May 13, 2025 • 17 mins
Bob Bush, senior investment executive and the President, CEO and Co-Founder of Mutombo Coffee, explains the key business point on which he disagrees with Bezos, breaks down risk tolerance internationally and domestically, shares the historical lesson we can learn from Nikola Tesla, and talks about keeping the hunger and the naivety that is your spark.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Bob Bush (00:00):
I'm enjoying this. So until you kick me off, I'm good
(00:35):
to go.
Adam Outland (00:39):
Awesome. I know you are a contributor to Forbes
Middle East. And Jeff Bezossaid, and I'm heavily
paraphrasing that he mentioned,how the US is such a good
fertile ground for business,partly because of the risk
tolerance of the money in the USthat that there are many
organizations that are have ahigh risk attitude towards
(01:01):
venture and taking bets thatisn't as common in other
countries. But I think you havean interesting perspective,
because I'd be curious yourthoughts about the risk
tolerance in the Middle East forinvestments from an uninformed
perspective over here, it seemsthat it's quite high, but you
might have a differentperspective on that so. And I
(01:25):
think even your greater commenton the economics of risk, risk
in general would be interesting.
Bob Bush (01:31):
Yeah, I'm familiar with Mr. Bezos comments. There
are a couple of things there. Ithink venture capital and PE do
not have a high risk toleranceand so and it seems that I'm
going against one of the world'srichest man when I say this. So
let me really sort of unpackthat. Yeah, what you find when
(01:51):
you talk to sophisticatedinvestors, it's all about the
risk mitigation. These guysdon't make money by taking non
risk adjusted risk. It is allabout a risk adjusted risk. And
so because of the size of thecapital pool, you have different
kinds of risk players who arecomfortable with certain kinds
(02:12):
of risks for startups or certainkinds of risks for growth
companies or certain kinds ofrisks, right? And so what are
the things that and I'm surethat that Bezos would agree that
when you look at a capitalstack, you will find that there
is ample capital for whateverrisk level that you want,
(02:32):
sufficient enough to have a veryrobust, robust market around. So
it's not so much that the US hasa super high risk tolerance, but
that there is enough, there areenough players, wherever you
want to be on the risk spectrumwho are comfortable with
understanding that particularrisk at that development, and
(02:53):
the mitigants for that risk, andthat's who they bet on. They
don't bet on the guy who'staking the most risk, or, you
know, the company, or the team,or the woman who's taking the
most risk. They're betting onthe company, the woman, the team
that knows how to mitigate themost risk for that type of risk.
(03:13):
That's the bet.
Adam Outland (03:15):
And I think you're probably dead on that, that
Bezos would agree on that. Ithink his, he probably operates
with a different definition ofrisk that the average person and
probably lines up with what youjust described.
Bob Bush (03:26):
Right? So let's, let's dig that a little bit deeper.
What we have, you know, thiskind of links to the Middle
East, and it links to Europe,where I've been fortunate to
have done some work with theEuropean Commission and other
capital providers across theworld. And so one of the things
that the United States has isreasonably patient capital. Very
(03:48):
little capital is patient, andcertainly not PE and hedge fund
capital, but it's reasonablypatient, meaning, meaning that
it can be sticky, that if,depending on where you are in
that capital structure, if youneed three years of capital, or
if you need five years ofcapital, or you need seven years
of capital, or you need 10 yearsof capital, right? There are
(04:11):
capital providers that arewilling to take that turn,
provided that Dominicans arethere and that, you know, I had
the pleasure, I was asked toadvise a particular group,
several groups of the EuropeanCommission around this very
point. I know if you just sawrecently where the commission
has now allocated $200 billionfor AI development, and it was
(04:33):
100 almost 100x and what theyhad internally thought they were
going to put into AI just a yearago. And so I've lived in
Germany. I've spent a lot oftime in in Switzerland and
Austria and talking to Europeanswhere these sources of capital
are. Spend a lot of time inLondon as well. One of the
distinctions between sort ofEuropean risk taking and the US
(04:56):
is and I. Take it from theentrepreneurial side. So the
European Commission asked me togo around Eastern Europe, to the
Balkans and all these EasternEuropean countries, including
Ukraine, and meet withentrepreneurs and accelerators
and incubators. So this was,just may have been about 10
years ago, on this very questionof, you know, you know, appetite
(05:18):
for risk, etc. So from theEuropean Commission perspective,
they had the Chinese and theAsians, tons of capital, very
assertive, very aggressive totheir East. And then they had
the Americans, very end of thatinnovative, very assertive, very
aggressive. And the Europeanswere getting bookend and
squeezed. And so having been anAmerican that had lived in the
(05:41):
Middle East, who was now livingin Europe, I was living in
Europe because my former wife isEuropean, German, and so we were
started a family there. And youknow, you're at a dinner party
here and there, and people startasking you questions. And before
you know, if you're saying, Canyou come to Brussels? So I ended
(06:01):
up doing some work in process.So the point is, is that the
entrepreneurs, the best, mostinnovative talent that's coming
out of these countries is, Iwould say, superior to the
talent coming out of USuniversities. But the
incentives. So think about itthis way. I had the pleasure of
getting a philosophy degree at aliberal arts school. You don't
(06:23):
have that kind of luxury in manyof these eastern Europe. It is
physics, it's math, it'sengineering. You make stuff.
