply.

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To learn more about this episode, including podcast transcripts and show notes, visit salt.org/talks

Moderated by Anthony Scaramucci.