 Wow, awesome awesome. Thank you so much Patrick Byrne So next we have another incredible entrepreneur to speak with you. She is a fixture at fee seminars I'm really excited to introduce her to you. Magat Wade is our next speaker She is passionate about entrepreneurship and creating high-end retail brands based on diverse African traditions that change the perception of Africa So she's the founder and CEO of ToSwan, Tio-san a high-end skin care products line And she's been named as one of the top 20 youngest power women in Africa Magat Wade good morning guys and Thanks for having me. It's always an honor to come here talk to you See so many of my friends, you know when I come here you should ask my husband Michael He's like why are you so excited? I'm like, oh, you don't understand. I'm gonna be seeing my people So thanks for being those people Right, so When it comes to addressing the global poor I Think we can talk about three categories of people because at the end of the day You have to understand but I think my only reason of being alive on this earth I have decided by now is that I want to contribute everything that I have To making sure that we make poverty truly history I'm not trying to steal the words from bono, but I really mean it when I say poverty needs to be history by now It's 2017 You know really do we still have to talk about this? So but when it comes to dealing with Global poverty, let's talk about three categories of people first are the anti-capitalist two are the technocrats and Three are the people out there who are willing to advocate for capitalism and on there I see a lot. I see mainly the libertarians leading the charge. So thank you for what you do Of those anti-capitalists, you know all those do-gooders They so care about me the poor African person, you know Oh, we care about women's rights and we care about the poor's right and yeah But we only care about them as long as We can be anti-capitalist in the process as long as we get to trash capitalism. Yeah, I care about the global poor so But unfortunately for them. It's been proven that actually one of the best remedies to poverty is You know it capitalism Right since that was made clear. I Would not even sit here and try to tell you how many of them we lost in the process No longer interested. Oh, well poverty. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we have other issues now What type of people will sit here and tell me that they care about the poor? Yeah, only if it means that they get to trash capitalism so I've written them off of The technocrats Technocrats are a little bit better than the anti-capitalist But to my taste they're a little bit too soft and a little bit too ambiguous When they're not just flat-out misguided Why do I say that I? Get called to talk to so many different groups all over the world Some groups are the anti-capitalist and yeah, I go there and I give it to them as well But you know what they never dare ever dare to counter me on what I say to them about capitalism when I'm there Maybe the messenger matters. Who knows I don't know Um But the technocrats so I happen to be giving lectures at Berkeley, you know, UC Berkeley, you know the Mecca So There usually I'm called to go talk to graduate students And these are the people who are designed who are supposed to later go and be the practitioners of For example, the Millennium Development Goals of the UN, you know those 17 goals that they have decided at the UN that you know Oh, if we do this this is an opening thing. All these issues are gonna go away So I have these people, you know graduate students there. God bless their hearts have good good hearts And then I remember the first time I did it They were just coming back from their big power meeting in New York with Jeffrey Sacks their celebrity Economist-in-chief, you know big power. Oh, yeah, we're gonna fix, you know poverty and all the issue all of this stuff And I asked them I said mostly who was there out of I think are close to 1500 people They remembered the people make various ministers government people from various countries They remembered many professors They remembered many people from the NGO community and when I asked did you see anybody from the private sector? They actually had to stop for a moment and try to think and somebody said oh, well, maybe a couple people Mind you This is a group that's meeting to talk about how we're gonna make sure that everybody gets access to clean water How are we gonna make sure that everybody gets access to some type of health care? you know when they need it or reduce the level of maternal and You know babies dying when women are giving birth How are we gonna make sure that everybody gets fed properly? Well, it was very interesting because I took each one of the 17 goals on the screen and I asked them Who do you think doesn't have access to clean water? Someone who is too poor to have access to clean water You know, it is true that in some parts of Africa in some parts of the rest of the developing world Yeah, there is Issues around access to clean water, but let me tell you the people who can afford it always find clean water They actually drink better water than you guys here So it's not a matter. It's a matter of poverty Who does not have access to proper nutrition who is malnourished? Someone who is too poor to buy enough nutritious foods and We walked through each one of the goals and I made the case for them as to each one of those goals was Directly most of the time related to poverty and even when it was not