Adam Outland (06:30):
You make stuff, right.
Bob Bush (06:32):
And so the pragmatic and practical pool of talent at
that university, at that mindsetlevel, they make great stuff.
And guess where those the bestand the brightest go up until
recently, they become PhDstudents. And when you talk to
them as PhD students, and thenyou talk to them, I spoke at
dozens of universities, and talkto professors and departments,
(06:56):
those departments and professorseschew their best and brightest
doing something as pedantic ismaking money. Yeah, interesting.
So there's this stigma that ifyou're that smart, why would you
want to do what those 120 IQsguys do in London? So you got
culturally, this issue of notsupporting innovation in that
(07:17):
sense. So you've got a lot of bybest people not being trained
and how to truly be innovative.They can be inventive. They can
make, you know, you know, testis a wonderful example that's
exceptionally invented, but hegot out maneuvered by Edison
others around how to make thebusiness model being truly
(07:37):
innovative around thoseinventions. That's a historical,
culturally relevant point. Eventoday, his level of
inventiveness is top notch, buthis ability to meld the capital
get the business model aroundit, he got out maneuvered. He
got outgunned by Edison and CO,right? And so when you're really
thinking about the fertileground for risk, or fertile
(08:01):
ground for talent, or matchingcapital to talent, etc, there's
some really interesting thingsthat I've personally had to
observe going from the just onthe talent side, exceptionally
talented kids. And so what endedup happening is how they started
bridging and learning from theAmericans. Then you had a lot of
(08:22):
and Ukraine was a perfectexample of this. They started
doing it, outsourcing to some ofthese countries, because these
kids could code and they hadgood math skills and they had
good engineering skills, etc. Sothat's transition. And now they
realize, well, wait a minute,why am I doing the code for that
(08:42):
Silicon Valley company? I wantto be that Silicon Valley
entrepreneur. So organically,there's sort of this shift
around all of that. So Do notunderestimate a bright person
who shows up every day withoutthe best resources and their
ability to create something thatis world changing.
Adam Outland (09:01):
That's right. Well said. A question I ask
everyone, but one that I justlove, in general, is, you've had
a wealth of experience. Let'ssay you were able to just sit,
sit on that bus from Illinois toSt Louis and talk to that young
man who's riding to school everyday. What advice would you
provide him, knowing all thethings that you know now?
Bob Bush (09:25):
Well, as you've already picked up on, and I'm
not trying to be unorthodox, wethink the young man has
something to tell me less thanme telling him. And I'm going to
tell you why. Because as youstart having the weight of the
world on your shoulders, you gotkids, you got wives, you've got
(09:45):
employees, you've got biggerproblems, right? You think
keeping the same level ofcuriosity and inquisitiveness
and maybe naivete that you cando anything you want that
should. Me, I want to make surethat this world does not beat
that out of me and beat that outof other entrepreneurs, because
(10:06):
it can happen. Man. You know, Iremember reading very early on
about an immigrant that came outof Europe during the 30s in New
York in the middle of theDepression, and 50 years later,
he was this super richindustrialist. And they asked
him, How did you do it? He saidthat I never read the papers,
(10:28):
right? So what I would say toanyone that asked this question
is, those aspirations that weall have, those that that sense
of wonder, etc, don't lose thatkeep that young man and that
young woman in your spirit,because before you know it, the
world will do its best to takeit out of you. So I think that
(10:50):
young man has a lot more toteach me than I probably do him.
