it's a pleasure seeing you too given the fact that you are a former princeton high school graduate and i know you were captain of the tennis and lacrosse teams you know at the high school and maybe we can start by just talking about some of your memories of your times at p macross football i was the quarterback of the for foxy there as well and i you know i learned a tremendous amount at the school although i will say this coming out of high school i did get rejected from every single college that i have liked you so that has a lot more to say about me than the brits and i school the school system because they taught me a tremendous amount but  i really think it was some of my most formative years that's good that's good for those of you may not know dan then started out years ago in a t n t and he was president of the consumer markets division he also was president and c e o of the priceline group he also was right at the forefront of founding c e o a virgin and president of the prepaid group at sprint nextel and he was through president that american express before you know moving into his current role four years ago at pay pal and i think at a pay pal i think what i was reading dan is that there's a focus on transforming financial service to make life easier for billions of people around the world and i see that one of the experiences that i see that people seem to be moving away from writing checks and carrying cash i see india you know has now been cash so you think that's the future way right now well i think it's inevitable that the world is more and more payments will move into the digital around but i do think it's really important to recognize that there is a far segment of the population that is outside a big digital economy today and outside of the be more true common transaction like to your point cashing a check writing a bill sending money to a loved one getting credit is incredibly time consuming and expensive for that population almost two billion around the world and i think with technology and companies like heat now we can do those basic financial transactions at a fraction of the cost and much more convenient matter because you really have all the power of a bank branch in the palm of your hand these days with your smartphone and so i think technology has a and more years i really have learned that i used to think it was all the hard metrics of the business that were really important sort of the operational engine you can't ignore those obviously you have to execute day in and day out but i think it's most important for companies especially companies that have a high growth agenda a lot of the companies out in silicon valley basically the mission and the vision is what attracts employees to that company and so i think it's incredibly important in our mission at a balance to democratize financial services and that's just a fancy way of saying  think that the managing and moving of money should be a rights for every citizen and not just a privilege for the affluent and so that's a really important element of what we're trying to do and it ties in to what i was talking  such an expansive mission is embracing diversity and inclusion as a core element of what we stand for and as you know it's a political climate  standing up for the values of diversity foods and standing up for basic civil liberties is increasingly important responsibility of corporations and c e o s and so a mission and that value needs i am together and you need to act on them ok talking about values and c e o s you mentioned one time i think it was an interview you gave you said that companies and chief executive officers have a moral obligation to try to be a force for good could you expand a little bit about that and what you're what you're talking about you know i think  and can focus in on some of the problems that face us as a society so i'll give you an example i talked about the mission of pay pal one of the things that services that we of working capital for small businesses you know how important small businesses are in for instance or the economy we know how important small businesses are around the world but small businesses have  accessing capital to help them grow and we basically are one of the top five lenders working capital to small businesses in the country right now that's sort of a little known fact is here to really interesting facts because we don't look at spike of scores we use our own data in our own algorithms were able to lend to small businesses that couldn't  capital so here's two interesting facts twenty five percent of the five billion dollars that we've already to small businesses are to the reaper centive counties were  neighborhoods and when we loan them to a business their sales on average go up twenty two percent compared to the control group that goes up the back two percent so that makes a huge difference in those communities and those neighborhoods where those small businesses can now because their sales are growing higher additional people feel more financially secure and those kinds of things are the responsibility i think  that help people become financially healthy i think what the big concern is today is also you see the disappearance as you mentioned of you alluded to a lot of the moment pop stores and a lot of you see a lot of corporate stores taking over and so what can be done to accelerate the growth of local businesses so we don't see their disappearance because they play a huge part in the local general kind of a you know i think it's a great question it's one we're really focused on as well i think the riving small business kaname is essential for the health of our communities and so one of the things that we really focus on  pal because we now have we are not over two hundred fifty million people who use our platform twenty million merchants use pay pal across the world and the reason they do that is we give them a whole suite of services to be able to compete in the digital age so think about it increasingly the distinction between sales that are in a store and an online sales is learnt because people are using their mobile phone to do it more and more shopping and we can get a whole set of tools and services and products to small businesses to unable them to compete in the digital era one interesting fact it in general around the u s about five percent of small business is actually for do cross border sales small businesses that use pay pal in the united states over eighty percent of them you cross quarter sales so think about that what we're enabling that small business whether being in princeton other in other communities to expand their market your magic rate and be able to increase their sales keep their storefront keep their presence in that local community but also expand their just bull market and i think we're moving into a new age in retail and we've got to occur by these digital tools to these small businesses life is unpredictable you probably have experiences i certainly have experience that it is not a straight line it's certainly not a straight line and up to the right you have a ton of setbacks that can occur and so i think one is don't really be thinking about where do i want to be if years from now i think the only person who knew when they were born what they want to do apparently was bill clinton knew who wanted to be pres to be optimistic but there's a there's going to be a lot of things that happen in life that aren't going to be easy that are going to knock you down but having an optimistic attitude