George Roberts: Don't Miss Opportunities

so welcome George to the GSB and thanks for coming we're happy to have you um I'm gonna start by taking us back to the 70s it's a little bit of a theme around here today looks like a good theme in 1976 you and your cousin Henry Kravis decided to leave your cushy banking jobs at Bear Sterns and start a new firm in an industry that didn't even really exist so what were you thinking well it seemed like a good idea at the time know the facts of people borrowing money to buy companies this not new and original in fact one of the largest buyouts specially if you projected out today's value was the the biota and the merger of that created us deal with JP Morgan did back and I think it's 1906 and that track transaction back there was I think about a billion won in value which was quite frank there was 7% of the total US P&P at the time and it was financed with some gold backed bonds some convertible securities JP Morgan and his buddies all bought some penny stock and then they sold it to the market of dollars and that's where the term watered stock came in because that's what they did and eventually there were laws against it so what what we were doing was not new the new part of it was really making management partners in what we did and while I was at Bear Sterns quite frankly when I was in law school I worked and we had done probably 12 or 15 management buyouts at Bear Sterns the firm at the time really did one-up invest capital in that area so Henry Jerry and I borrowed the money for the equity to do it now the deals were quite a bit smaller and you know and at the time very very difficult to put together finally we had built up enough credibility with some banks some insurance companies and some wealthy families that in 1975 we were able to buy a collection of nine businesses from Rockwell and we paid 105 million dollars for it we were able to get that transaction done it took about a year to do it we called everybody that we knew to which and we needed everybody we knew to put up the money to do it and that really convinced us that you know hey we could do this on our own so we didn't just wake up one day and say hey this is a good idea let's go do it we had the training the experience we had some experience of some deals not working out quite frankly you learn more from those than we do your successes and we you know had a reputation of fair dealing and integrity that we had established with some key financial institutions in order to do it and then the final thing is in 1974 in 1975 the US had gone through a tough economic period of time it was really after the oil shocks and the oil embargo of 1973 wage price controls were put on at some point time so we were we felt we were coming out of a recession and to a reasonable period of time and it just seemed like you know seemed like a good thing to do Bear Stearns was going this way they were they were growing they wanted to do more agency business they really didn't like investing in businesses it took five seven ten years to mature and to develop on something I could understand that Bear Stearns at the time by the way had 30 million dollars in capital 1976 just as a point of reference Morgan Stanley had eight million and Goldman Sachs had thirty so you can see in the last 32 years how the world has certainly changed so that's that's what we did what we did what concerns or fears did you have at the time about taking that step oh well that we wouldn't be successful and I have to go I had wife and three kids that we'd have to go live with my mother-in-law but all kidding aside the and you all here are privileged to to get the kind of education that you're getting here and obviously they have the education you did before you came here so I remember specifically saying to myself you know what's my downside if this doesn't work and I always came back to the fact look I had a good education I have a good education and whatever we're going to do we really keep my reputation and our Tegrity and spin shape and you'll find as you go out in the world of you many of you already know this that the system we have in this country does not penalize failures as long as you fail honorably the system will give you a second and a third and a fourth chance if you're an entrepreneur and you take some risk as long as you do it in the right way and that truly was what I figured that was my downside and I also knew that if I didn't do this I would always look back and say you know I miss opportunity and and I had a very very very very supportive wife talk a little bit about your partnership with Henry how's that worked and how is it influenced the leadership or culture at KKR and what advice would you give to a GSB student today thinking about picking a potential business partner well Henry and I are first cousins our families were close growing up I think the last argument we had was we were about nine years old and I wanted to ride Henry's new bike and he didn't want me to so I shoved you through a window every ever since then we decided we better get along we also had two older siblings and we figured that if we stuck together we could come back whatever bad things our older students we're going to do to us so as a unique relationship you know I don't know how many there are like this in life more or less business my father told me a long time ago if you could really go through life and find one really really good friend and by that I mean somebody who's got your back and who's much interested and your welfare and be and as as he is in his own you know you're a very lucky person and you know things just sort of come naturally I think that we've got a different style of how we do things but our sense of values and what we want to accomplish I think are pretty symbiotic and you know I don't know what to advice to give you all in terms of finding the ideal partner but you need to make sure that one you can trust them and two that you share the same value system and that's don't mean that about making money I mean the same value systems about what's important to you in life and you know what you are is the person I think that's that's essential to be able to do that that sounds like anyway so let's talk a little bit about management you've had the unique opportunity to see how lots of different businesses are managed and I know you've come across a lot of under managed businesses throughout your career based on your experience