That's a real value to me. Ofcourse, I got more skills and I
got more people, etc, but theheart of that matter, that
talent, that God given hunger,that God given inquisitiveness,
don't want to lose that, becausethat's your spark.
Adam Outland (11:11):
Yeah, the a plus player is the person that's
humble, hungry and smart, andyou could replace hungry with
curious, right? But the morethese interviews that I've done,
I couldn't agree more, right?The humility and the hunger is a
good combination withintelligence. And the more I've
learned about business, the moreI realize I don't know. So it's
pretty easy to remain humble inthis business when you're
(11:33):
learning all the time.
Bob Bush (11:34):
None of us are smarter than the market, brother.
Adam Outland (11:37):
That's right. That's right. For our listeners,
please share Mutombo coffee,which I know we didn't spend
probably nearly as much time onthis as we could have, because
you have such an interesting andcolorful life. But where can
people learn about the Mutombocoffee, the respective social
initiatives, and how can theyparticipate?
Bob Bush (11:57):
Mutombocoffee.com of course, we have a website, M, U,
T, O, M, B O, coffee.com we alsohave launched an Amazon store,
and so that will will startdoing more with that. Primarily,
we've been B to B for the lastfew years, so we're now just
starting to which is why I'msticking my head up and doing
(12:17):
more podcasts like yours,because we want people to know
that that we exist, etc. The oneof the other things we will do
for your listeners is we'llcreate a VIP code for them, and
anyone that puts in their codewhen they go to the website,
they will get a VIP preferentialpricing for our product as a way
(12:38):
for us to say, thank you forintroducing us to your listeners.
Adam Outland (12:43):
Yeah, love that. Well, thank you. Wow. This
great, really great interview. Imean, really good for our
listeners. Hopefully you'veenjoyed it too. Great
conversation.
Bob Bush (12:51):
I did. Make me look good, fellas, make me look good.
I'm enjoying this. So until you kick me off, I'm good
(00:35):
to go.
Adam Outland (00:39):
Awesome. I know you are a contributor to Forbes
Middle East. And Jeff Bezossaid, and I'm heavily
paraphrasing that he mentioned,how the US is such a good
fertile ground for business,partly because of the risk
tolerance of the money in the USthat that there are many
organizations that are have ahigh risk attitude towards
(01:01):
venture and taking bets thatisn't as common in other
countries. But I think you havean interesting perspective,
because I'd be curious yourthoughts about the risk
tolerance in the Middle East forinvestments from an uninformed
perspective over here, it seemsthat it's quite high, but you
might have a differentperspective on that so. And I
(01:25):
think even your greater commenton the economics of risk, risk
in general would be interesting.
Bob Bush (01:31):
Yeah, I'm familiar with Mr. Bezos comments. There
are a couple of things there. Ithink venture capital and PE do
not have a high risk toleranceand so and it seems that I'm
going against one of the world'srichest man when I say this. So
let me really sort of unpackthat. Yeah, what you find when
(01:51):
you talk to sophisticatedinvestors, it's all about the
risk mitigation. These guysdon't make money by taking non
risk adjusted risk. It is allabout a risk adjusted risk. And
so because of the size of thecapital pool, you have different
kinds of risk players who arecomfortable with certain kinds
(02:12):
of risks for startups or certainkinds of risks for growth
companies or certain kinds ofrisks, right? And so what are
the things that and I'm surethat that Bezos would agree that
when you look at a capitalstack, you will find that there
is ample capital for whateverrisk level that you want,
(02:32):
sufficient enough to have a veryrobust, robust market around. So
it's not so much that the US hasa super high risk tolerance, but
that there is enough, there areenough players, wherever you
want to be on the risk spectrumwho are comfortable with
understanding that particularrisk at that development, and
(02:53):
the mitigants for that risk, andthat's who they bet on. They
don't bet on the guy who'staking the most risk, or, you
know, the company, or the team,or the woman who's taking the
most risk. They're betting onthe company, the woman, the team
that knows how to mitigate themost risk for that type of risk.
