Robert Hacker - Building a Billion Dollar Business in Emerging Markets
{On Indonesia}.
“I mean as a course of, you know, 10 years. I had my bank lines, canceled twice. I had seven stores burned to the ground. I had Walmart show up as a competitor. And then it got tough…. Currency dropped 80% in two months….. $30 billion of Riot damage related to this related to the devaluation.” - Robert Hacker
Robert Hacker is the Co-founder and Director of StartUP FIU, where he focuses on commercializing faculty research in emerging technologies and curriculum innovation. He is a professor in the Honors College at FIU and he previously taught at MIT Sloan. He teaches courses in social entrepreneurship, mental frameworks in decision making and the Fourth Industrial Revolution. He previously was the COO/CFO of One Laptop per Child, an international social venture started at the MIT Media Lab. He also built a billion dollar publicly-traded company in Indonesia.
You can find Robert Hacker on Twitter @rhhfla. Moreover, follow @StartUP FIU on Twitter and Instagram and you can join @HackerNation for weekly meeting with Mr. Hacker and other curious individuals.
Additionally read his books “Billion Dollar Company: An Entrepreneurs Guid to Business Model for High Growth Companies".
Key Insights from Hacker’s Experiences
Through Hacker’s experiences there were some key insights.
Philosophy & Finance Consulting
Insights from Japan
Indonesia & Building a Billion Dollar Business
Dictators and The Emerging Markets
Wisdom - the conditions and definitions
Hacker Quotes
On Philosophy.
“What fascinated me about philosophy of symbolic logic… and learning to break down arguments to understand premises or the assumptions. And that was the beginning of the sort of transformation of how I thought about things.”
On Japan.
“Japan was a fascinating place because the culture was so extremely different…. The reason it was different is that the epistemology, the theory of knowledge in Japan is completely different than what we have in the West. So I started trying to figure out why was the epistemology so different? … you realize the answer is that it was the religion that shaped epistemology. In the West… we have a right or wrong ,0 or 1 kind of world. That is probably based on sort of the right and wrong from Christianity and the Judeo Christian tradition. But in Japan, under the influence of the Shinto religion and the Buddhist religion, it is much more almost like reality as a spectrum…. For example there’s five meanings in Japanese to the word, Yes.”
On Ethics.
“I do think there is right and wrong. But I think it’s explained in much simpler concepts, say than most religions would offer us not to say that their approach is wrong or unacceptable, I’ve just opted for a simpler approach… do no harm to future generations.”
On Dictator Governments and Economics.
“Another factor.. The government was really stable because a dictator had been there for 30 years. And he was a comparatively benevolent dictator in the sense that when he took power killed off all the opposition, but then basically after that the killing stopped.”
“Well, first of all in the 80s Japan was, was very hot. In the 90s Southeast Asia became hot. And the reason was that Japan cooled off. And they needed a place to put the money and Southeast Asia was invited. Because even though there was, you know, quite a few dictators, it was a sort of a benevolent group of dictators if you well except for the communists, the non communist dictators were comparatively benevolent. And that fostered, you know, good investment opportunities.”
“You saw where the dictators were place by democracies. As the economy's improved. Okay, it's sort of like the middle class and dictators don't do well together. That's why the Chinese government's having so much trouble right now trying to reconcile centralized communist power and economic management. As the Chinese are making the wrong decision to try and re insert the government into the economy. They would be much better off trying to figure out how to maintain their position, but let the free market operate which is what they did. For the last 20 years, and that's the reason why China has had so much economic success.”
On Indonesia and Emerging Markets.
“I mean as a course of, you know, 10 years. I had my bank lines, canceled twice. I had seven stores burned to the ground. I had Walmart show up as a competitor. And then it got tough…. Currency dropped 80% in two months….. $30 billion of Riot damage related to this related to the devaluation.”
“And when you run retail, and you have riots, not good for sales. Right. So that was the 30 billion of riots damage. And then, last thing was that the dictator who had been in power for 35 years was peacefully pushed out, but by the fact that this is, you know, figureheads of the country for so long, was no longer a figurehead, it created an incredible amount of uncertainty in the country. So on top of all the other five things. We now had uncertainty about the head of the government.”
“Once as I once had a boss who asked me why I wasn't concerned about a particular problem. And I told him what I've been through in Indonesia. I said you know you. You've got nothing going bad that's even close to Asia.”
On Wisdom.
“When your life is over. You have essentially two things to look at: what did you leave behind. How did you live your life. And what you left behind is your legacy, and how you lived your life is hopefully to evolve towards a, you know, a wise person.”