what are a few common mistakes that you see managers making or pitfalls that they run into well so many times especially in larger companies people get consumed with the idea of managing a corporation as opposed to achieving objectives anytime you have more than eight people in a meeting and it lasts more than an hour it's not going to be very productive anytime you have three or four people of meetings in the last more than two hours it's probably not going to be very productive and so much business today is done by you know meetings and studies and all the stuff that goes on politics that goes on in big companies that you really don't pay attention to what you should be paying attention on which is to make the organization that you're responsible for run better obviously the bigger of the companies are the more you have to delegate and rely on other people to achieve those results and you know I think Peter Drucker said it pretty well words I live by and that is you know the goal of I would use the term leaders not management is to create an organization where people can do their best work and be helped when they need to help and not be interfered with when they don't so basically if you if you give people responsibility which we do and and rewards for that by making them owners of the businesses there above them and you hold them accountable and it's much of a non-political way as you can you know you'll get the best you can out of the organization many times people don't think like owners I'll give you one quick example back in the early 80s we bought up a company called Union Texas Petroleum which was at the time the largest independent oil and gas company in the US we did it jointly with a line signal they owned half we owned half we gave 10% basically in options to the management and back in the 80s that period of time oil went to $30 a barrel which was way over the projections that we had used and we were making money hand over foot and then six months later it went to eight and we were losing a lot of money and I remember going to a board meeting we were gonna describe discuss the budget and the company had spent six hundred million dollars the year before and they came in with the budget the same number I said well this doesn't make any sense you know oil prices are down why don't we have to spend the same money they went through you know whole litany of reasons I mean that you really couldn't you really couldn't fathom so basically I said look if you as a management are willing to invest 60 million dollars in this new budget you know what we'll prove it they said well we don't have it I suggest you do you own 10% of the company six hundred million dollar budget 10% 660 millions your own money and the light went on you know and they they came back with a budget substantially lower they found the same amount of oil I think a lot of that human nature I mean to get people to think like owners or something as opposed to renters you know if you own a house you take better care of it than when you're in it it's not real complicated and you'd be surprised what's out there in the corporate world where people don't know certainly think the same way speaking of mistakes what's the big mistake that you've made and what did you learn from it oh well we don't have enough time here you know in terms of just what you know in terms of mistakes but I don't know I mean you obviously make mistakes about business judgment you know whether or not you should have made the investment or not I mean that's that's life that you're gonna you're gonna be in the real word you're gonna make mistakes even with the best information I'd say probably the biggest recurring mistake that we have a tendency to make is when we and this was some business now is when our gut tells us that the management's really not doing the job they ought to be doing there's a tendency to give them a second or third chance before you make some changes and I think we've learned over time that if it's not going to work you're much better off going in very quickly and making changes up front organizations when there's a change of control expect excuse me expect change you know you should go do that and do it do it very very quickly so we're business standpoint I think that's you know certainly one you know you could probably again with hindsight question whether or not we should have bought our J or not so much because of how the economic returns work because actually with all we went through that wasn't so bad but really what it did in terms of turning the spotlight on our firm from 1988 till this morning or whatever whatever it is that really wasn't a very pleasant thing to do it wasn't a pleasant thing to have to go to Washington to defend yourself before some of the brighter lights that we have in our Congress you know I guess with hindsight you know certainly wouldn't have done it again not because of the the dollars and cents but because of everything else that went with it I think it distracted our firm for a long period of time I know it did because we we faced an awful lot of issues that we had to do including resetting a bunch of bonds and if we had to reset them there been a number of banks that would have gone bankrupt and you know it's somewhat Asia vu all over again here so it was a huge responsibility to have undertaken that when we exited the company and they were investment great again and a lot of the issues that we fought through had been accomplished but you know I prefer not to have that experience together you talked about changing out management and you've probably hired and fired a lot of CEOs and managers throughout your career are there any particular CEOs or leaders that you found especially inspiring or effective and what was it about them that made them stand out well the first I don't know if inspired or not but the first company we bought when we left Bear Stearns was coming to called AJ in the streets and which was y'all alaska's you know gold mining company which is a second large second oldest company on the New York Stock Exchange and it had transformed when our group had been a big shareholder and it at a huge history but it was no longer really a gold mining company they've become a conglomerate and they had aerospace business militaries business and automotive business eighty-three lawsuits a land business and a lot of other stuff and Ray O'Keefe who was the CEO that was brought into it was really a