directly related to poverty It was one of the consequences of poverty and they were just like well, I guess that's true So if yes, indeed poverty seems to be at the root of all of these problems And I will yes even dare go to say that poverty is at root of a lot of conflicts in this world Well, what does it mean? People are poor. Why? Why are you poor? How does it work that you poor you poor because you don't have enough money? It's that simple you poor when you don't have enough money to give you basic needs Where does money come from for most of us it comes from a source of income, right? Where does the source of income for come for come from for most of us? a job Anyone else job and or Thank you, or you know you're investing but before you invest you gotta have that money from somewhere But even there when I asked that question that my you know Berkeley graduates were like some of them are like yeah, I come from government For those people here who think that jobs come from government. Yes, it is true that the government hires some people But even if you work for the government, I would like to think that you're being paid, right now. Where does that money come from? We go back to exactly comes from taxes that people who work employees people who hire them You know the companies and the employers pay so that we in turn, you know pay these government people So even there we're back to commerce even there. We're back to business and so once we make that clear and My UC Berkeley graduate we all agreed to that Because I always like to take checkpoints Then I say, okay, if indeed Jobs is the solution to this massive massive problem we have out there of poverty Then don't you think that maybe we should try to think about where jobs come from and We said entrepreneurs so if it comes from entrepreneurs and business then don't you think that we should really try and pay attention to what type of Environment those businesses get to operate in don't you think? Right, okay, so then those guys tell me yeah, you're right I'm like but yet you come back from this meeting this big power meeting where you're gonna fix these problems And you're telling me that out of 1500 people you only remember two people from the private sector Do you now see the problem we have? technocrats and they're like whoo now At that point I all have them in the bag You know when I was starting to be like the minds or like I'm seeing some eyes of them Some of them I can almost feel like they feel like they've been light to their entire life, but it's a whole other problem At that point I'm like, okay if entrepreneurs if business is a solution Yes, let's try and make sure we look at the business climate Then that's when comes my best and favorite ranking in the world the doing business index ranking of the World Bank Who has looked at it here? But doing business index ranking of the of the World Bank I don't see a lot of hands up I see a few hands up for the rest of you make sure you pay attention to that because it will be one of your best allies To make your point out there so doing business index it's the index that measures How hard or easy it is to start a business and run a business in any country around the world and guess what? We find that most of the poor people are at the bottom of the list Yes, of course because the harder you make it for entrepreneurs to do their work Of course the less job businesses will be created and the less businesses are created the less jobs you get It's that simple and then you're gonna come and complain that oh, yeah But business is so bad because in those countries we only get the multinationals Yes, you only get the multinationals because you made it so hard for the little people to get in the game The only the big guys are left and then they get to screw everybody else. Yes You see why I don't have a lot of patience for the technocrats And then finally We have those Like you in this room who are absolutely willing to stand up for capitalism and defend it anytime any day and I say Thank you but is but I Need you guys to be more powerful out there Because right now you are being crushed by the side that claims to care about me They right now hold the moral high ground and they use it to crush you down But the more they crush you the more they slow you down the more they slow these ideas down And it means more of my people are condemned to a life of poverty and Indecency in terms of ways of living So yes, this matters to me So it is my goal to try and make you as powerful as you can as you are advocates of these ideas One thing I ask you one thing I ask you if you want to be more powerful at that You need to stop doing it from me from an ideological perspective That doesn't work. It doesn't so Why do I care so much about poverty and we're gonna go into some of the solutions, but first I Want to walk you through the reality of poverty Because I want you to fill it in your guts as much as I fill it in my guts Because then you get to talk from your guts and when you talk from your guts people listen to you There's no other choice so What does poverty mean for me my gateway from Senegal? Poverty in my case or poverty of my people means But we have countless countless young people some of my most entrepreneurial People who are right now serving as fish food as a bottom of the ocean Just two weeks ago. We had a boat tip over Somewhere in the Mediterranean and you hear about these stories you see these pictures I grew up with those stories of people dying at sea Why because they had to leave