i think is very helpful and there's a great saying by shakespeare is that says something like nothing is or is not but thinking makes it so and i think you know the way we think about things definitely influences our perception and our ability to be successful going forward and i think those are probably things that i would advise people and last piece of advice would be to be authentic to yourself we're all different yob different skills and different strengths and you know you should you should try to embrace that try to be authentic try to be real and not try to be something else that somebody else wants you to be because you're only your strongest when you're your most authentic i know that you're a big martial arts practitioner and i know that you lived in israel for a while to so that you can tell us all about that back then and why this is important to your daily routine i think martial arts i wish everybody took martial arts is i think it's much more peaceful world that were the case because the dominant philosophy of martial arts is the best way to win a fight is that not get into a fight and so we spend a lot of time thinking about how to deescalate situations have to think through you know a changing world and changing perspectives one of the things you learn martial arts is that you can't control your xorn all environment but you can control the way you react to it and so that's a philosophy and a very important one in obviously there's a ton of discipline that comes from a d sort of a low key confidence that comes out of that is a humility that comes from that because no matter how much you train you can always train and you know even if you're a great fighter if you get into a fight you're always going to get hit once or twice there's a lot to take away from the philosophy of the martial arts as much as  family history was one of social activism i guess things that you learned from your mom and dad growing up and i know at pay pal you're one of the first financial companies to take to take a stand on guns so my question to you is how did this come about and where do you draw the line so we basically we try to think about  decisions that are in the part of our culture within the context of our values so we don't try to make a political decision you know decision that's either red issue or blue passed each the two which was a bill that in our estimation allowed for the discrimination against somebody for their sexual orientation or sexual identity you know tell us that was anathema to our values our values are that inclusion and diversity and we don't think there's room for discrimination of any  in the united states that's part of what we stand for as a company i think that's what we stand for as as a country as well and so we were going to open a pretty large office four hundred political and values based issue but we felt that it was very consistent with who we are as a company and our values we do the same thing around illegal trafficking of guns we feel very strongly that we can help prevent that we feel that we can allow yes the buy guns because we can't  that the person buying that gun because it's on line is the person that they say they are and so we feel that you know identity is in the ratably important part of this and all of the regulations purchasing guns and so from our perspective you know we need to be a good corporate citizen around these types of activities and and we'll continue to stand up for those that are organizations and one of the founders of those organizations said to me that the only way to really appreciate what these kids go through is to actually spend at least twenty four hours on the streets without any money having to basically beg for money to sleep out in the street and really  viscerally and not just intellectually and it was only twenty four hours so you know i don't want to you know say it was the biggest sacrifice forty eight hours would have and way more difficult seventy two who knows if i would have broken or not but these are kids and adults spend months and years of their lives sometimes all of their life on the street and i think if you want to support the cause whether it's democratizing financial services or helping the homeless i think experiencing that directly is the only way to release the kids that with that degree of conviction and passion that's necessary just intellectually understanding the facts and figures about it isn't enough i think you need it's variance to really start to address the issues  when you talk about experiencing things you've been through you've had many companies and you've been in various roles what has been your most rewarding experience well i think the most rewarding experience i have  across all of the different companies that i've been a part of is really seem teams come together against a common mission i mean there's nothing better than walking into that hoffa's and having a around a mission and a vision and then have rate people on that team pulling in the same direction really there's nothing more exciting than that from a professional point of view and i think to very much a believer that this and says we need to be a force for good and he really was the mentor that shaped a lot of my thinking about how as a c e o you need to stand up for the right and making communities move forward what are your what do you see pay pal going in the future you know where it's been you know where we are right now but you know looking ahead what have some of things you would like to see pay pal implemented in years to come i think the most important thing for us to do is to continue along the mission that we have which is to bring in more people that are x rated from the digital economy into that economy i think that's incredibly important not just for pay pal but for the health of our economy the health of our political systems if people are x clued it or feel left out you know they can tend to you know vote against the system not because they think that it's still the system is not  helping them and being attuned to their needs and i think it's a really important issue of our day and as a company and as a tech company and a fin tech company we have the ability to make a real difference in the financial health and lives of individuals and i think that can make a real difference in both the political unequal economic climate it's many countries around the world ok dan before you leave i just want to clarify one thing for for our viewers out there especially our student viewers that even though you didn't get into all the schools that you played for you did go to college you did go to middlebury college and got a degree in economics and you would get your m b a from you know i guess n y u i believe it was and so you did have an educational career so i just want to make sure our students realized how valuable it is believe me is because i didn't get in when i first  i didn't give up that's for sure and eventually middlebury except to be prettier february term and you know in that interim i drove a truck for the princeton university school and  made me realize the value of education in ways that maybe i never could have realized before and so middlebury and why you princeton high school were these or go to all haunting ground the chemist or embarrassed or or even the sub at hogan haven but you know it was a pleasure having the conversation this morning with thank you from you know breaking from your busy schedule to you know to talk with us today next week another dition focus on