unique individual I mean I think he had no balance in his life but he basically worked 18 hours a day and he got this sorted out and at the end of period of time we had no lawsuits or had gotten rid of 30 some-odd money-losing divisions we basically had four left and you know we were heading into a recession back in the back in the 80s early 80s which by the way you know Dwarfs anything that you're reading about in the newspapers 1980 1981 in the u.s. we had more people unemployed than we had during the Great Depression we had a prime rate of 21% we had a long vine of 14% so things were tough then and there's ray with four businesses right in the teeth of all this bad stuff going on and he had a little saying on his desk again basically I've never forgotten there basically says you know when the wind don't blow row that's what he did and you know the outcome was financially fantastic for all of us first transaction we did and it was nice to get off to a good start there so you know I think you know what I can give you lots of other examples but basically people that lead by example that don't ask people to do things they wouldn't willing to do themselves I mean you know there's rave in the office and the factories talking to customers you know a guy that was doing it so how could you if you work for him how could you not want to do that - I'd say that would be a plate a good example well you mentioned it so let's talk about balance um I worked a lot of hours when I was at KKR having these memories of sleeping in the office on more than one occasion given that how do you think about work-life balance especially in an industry as demanding as private equity well you know having used working hard and sleeping at the office you know makes my life you know and if you're not going to do it now what are you gonna ever do it but putting it seriously look I think that I've been blessed in life because I found something in a very early age that I love to do I mean a very passionate about you know the work very passionate about the firm certainly one of the fathers of it I take a lot of pride in what we do and I think when you you know and I say blessed because I wish that for all of you did you find something in your life regardless of what it is that that you love to do and if you do that then even going through difficult times which you will will become easier because you'll look at these as challenges in ways that you know you're going to get over this and your wages are going to make you stronger if you have something that you're really passionate about so I start with that I've always had a tribute is to my mother a very strong sense of what's important in life which is obviously your family and your family's help and I focused on my in my life really on my family and my work which in both cases were passions of what I love to do so it's come pretty easy for me with respect to that I mean you know I've said this before you know I was married for almost 36 years before my wife died I've worked since I was 20 years old doing what I'm doing now and it was never a day that I didn't want to go to work no matter what was life was like and there was never a day I didn't want to go home so again I think you know find the right mate in your life somebody that shares the same values that you do and find something that you love to do and you'll you'll work out the you know the balance so I think this mean we our last question and it's about some career advice for all of us you know I'm trying to find a job right now and I know that I would benefit and probably my classmates would for some advice about what we should be thinking about when we're deciding where and how to start our careers well first of all I have confidence in yourself said earlier you know you've got what 99% of the people in the world don't have and that's a good education and believe me this will come back to serve you you know many many times over and in your life and lots of ways that you don't expect this will will be there secondly you know you don't have to make you're not Japan like Billy was for a while you know you don't have to make a career decision for the next 50 years of your life it's okay to go out and have a bunch of different jobs and doing what you're doing so again I would just go back to something where you don't overthink it you go find a job that you really feel that you could contribute in and you can learn from sort of as a starter job out of Business School and see where that takes you and you know you'll meet lots of people along the way doors will open for you along the ways the experience you gain in one set of jobs will help you in something else that you're going to do you know work hard and work with integrity all the time and opportunities will you know will be there plenty for you but for the best of ice I give you is don't don't stress out too much about it and don't try to overthink it and if you need to change jobs in two or three years you know you haven't come into the sense well I think that's enough for me we'll turn it over to questions from the audience but thanks again for your candor and for your time and being here [Applause] all right it'll work okay so mr. Roberts it's a privilege to see you here today but with us the father of KKR and the father of an industry that many of us come from and I returning to you'll be pleased to know that something like four tenths of the people in this in this business school belong to the private equity Club so you've inspired a generation of people to go and invest in the short term given the climate where would you put your money and in the long term as you look through the fogginess of the madness right now where do you see private equity going and KKR within that well you know I'm not a registered investment advisor so in terms of where you would invest today you know I would really look at the debt markets I mean they're the ones that are the most most extreme you know usually what's the baseball term if you want to get a hit hit where they ain't so everybody's running away from things you know you basically have had government agencies traded 300 over Treasuries you know you've got fear and panic in the credit markets today so that's what I would go do probably the second area I would look at would be to go buy some mortgages or some homes from some banks in areas that you think at some point time will cover and people won't want to live it I think you'll