their country? Because there is not enough jobs and why there is not enough jobs because the business climate sucks so much that People like me can't do their work of creating companies and jobs So they pack themselves into little fishermen's boat try to cross to make it to Europe to find a job So they can feed the families back home Most of them don't make it Just two weeks ago and again another boat Babies in it babies and then we hear stories and Where People like me are being sold for five hundred dollars in slavery Because they cross for there to try to make it to Europe and they get stuck over there You want to talk about poverty you don't want to know why it's so visceral to me What type of a human being would have would be to leave knowing this and I'd give a damn so Those are the realities of poverty and a lot of people People from Ecuador people from all over the door could tell you the same stories probably different type of horrors, but feel horrors so What are some of the solutions? some of the solutions are We pay attention to this doing business index and we pay attention to the fact that Reason why these countries are poor it's due to the fact that they are overwhelmingly over Regulated This is something that everyone needs to know Let me give you some examples, you know, I just came back from Senegal three weeks ago I now spend half my time in Senegal half my time here in the United States Because my business we produce our products back home and we retell it that we retell them here in the United States so We just finished setting up the manufacturing facility. We make skincare products Let me give you an example as to The type of idiocy that I'm dealing with on a daily basis there So You know To make these beautiful creams for you these beautiful lip balms for you I need the best ingredients that the world has because I happen to be a very picky person And a very proud person if I want to show you that us Africans are as worthy as anybody else I also need to raise my bar, right? So nothing but the best for you guys and for myself Because of that I Need to source my products from anywhere. I see them in the world where they happen to be the best So it turns out that right now in Senegal out of all the ingredients and packaging that goes into my let's say the Le Bon But we're launching in September Only two ingredients for now I can get from my country because they match the standards that I'm looking for all organic the way it's done I know some of you guys here don't believe in our organic, but we're in a free world I believe in organic leave me alone. Okay, so fine So All the things and I need to know it's traceable Because you know at the end of the day if you guys today tell me oh because of your lip balm I had the big rashes on my lips or they became so big. It's your fault Well, I need to have all my ducks in a row everything, you know We have test controls of everything at our lab at a different lab and everything is you know neat We can trace it back insurance can get on everything we I can make my case It's not because of us, but you got this big thing in any case um So we have to have all of that and you understand that my supply chain has to follow that type of rigor, right? so Only two things in the product that I make can found be found in the country Everything else has to come from somewhere else, and you know how that goes. We're it's a global world You know we we source from wherever we can and where we find what suits us Well, did you know that unless I jump through hoops and hoops and hoops and hoops? anything But I import in my country to make my product Get a tariff off. You know how much? 45% you can be competitive with that So if I can't be competitive with that, do you even think that business is viable? No, it's not So my country's like yeah, okay. Yeah, that's right. That kind of sucks So, okay You jump through these hoops fill out all of this paperwork do this do this do that and then we will come and do all of these Controls at your site and everything and then we'll give you an exoneration for three years And if you're being a good citizen, then maybe we're extended for another two years That's what we have to do right now Do you see the disadvantage that I have compared to a woman who is here in America and starting her business herself? One nonsense another nonsense. Do you know that? Right now. I'm trying not to hire anybody with a degree You're like why yeah, why? because Depending on the degree that you have the level of a degree that you have the state of Senegal Forces me the state of Senegal has decided what's the minimum wage that I can pay you and it differs based on your degree So if you have a PhD in philosophy and I love philosophy But you have a PhD in philosophy and you get to go find a job nowhere because no one really can use your skills in the business world The way you have it presented You're stuck. You have no job, but my god where it shows up and she's like, you know what? You have skills that I care about that's nothing to do with your degree in philosophy has nothing to do with your PhD in Philosophy, but at least I have a job for you and these are going to be my rates Well, I can't hire that woman with her little PhD in philosophy that has had no job for the past five years since she came out of school Why because a minute I touch her I Have to pay her prices that are not justifiable for my business See on one end they're asking us to go and get all of these degrees because they tell us a degree is gonna be your Your