(03:13):
That's the bet.
Adam Outland (03:15):
And I think you're probably dead on that, that
Bezos would agree on that. Ithink his, he probably operates
with a different definition ofrisk that the average person and
probably lines up with what youjust described.
Bob Bush (03:26):
Right? So let's, let's dig that a little bit deeper.
What we have, you know, thiskind of links to the Middle
East, and it links to Europe,where I've been fortunate to
have done some work with theEuropean Commission and other
capital providers across theworld. And so one of the things
that the United States has isreasonably patient capital. Very
(03:48):
little capital is patient, andcertainly not PE and hedge fund
capital, but it's reasonablypatient, meaning, meaning that
it can be sticky, that if,depending on where you are in
that capital structure, if youneed three years of capital, or
if you need five years ofcapital, or you need seven years
of capital, or you need 10 yearsof capital, right? There are
(04:11):
capital providers that arewilling to take that turn,
provided that Dominicans arethere and that, you know, I had
the pleasure, I was asked toadvise a particular group,
several groups of the EuropeanCommission around this very
point. I know if you just sawrecently where the commission
has now allocated $200 billionfor AI development, and it was
(04:33):
100 almost 100x and what theyhad internally thought they were
going to put into AI just a yearago. And so I've lived in
Germany. I've spent a lot oftime in in Switzerland and
Austria and talking to Europeanswhere these sources of capital
are. Spend a lot of time inLondon as well. One of the
distinctions between sort ofEuropean risk taking and the US
(04:56):
is and I. Take it from theentrepreneurial side. So the
European Commission asked me togo around Eastern Europe, to the
Balkans and all these EasternEuropean countries, including
Ukraine, and meet withentrepreneurs and accelerators
and incubators. So this was,just may have been about 10
years ago, on this very questionof, you know, you know, appetite
(05:18):
for risk, etc. So from theEuropean Commission perspective,
they had the Chinese and theAsians, tons of capital, very
assertive, very aggressive totheir East. And then they had
the Americans, very end of thatinnovative, very assertive, very
aggressive. And the Europeanswere getting bookend and
squeezed. And so having been anAmerican that had lived in the
(05:41):
Middle East, who was now livingin Europe, I was living in
Europe because my former wife isEuropean, German, and so we were
started a family there. And youknow, you're at a dinner party
here and there, and people startasking you questions. And before
you know, if you're saying, Canyou come to Brussels? So I ended
(06:01):
up doing some work in process.So the point is, is that the
entrepreneurs, the best, mostinnovative talent that's coming
out of these countries is, Iwould say, superior to the
talent coming out of USuniversities. But the
incentives. So think about itthis way. I had the pleasure of
getting a philosophy degree at aliberal arts school. You don't
(06:23):
have that kind of luxury in manyof these eastern Europe. It is
physics, it's math, it'sengineering. You make stuff.
Adam Outland (06:30):
You make stuff, right.
Bob Bush (06:32):
And so the pragmatic and practical pool of talent at
that university, at that mindsetlevel, they make great stuff.
And guess where those the bestand the brightest go up until
recently, they become PhDstudents. And when you talk to
them as PhD students, and thenyou talk to them, I spoke at
dozens of universities, and talkto professors and departments,
(06:56):
those departments and professorseschew their best and brightest
doing something as pedantic ismaking money. Yeah, interesting.