do really well there in terms of the environment today people lose sight of what's really our business our business is really making investments at companies and making it better so that's what our job has to be most people focus on well can you do deals sherry Kathy you know they'll be you can do them today you know if you want to pay the pay the cost of capital we'll do it you know the markets aren't totally shut we've done two deals one in Turkey and one in the UK in the last six months so if for us what we need to do is continue to focus on making the investments that we have better if we do that we'll be able to continue to attract capital and by that I mean not just financial capital in human capital and we'll be able to grow our business around the world where we're we're basically set up today so it's keeping your head down keeping focused on what's important today like yesterday and the year before the most important thing we have is our investment that's where we have our money that's where the people that have trusted us have their money we've got to make that work do you make that work lots of other good things happen and you can grow grow your business but you know the this form of investment whether you call a private equity or buyouts or whatever it is is not going away every every ten or fifteen years and the Dean knows this better than I do thanks figure out a new way to lose money not that they don't have enough existing ways but they figure out new ways and we'll go through this period the banks will deleverage the balance sheets there's going to be a lot of losses it's gonna be a lot of angst with this to be a lot of layoffs of financial institutions and then they'll wake up one day and say well you know we got to make money again and they make money by lending forever so life will go on you hear me okay you mentioned that you know you mentioned the 81 recession and you don't throughout your career I think you've been through through several cycles and how do you see the current situation you know probably heading into a significant recession and how do you see your companies being placed but we've weathered the storm could you give me the last part again please basically how do you see the portfolio companies you're currently like you know owning weather to the storm and you know which kind of plans do you have or you know you see a massive challenge or not as I understand it the question is how do we see KKR whether in their store and whatever plans a portfolio companies okay well we have we have 44 investments today if you aggregated them sales or 185 billion dollars and they they employ eight hundred and eighty thousand people so we have a huge responsibility to all the constituencies that are involved in that and from the day that before we make an investment we try to figure out what we're gonna do to make that business better and we spend a lot of time in our decision-making process that's why Selena sleeps on the couch when she worked for us and trying to figure out you know what are we going to do you know when the dog catches the bus and then we have some very good processes in place to make sure that what we said we were going to do is going to get done we have an Operations Group within KKR that gets into all the details of the business in terms of how they can be improved many of the investments we've made we actually had our team in in the end and working in a company prior to actually owning it so the focus from day one from the time you say well this is a good idea do you actually make the investment you have to live and breathe operational improvement in those so it has to be engraved in the culture of the people that work at KKR and everybody that's there to help you that's not to say you don't make mistakes or their macro things that work today in the world which they obviously are that are making that difficult but you have to stay after it every day and you have to follow up you have to hold your people accountable for doing what they say and you have to be all over there has been a lot of emerging market fundraising activity recently given the environment given the financial markets the way they are currently how do you see this trend panning out particularly in light of you know flight to safety kind of argument that a lot of experts are you know coming out with and you know where do you see the balance between chasing the Returns versus flight to safety what was the last part again where do you see the balance between chasing the returns in emerging markets versus flight to safety okay well in the emerging markets you know we're we're sort of there you know in China we've got investments in China we've got an investments in India so we're obviously looking at that but in terms of where you see values today quite frankly the stock market has not come down enough to really reflect what you would have to pay to to buy something so we're sitting there on in a very nice position with an awful lot of capital and in terms of in times of turmoil that we're in it's great to be liquid it's great to have capital in this period of time I have no doubt that we'll be able to find some productive places to put this I can't tell you what month or when what it's gonna be but we've been doing this long enough to know that there are cycles that take place I've seen this happened five times now and in my career and you know the the Black Swan always shows up sometime and it always shows up differently than you would think and then it goes away differently than your thing these are periods of time where there'll be different kinds of opportunities than going out and buying a hundred percent of the business it could be taking a minority stake which we did and Lake Mason in the business it could be you know creating a pool of capital to go by debt which we've done so you need to you know to be able to go with the flow to so to speak and look and see where the opportunities are when you have situations like this but you guys will look back in three or four years now and you'll be this period of time it's a great opportunity to have made some money if you picked the right bet good you you know you spoke briefly about the RJR do and how maybe that had brought a little more attention to the industry than you would have liked I mean again you're still seeing maybe expensive birthday parties and other things bringing a little more attention than you may like to the the industry