An interview with billionaire private equity titan and founder of Blackstone, Stephen Schwarzman. In this interview, Stephen discusses his unusual investment strategies and creating the firm, Blackstone. Stephen also talks about his life, worries for the future and advice to young people.
Q2 hedge fund letters, conference, scoops etc
Stephen Schwarzman: Investment Strategies, Creating Blackstone And Life (2018 & 1999)
Transcript
Are now obsolete but in the olden days what a telephone switchboard would do is take in incoming calls. Sort of whip them around and then connect you with some other place that you were trying to reach. And that's sort of the way I saw myself. You know it's not much of a self starter in other words sitting in a room thinking great thoughts. But if I can see things that are happening I can feel what's going on. Then I can do something with them and I make them go some other place create something do something with it. And so I need those inputs. I've got the processor and then something magic happens coming out. And so that's what I thought was was my basic purposive skill whatever. Well now it's like it's amazing because there's so many inputs through my my work life I get to hear about what's going on in every part of the world with every asset class with different kinds of companies real estate. I can I can get a unique overview every week of what's happening and that's also got a political overlay to it. And so then of course we're now in an Internet world where there's all these other inputs. And television is no longer you know three network channels that became four. Now there are hundreds of inputs and more publications. We set up a system that's terrific here where we're every Monday. Each one of our big areas private equity where we probably employ about 500000 people. One of the biggest in the United States real estate we're the largest donor of real estate in the world.
And you know sort of er capital extension in the debt business. Each one of these areas you know reports and tells you everything that's going on. I don't have to pick. It picks itself and and the people in that group describe what's going on in the world. I've only been doing this for over 30 years. And so you get these feeds from from its raw data. And you know this is before there was a fixation on data. We get it all the time. And and what works for me is the way my mind you know I realize now works is I look for for changes not what's going on. And anybody can see what's going on. That what I'm most interested in are.
