Rodrigo Barros, CEO of Handson.tv, talks about why foreign founders in tech have to hustle harder for respect. He argues formal degrees don't determine success and that personal responsibility and hard work are what actually earn you opportunities.
Chapters
First of all, it's important to say that here is the best diversity in the world, right? We don't see as much people from everybody else as we see here, okay? Even in Berlin, even in— what else? You know, here is perfect. Thanks, Jack. You're welcome. Thanks, buddy. So here is the perfect way to be for diversity. But I agree with you. When we come here, people don't care too much, right? People say, have you gone to Stanford? No? Oh. You know, like me actually, I haven't gone to university either in Brazil. To have like a degree, I bought a university. No, I'm just kidding. I didn't buy because of that. But that's true. I don't have a degree. I don't have like a university degree. I don't. Right? But what I think is when you hustle enough, people respect you. I think it's as simple as that. When you hustle enough, people respect you. I really think you guys, most of you here, or maybe every one of you, are not hustling enough. But you can, right? Sometimes you say, oh, I can't make it because of this, I can't make it because of that. No, you cannot make it because of you. And when we understand that we— I mean, me as a human being, I'm the only one responsible for my own life— we behave differently, right? So I don't really care about if people respect me or not, but I know I will hustle enough for them to respect me and invited me to talk at Draper University, right? Yes. You don't see many people coming here from Brazil and speaking, right? I'm here because I hustle enough, right? And I think what needs to happen is already happening. A lot of foreigners. By the way, most of the foreigners are the big companies nowadays. Go here, go around, visit the companies, visit the founders. They're not from here, they're not from Silicon Valley, and they're not even from US, right? So it's happening already. It's not something that will happen tomorrow and then we change the game. No. But now when you come to people and say that you're foreign, like Right now if you come to people and say, I'm from Sweden, because of Spotify people go, oh man, right? So that's what I think needs to— I mean, it's not something that I think it needs to happen. I think it's happening already. But we need to hustle more. That's definitely for sure, right? If you went to Stanford, you're like 100. It's not like 1 or 2 or 10. 100 times in front of me, but you are not hustler enough. So I don't care. Thank you.