what what do you think has gone wrong and what can private equity do to show that they really are a net creator of jobs and not just a bunch of Liquidators essentially okay well all you got to do is to see what our records are is to look at them they're their eyes have been audited the informations there so you know the but that's not interesting for the press to write about okay and look really what's happened is and it's not just private equity but there's been a lot of money made in the last ten years in the United States and you can individualize that you don't see this Warren Buffett get the same you know criticism that Stephen Schwarzman kids but you know if people want to go pick pick Warren apart I mean believe me they can find a lot of wards but you don't see that you know so when you can when the press can individualize this they do it I mean it happened with Mike Milken this is back in the 80s Mike Milken made five hundred million dollars one year you know if he had been in a corporation and the stock had gone up he'd stopped taking stocks out of cash nobody would run it so don't forget that the press needs to sell newspapers they need to get sound bites they need to do this and it's uh you know there's not a lot of people that you know are too sympathetic to us you've got union activism here with respect to it that have their own of goals and objectives so you've got all these forces and we've seen it I've seen it happen now time's certainly happened in the RJR Deal days I can remember going down and having breakfast with the whole House Ways Means Committee this was a day after the savings alone bill got passed that bailed out all the S&L so I figured nobody's gonna be down there to you know listen to what we have to say but they all showed up and I can remember one particular senator who's still a senator sitting next to me he said you know I don't care what you say you're never gonna convince me I so I said well why why are you here and he said well and that at the time Henry was married married to a lady that designed clothes said my wife told me to come so that I could talk to mr. Kravis about his wife's latest designs like Henry knew a lot you know about so I mean you know you're always going to have this you have a you know a populist movement now in the in the in the Congress and you know it's as hard as it is to read about stuff that's not right you eventually get a bit you know you get a thicker skin and you just gotta let it roll off of you and there's some people that you know in the middle of the fire flight stick to pop their head up and say or do some stupid things that add just to the a dullness I noticed that you're carrying the book leadership secrets of Attila the Hun and I don't think that's in the core curriculum right now so I'm just curious what your what what selections you found most interesting and and would want to convey to students well I'm glad glad yeah now many of you don't know much about a Atilla the Hun nor should you but he was a unique character he was born in 400 AD there abouts he was the son of a king of the Huns he basically United a nomadic group of people which now is Eastern Europe and he was a tough guy but and again I don't know whether he wrote some of the things in the air but there's some particular sayings that he had I think that pertain to leadership which I thought maybe maybe I just shared with you a little bit above all traits one who desires to lead must possess an intrinsic desire to achieve substantial personal recognition and be willing to earn it at all fairness you must have resilience to overcome personal misfortune discouragement rejection and disappointment you must have the courage creativity and stamina to focus on accomplishing your responsibilities through the directed delegated efforts of subordinates you must recognize and accept that your greatness will be made possible through the extremes of your personality the very extremes that sometimes make the campfire satyrs and legendary stories you must remember that success in your office will depend largely upon your sustained willingness to work hard sweat rules over inspiration you must be committed to preserve even in the face of opposition and challenge you must have a passion to succeed a passion that drives you to prepare yourself in your hands to excel you must be willing to remain your natural self not take on an Aurora of false pride in your countenance so Attila had some pretty cool things to say that I think applied you know - you know everyone's everyday life and every once in a while I'd pick it up and read it always find something a little bit different you know say about it now he died you know he had many many wives that I think his left last wife poisoned him because he had killed her father so don't do everything that well in terms of succession planning you know we think about it all the time but you know voluntarily you have no plans to leave you know in the foreseeable future but part of your job if you're gonna be a leader an organization is to make sure that you have a good succession plan and my hopes are that the people that take over after Henry and I aren't there do a better job than we've done I mean I I want to make sure that we have the quality of the people in the firm with those skills that can do that in terms of how we share the economics to the firm I think this has sort of been unique to KKR everybody it's a full-time employee in the firm as an ownership and everything we do so when you go to our office a lady to greet you at the door is an owner and everything that we do we've shared the ownership deeply throughout the firm everybody participates regardless of whether they're involved in a situation or not basically the folks that we have in China or Japan or Australia or Europe or the u.s. we all participate equally and everything that gets gets done throughout the firm so when you when you take that out of the organization and without people having to fight every year over what they think they should be reasonably paid you create an environment that where people communicate a little bit better and you've taken a lot of the politics out of it so if you take that and you make sure that you communicate with people two or three times a year and if they're they have some issues and ways that they need to improve maybe even more so so you get people feedback you know you'll get the best out of your people you know we've I think