Michael Margolis, founder of Get Storied, tells Draper University students how growing up between Switzerland and Los Angeles, with an inventor father and artist mother, taught him to communicate fast and think differently. He credits a Dartmouth business program for teaching him entrepreneurship's language, the same skill Draper builds.
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Before we get into those 3 steps, I wanna do one more piece around your personal story. You guys up for that? It's a really fun exercise. Yeah. Okay, so I'll tell you guys a little bit more about me first. We got like the United Nations here in the room, don't we? Right? Call out, what are all the different countries and places that you guys come from? China. Brazil. Brazil. Argentina. Argentina. Egypt, Peru, Pakistan, Kenya, Netherlands, Chile, UK, Boston represents. I was hoping. I wanted to hear some— anybody else have a really— India, Korea, Germany, China. All right. So I love this. So what you guys are doing being here, and I'm just getting to know Draper University, but I gotta tell you from what I know about Draper University and what I know about the kind of program you're going through, it's one of the smartest choices that you've made in your life. No matter what happens with this startup that you're working on, this is one of the smartest choices that you ever made in your life. Thank you. Because what you're doing is you're learning the language of the world you wanna be a part of. Okay? Now, that world, what is that world? I mean, how many of you guys are pretty clear no matter what you do, you wanna be part of the world of innovation in your career, right? You wanna be part of the world of technology, part of the world of entrepreneurship, right? So you might have your current idea, the current thing that you're working on, and that might work, it might not, who knows, it doesn't really matter. You're here learning that language. I did a similar program back in the late '90s. See, I studied cultural anthropology. And right when I graduated from college, my dad sent me this thing he saw in Business Week. Up at Dartmouth, they had a new program called Business Bridge. And it was a boot camp, month-long mini MBA taught by the faculty there where you learned all the language of business. And despite my typical rebellious nature, I actually said yes. I was like, oh, I didn't know what the heck I was gonna do when I graduated. I was like, okay. One of the best decisions I ever made. Now, so like all of you, I have spent a lot of time outside the US. Actually, the first 9 years of my life, I grew up in Lausanne, Switzerland. Expat kid, went to public speaking French school, and when I was 9 years old, my family, we moved to a really foreign land. Where? West LA, California. I'm still recovering, if any of you guys have any doubt about this. Brutal, painful transition. And I had this experience of just utter culture shock. And I came from a very global family. My father and his family are from Zimbabwe and lived there for almost 100 years. We're part of the Jewish diaspora. So me being a nomad now, I think I'm just kinda working through some karma. I'm just meant to live on the road. But there's something about the human experience and figuring out where we fit in or belong, and that's what I've forever been a student of. And for me though, it came from this place of, Well, first of all, being thrown to the wolves. When you're in a new culture, in a new place, and you're a little different— I mean, I was Swiss lederhosen boy trying to fit into surfer skater culture. Brutal. Total nerd. So I very quickly was like, I've got to figure out some human communication relationship skills, because— I'm failing fast. But I also grew up in a really unconventional household. My dad is a mad scientist and inventor, and my mother is a teacher, artist, and toy designer. So you guys, any of you guys see Back to the Future, the movie? Remember that movie, yeah? Remember Doc Brown? Yeah. Okay, that's my dad. All right, just a slightly more reserved, shy version, but my mother makes up for it. My mother is like Mary Poppins in the classroom. Okay, so I had a very strange, unusual childhood. The good news is creative freedom ruled the house. Okay, the bad news is there wasn't much structure. I pretty much had to fend for myself. There was a lot of love, But you pretty much just had to figure things out for yourself. But it set me up to be a great entrepreneur and a great storyteller.
