Don't Wait Too Long to Give Away Money

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I encourage people to give away as much money they can while they're alive. Grumpy people, my theory is, don't live as long. So if giving away money and having people say you're doing something good for the country makes me feel good, it might make me live long. Do you think the foundations of other very wealthy people after their deaths have gone well or gone poorly? Like anything in life, theirr good cases and their bad cases. Some people have done really good things with their foundations after they died, and some people's foundations probably haven't been as productive.

Baltimore native David Rubenstein is a founding figure in private equity, a prolific philanthropist, and author. From leveraged buyouts to his patriotic philanthropy to his leadership roles within institutions like the Smithsonian, Kennedy Center, and the National Gallery of Art, David has spent much of his life evaluating what makes institutions—and people—succeed.

He joined Tyler to discuss what makes someone good at private equity, why 20 percent performance fees have withstood the test of time, why he passed on a young Mark Zuckerberg, why SPACs probably won’t transform the IPO process, gambling on cryptocurrency, whether the Brooklyn Nets are overrated, what Wall Street and Washington get wrong about each other, why he wasn’t a good lawyer, why the rise of China is the greatest threat to American prosperity, how he would invest in Baltimore, his advice to aging philanthropists, the four standards he uses to evaluate requests for money, why we still need art museums, the unusual habit he and Tyler share, why even now he wants more money, why he’s not worried about an imbalance of ideologies on college campuses, how he prepares to interview someone, what appealed to him about owning the Magna Carta, the change he’d make to the US Constitution, why you shouldn’t obsess about finding a mentor, and more.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video.

Recorded September 30th, 2021 Other ways to connect

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