we probably have lost nine nine people since we started KKR only one really went into the buyout business and he's I don't know what he's doing now you know people tend to want to stand and stay and make a career and what we do some people have wanted to do other things ned's got left to start up you know a small hedge fund basically we've had guys late leave to go start nonprofits so and most importantly we've we've had a thousand when we go out and try to hire people so we must must be doing something right so again I think if you keep it simple you treat people fairly and communicate with them and you take uncertainty out of their lives you know provided they perform you'll get the best out of everyone so you've obviously created this entity which has been hugely successful been very good at doing that it's wondering how do you how do you think about spending so the rest of your time what is the or vision for the rest of your life it's like what do you do besides work oh well I try to stay fit [Music] you know I start around 5:30 in the morning and go do that for about an hour I work I like to practice my golf I have four grandchildren and another one on the way I like to they all thank goodness all my children live in the area so I like to spend time with them I like like to read enjoy my friends I know you're involved in the he started read F venture philanthropy firm and would love to hear a little bit about your vision for venture philanthropy and whether that'll be the wave of the future in the nonprofit industry well we my wife and I started when we were fortunate enough to have the wherewithal to give back one of the things we wanted to do was to do something if we didn't do it wouldn't get that you know big institutions are gonna raise money whether you helped them or not quite frankly so we look for something to do and and we basically focused on something that was not a success but the first thing we focused on was trying to create jobs for homelessness and we narrowed down on women with children the homeless homeless women with kids as a group that we thought we should we should really focus on and we tried to do that through jobs or jobs training in many cases helping them create a business and you know that was not successful you know there are lots of reasons for it but many cases the women that were homeless were such because it came from abuse relationships and that there was a number of times they would keep going back in that same environment before they finally got out of it so we we weren't successful there so then we spent six months and with a guy named Chet Emerson and said okay what what is it that the you know we've got some skills with they could apply to creating jobs for people that have either been in jail or the lowest one percent of the unemployed group in the Bay Area and when we found there were probably ten or twelve really good organizations within the Bay Area rubicon ventures human ventures you go through the list that actually employed folks that that you know we're at that that level in society so we said well why don't we create a venture business where we can take some money and some expertise of people and we can help those businesses grow and if they can grow they can provide more jobs and training for people and so that we did we started financing about eight of those and we built up a staff Jed who was probably the most left-wing social worker in the whole world actually went back to business school Santa Clara and he's become a real capitalist now so he figured if he was going to do this he better learn something about it he did and we built up a team to basically go in and help organizations to do this and then we said well how do we know that what we're really spending is making a difference are we really spending our money wisely because funds aren't unlimited and we developed a metric system and tracking system of what to do there and you know we found by all measurements that many of these organizations were you know doing good things for people that had a reduced financial cost than if they did I mean you compare it to going back to jail you compare it to drug situations compared to where the wages were could they afford to actually rent an apartment they did they stay out of trouble and so we tried to develop the Metra C's for that and I think that's really the you know probably the heart of what's come out of all this so today we jed's moved on we have a lady named Karla Javits who runs that we also said well you know we can't just keep supporting the same organizations over and over again because they need to stand on their own so let's go find some other groups that we can help which Carla's done and the goal is over the next two years is to create another three thousand you know jobs for people that wouldn't have them whether we can do that I don't know but the whole purpose is really to take a very underserved population of people and be able to get them in some more permanent employment and a lot of the groups they go through whether it be Rubicon or Yuma whatever it is they're really just training grounds for people within to go out and get you know get a different job so that was the theory behind it I think it's 12 years now that we've been going at it we've expanded the board and we've gotten the other thing I said is you know if what we're doing is so wonderful then we ought to stand the market test and let's go out to the not-for-profit world and see if we can raise money from out other people that really believe in what we're doing and Hewlett Foundation has been very helpful with that as Rockefeller and others so you know it's it's just this slice of what we're trying to do and we're trying to keep it local I don't think there's a you can manage an organization like that and you know nationally but you know it's amazing what you can do with just put some time and effort well unfortunately George I think we're out of time now but I just wanted to thank you again for coming and for sharing all of your insights and experiences and hopefully we'll see you back at the GSB again soon thank you

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Rating: 4.8759689 out of 5

Keywords: George Roberts, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, KKR, View from the Top, finance, investment, risk, private equity, economy

Id: w2wYx6qE-sI

Length: 51min 41sec (3101 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 27 2009