My name is Zach, and I have the honor of introducing Minh Tsai-- founder and CEO of Hodo Soy-- who's here to talk about his journey from investment banker to tofu master and the growing popularity of tofu and soy products here in America. I first met Minh several months ago, taking a tour of his tofu factory in Oakland with a small Google group, and I wanted to kind of bring this
I've had a number of different positions. I was an investment banker in New York for 15 years. I was an institutional lender both in New York and at the World Bank in Washington, DC.
And nobody was willing to take a chance on this system. He goes to an investment banker that he's known for 35 years, a classmate from Harvard Business School. And that guy promises to put up enough money to buy the system out of bankruptcy and run it for a year.
person for conversation and you can borrow you know there are volunteers there may be a Muslim teenager or a war veteran or a miserable investment banker and you talk to them about life like the opposite of speed-dating you talk to them for an hour not for a minute and just imagine if we could spread human libraries everywhere you could invent a really good online form of human library
And there were people who came from Stratton Oakmont to D.H. Blair and vice versa. So I was an investment banker looking for deals, and I watched that movie and I thought, wow, that is really-- it's exaggerated, but accurate. So they take it-- they take exactly the same things that were happening at the firm that I worked at and they turned the volume up.
play in the hard times. So it's a story of an investment banker that goes down to a small Mexican fishing village.
So it's a big pot of money. And the fund is run by investment banker -types like myself. And so the fund is buying companies for the most part.
There are a lot of different words for this. So he started off as an investment banker or something and figured out what that lifestyle was and determined for himself that that's not what he meant.
We were buying bottles at $0.19 a bottle, and Coke could get those exact same bottles for $0.11. But this distinction that you didn't want an investment banker , what-- No, I wanted it.
We were buying bottles at $0.19 a bottle, and Coke could get those exact same bottles for $0.11. So of these various professions we just ran through-- the investment banker , the lawyer, the accountant, the financial advisor, et cetera--
After graduation, I was going to start a job in investment banking in London. And more than a student or a wannabe investment banker , I was rowing. I was rowing crew for the university and also for Ireland, so I knew exactly who I was and where it was going.
We try to build-- we try to open up the doors of possibility and exposure because if you open up their minds to what is out there-- it's hard to dream of being an investment banker if you've never met one-- but when you put them in a position to see it, then the light goes on.
And then I'm going to become a steward. And then somehow-- I'm keeping it short-- I landed up becoming an investment banker . I did not know that.
It's a terrific movie and you all should go see it and get it online. But this case started in April of 1989 when a young woman who was an investment banker , actually a wonderful person whose overcome horrible injuries, was jogging in Central Park, as was her habit and pattern, when she was mugged.
I recall in those early days, when I was saying these things, and I was hammered by the media all around, a professor from Oxford, , A friend of mine, an African American investment banker , Malcolm Pryor, who was a Wharton alum and was on the board of Wharton, I was visiting with him
Yeah, OK. So this is probably going to be kind of sobering. I'm an economist originally, and former investment banker . I have an MBA from IESE Business School in Barcelona.
I did not know that. Yes. OK. I was an investment banker for good nine years. And yes, I worked with ICICI Dubai in Dubai with the wealth management.
We were buying bottles at $0.19 a bottle, and Coke could get those exact same bottles for $0.11. That's right. That they didn't want an investment banker .
He chairs-- DR. WALTER LINK: Sarvodaya International. Sarvodaya international. And as Senior Strategy Advisor and a leadership coach and associate investment banker to the organization, Walter is involved in the same kind of work.
very much of their own making and my view having uh been an investor for many years an investment banker for many
right? Or if something around humor comes up as a value and like let's say you're like an investment banker , like
I always said that when I was recruiting at Goldman Sachs, if someone came out of their mother's womb knowing they wanted to be an investment banker ,
Now in the category of probably too much information, my wife's a former auditor at JP Morgan, investment banker .
Even a friend of mine, he was also at Peking University, named Michael Pettis, he keeps a blog on the website and he used to work at Bear Stearns as an investment banker .
York. I didn't like that. I didn't wanna be an investment banker smoking cigars and wearing suspenders. That was just not me. And I wanted to be a real estate developer, I wanted to
Ina: He was the Dean of the, well, he was a lot of things. He was an investment banker ; he was in the Clinton Administration--