your key to a job But then people like me when you come and you see the reality you can't hire them How stupid is that? So right now I'm trying to hire people with no degree of the lowest degree possible So that's how I manage my flexibility Of course, I will go and treat my employees very best because I also believe in that I believe in them on the stakeholder model rather than just a shareholder model I'm a true pure conscious capitalist at heart and in mind So Imagine that nonsense. Oh and by the way, huh, I am married to my employees if I Decide to hire you give you just like a normal permanent job. You don't like how you come and I signed a contract with you We hire you you're hired The minute I do that. Oh For every year, but I keep you if for whatever reason we need to separate Hey, I need to be able to justify the separation and on top of that for every year But I hired you I owe you one month of severance If you've been working for me for six years everything has been going well and we know business is ups and downs all of a sudden something happens I need a flexibility to let somebody go They're gonna ask me to justify and by the way, they're they're not gonna take into account so much for the economy is going down Or whatever it needs to be something else And even if I do let you go then I got a pivot penalty So let's say you work for me for six years now I need to let you go by the time I need to let you go if it's for economic reasons It means I'm probably struggling money-wise right, but no I have to have six months of severance for you So most of the time companies go down What we do that? But if you don't want to go down you want to play a plan ahead for that what you do in my case is you say I'm not gonna hire you permanent. So you are in an you're in an It's just like forever that you have these two-year contract to your contract to your contract Or anything to be 23 months not 24 because a minute it becomes 24 continuous months The state automatically converts you into a permanent employee and then everything else kicks in What does it do and in for the employee they did that to protect them But what do they have now all of these people walk around with no real permanent job and they can't go to a bank and You know get a loan or have an apartment, you know for the renting an apartment You start to see all the nonsense that's going on It's madness. It's madness if I sat here and told you about all the crazy stories You would be like why in the world are you doing business over there? Because someone has to I am not someone who gives up. We have done a lot of work You know I created a mini Diplomatic incident a few years ago because as you can see by now I have a big mouth and I'm not afraid to use it So I was at this conference in Gabon and we had all of these held this heads of states Mostly from Africa and my president was sitting right there with his wife next to him And he expected probably me to be like the traditional good African, you know be like oh everything is great My old president you're such a great president blah blah I keep going and I was like well Let me tell you about how things are going for my business How it took me two years to set up my business over here in Senegal and it took 15 minutes in the United States How ridiculous is that and I talked to them exactly about what I'm telling you guys right now He was pissed off He was pissed He was pissed the organizers were freaked out Everybody thought this was gonna be bad and yet there was a mini Diplomatic incident. I heard about it. I had an earful about it and then as if it was not enough I decided to write for Forbes a column It was supposed to be called if I can't fire you I can't hire you they thought it was too harsh They changed the title to something like whatever, but my point was still made Because I didn't have a true I see a couple here You guys love each other right? It seems like right now if I tell you that you marry him and God forbid you want to divorce his ass for any reason You can't would you marry him? Thank you She's trying to be too nice because she should really say no she said I don't know about that one Well, I know what you mean. You probably not gonna marry the guy just to be honest So if I can't fire you I can't hire you it's that simple So that was after the mini diplomatic incident I piled on with that article and you know what they did they started debating the article on National TV the most respected TV show on national TV Debating my articles two teams of experts including the tax people everyone was talking and you know what since then My president made it a key that we as a country have to start paying attention to a doing business index ranking And he puts a lot of pressure on everybody for us to be better reformers So so what can you do you guys over here because I know you people who care? Be aware Everything I talked about today Go back dig deeper seek more watch poverty Inc. If you haven't it will give you a lot more information So number one be in the know number two By any time you can do business with African entrepreneurs Things are tough back home. Trust me, but I am not giving up things are gonna get better We are working and a generation away from mine, and I'm hoping actually even ten years away from By the time I'm done with this that we're not talking about on this nonsense anymore But in the meantime you guys keep doing business with any African entrepreneurs that you can do business with That's the best way to keep things going forward three Get