So there's this stigma that ifyou're that smart, why would you
want to do what those 120 IQsguys do in London? So you got
culturally, this issue of notsupporting innovation in that
(07:17):
sense. So you've got a lot of bybest people not being trained
and how to truly be innovative.They can be inventive. They can
make, you know, you know, testis a wonderful example that's
exceptionally invented, but hegot out maneuvered by Edison
others around how to make thebusiness model being truly
(07:37):
innovative around thoseinventions. That's a historical,
culturally relevant point. Eventoday, his level of
inventiveness is top notch, buthis ability to meld the capital
get the business model aroundit, he got out maneuvered. He
got outgunned by Edison and CO,right? And so when you're really
thinking about the fertileground for risk, or fertile
(08:01):
ground for talent, or matchingcapital to talent, etc, there's
some really interesting thingsthat I've personally had to
observe going from the just onthe talent side, exceptionally
talented kids. And so what endedup happening is how they started
bridging and learning from theAmericans. Then you had a lot of
(08:22):
and Ukraine was a perfectexample of this. They started
doing it, outsourcing to some ofthese countries, because these
kids could code and they hadgood math skills and they had
good engineering skills, etc. Sothat's transition. And now they
realize, well, wait a minute,why am I doing the code for that
(08:42):
Silicon Valley company? I wantto be that Silicon Valley
entrepreneur. So organically,there's sort of this shift
around all of that. So Do notunderestimate a bright person
who shows up every day withoutthe best resources and their
ability to create something thatis world changing.
Adam Outland (09:01):
That's right. Well said. A question I ask
everyone, but one that I justlove, in general, is, you've had
a wealth of experience. Let'ssay you were able to just sit,
sit on that bus from Illinois toSt Louis and talk to that young
man who's riding to school everyday. What advice would you
provide him, knowing all thethings that you know now?
Bob Bush (09:25):
Well, as you've already picked up on, and I'm
not trying to be unorthodox, wethink the young man has
something to tell me less thanme telling him. And I'm going to
tell you why. Because as youstart having the weight of the
world on your shoulders, you gotkids, you got wives, you've got
(09:45):
employees, you've got biggerproblems, right? You think
keeping the same level ofcuriosity and inquisitiveness
and maybe naivete that you cando anything you want that
should. Me, I want to make surethat this world does not beat
that out of me and beat that outof other entrepreneurs, because
(10:06):
it can happen. Man. You know, Iremember reading very early on
about an immigrant that came outof Europe during the 30s in New
York in the middle of theDepression, and 50 years later,
he was this super richindustrialist. And they asked
him, How did you do it? He saidthat I never read the papers,
(10:28):
right? So what I would say toanyone that asked this question
is, those aspirations that weall have, those that that sense
of wonder, etc, don't lose thatkeep that young man and that
young woman in your spirit,because before you know it, the
world will do its best to takeit out of you. So I think that
(10:50):
young man has a lot more toteach me than I probably do him.
That's a real value to me. Ofcourse, I got more skills and I
got more people, etc, but theheart of that matter, that
talent, that God given hunger,that God given inquisitiveness,
don't want to lose that, becausethat's your spark.
Adam Outland (11:11):
Yeah, the a plus player is the person that's
humble, hungry and smart, andyou could replace hungry with
curious, right? But the morethese interviews that I've done,
I couldn't agree more, right?The humility and the hunger is a
good combination withintelligence. And the more I've
learned about business, the moreI realize I don't know. So it's
pretty easy to remain humble inthis business when you're
(11:33):
learning all the time.
Bob Bush (11:34):
None of us are smarter than the market, brother.
Adam Outland (11:37):
That's right. That's right. For our listeners,
please share Mutombo coffee,which I know we didn't spend
probably nearly as much time onthis as we could have, because
you have such an interesting andcolorful life. But where can
people learn about the Mutombocoffee, the respective social
initiatives, and how can theyparticipate?
Bob Bush (11:57):
Mutombocoffee.com of course, we have a website, M, U,
T, O, M, B O, coffee.com we alsohave launched an Amazon store,
and so that will will startdoing more with that. Primarily,
we've been B to B for the lastfew years, so we're now just
starting to which is why I'msticking my head up and doing
(12:17):
more podcasts like yours,because we want people to know
that that we exist, etc. The oneof the other things we will do
for your listeners is we'llcreate a VIP code for them, and
anyone that puts in their codewhen they go to the website,
they will get a VIP preferentialpricing for our product as a way
(12:38):
for us to say, thank you forintroducing us to your listeners.
Adam Outland (12:43):
Yeah, love that. Well, thank you. Wow. This
great, really great interview. Imean, really good for our
listeners. Hopefully you'veenjoyed it too. Great
conversation.
Bob Bush (12:51):
I did. Make me look good, fellas, make me look good.
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