into hacking and hacks to governments Yeah, I said it. I don't care. I know that they watch what I say what I'm in this short. That's fine They don't own me so Hacks to government We're talking We're talking Bitcoin. We're talking blockchain. We're talking e-government. That's what we're talking a few years ago I met two guys two tech founders. They were involved in the blockchain technology I met them in Guatemala, and then we were we saw each other again They're two tech people from New York young people and so they were telling me how excited they were but you know They were gonna create this Bitcoin This Bitcoin ATM and the debit card that goes with it. I said well, it's all great But well doesn't impress me but what would impress me is if you came to Africa With this technology and that we applied it to some real life issues down there If you want to talk call me, I thought they would be like oh, whatever lady But they called me and now they are in Senegal and then from Senegal they went into Ghana and That's what they're doing the business is there doing well really, you know Fixing real problems for people on the ground Those are the type of things you can do right using the power of Technology and seeing how you can hack government as much as possible for There's this phenomenon in town called the free cities for those of you who have not heard about this I'm telling you this is the bomb as far as I'm concerned some people like oh, let's go to Mars Go to Mars all you want. I'm very touch the planet earth. Thank you very much I'm staying here. You are you guys all go if you want, but me. I'm gonna stay here and try to make this place, right? So yeah, I kind of gave up on a lot of states, but now what could happen if in a designated country you get to You take a plot of land as inhabited as possible and on that plot of land you consider that plot of land like your computer But the law that you get that get to rule that plot of land you consider it as you're operating software Start to play with his ideas a little bit Well, that's what Singapore has done. That's what Hong Kong has done. That's what allowed China to actually raise Take 700 million people out of poverty within 30 years. They basically try to zone there tried to zone these places using capitalism for prosperity So this is something big that's coming that I absolutely believe in my husband who is in the room here can talk to you guys more about all of that So in Clothing I Have marching orders for you actually I have only one marching order for you I know we're talking about freedom and everything, but yeah, I dare to commend you What is it I Want that anytime anyone of you runs into people who claim that capitalism is a problem Look from straight in the eyes and in my name. I allow you that in my name. Tell them How dare you? condemn a billion people on this earth to poverty How dare you? condemn a billion people on this earth most of them women and children to leaving horrific lives and Oftentimes horrific to meeting horrific deaths Who the heck are you? What type of a monster are you? Turn the tide around You want to talk about righteousness? Those people want to talk to me about righteousness. I'll give them righteousness So whenever you see those people stop arguing about minimum wage Stop arguing about, you know, you're right for You know like housing to to be deregulated maybe in San Francisco and all that I'm with you on that trust me But it's too complicated for some of you need to grab it where it is There are low hanging fruit stick to What's happening with a global poor if you stick to that I Have noticed that none of these people dares to stand up to you They just can't and there is the truth has a way at this point I truly truly believe that this is pure truth When we go and we talk to Peter Singer over at Princeton, he does not Counter the ideas. He doesn't he will say oh, I never thought about it, but he doesn't counter it This my friends is a moral high ground Use it to make inroads in people's minds and hearts and from there go on to other issues But our mayor may be more complicated to deal with But use it to build a common ground And let no one ever Tell you that you are these cold Part-blooded people that don't give a rat's ass about anyone but themselves Because that's right now how they dare to talk about people like us who care about capitalism and I do not care There's a little Dean from of your name a little are in front of your name or a little L in front of your name or something else I do not care and I won't stand here saying that I vouch for all of your ideas But when it comes to this idea of yours around free markets and around free capitalism, I am your biggest supporter Advocate supporter probably your best messenger and I am here to defend you as well so all I'm asking is for you to have a little bit more courage and also Just dare stop being ashamed of what it is that you believe in If there is anything that I want to leave you with today It's it's that belief in your hearts and in your guts, but you've got it You've got the right message But I need so many more of you to be courageous about it and not let anything else digress you because Any second you miss on speaking up Probably means the life or the death of someone Thousands of miles away from you these ideas need to be let free and they need to go And everybody in this room is it? So thank you for who you are and thank you for having come to this place I used to be an anti-capitalist by the way, so it's possible. Thank you guys