Michael Moritz on Origin Stories, Exile, and Obsessive Curiosity

**Tyler Cowen** (0:04)
Conversations with Tyler is produced by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, bridging the gap between academic ideas and real world problems. Learn more at mercatus.org. For a full transcript of every conversation enhanced with helpful links, visit conversationswithtyler.com.
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Conversations with Tyler. Today I am chatting with Michael Moritz. Michael is perhaps best known for his work as a venture capitalist through Sequoia. Before that, he was a very active and successful journalist, with several books to his credit, including the first study of Apple and an excellent work on Alex Ferguson of Manchester United. Michael is extremely well known in addition for his work in philanthropy. For instance, his institution, Crankstart, has been supporting the Booker Prize since 2019
He also is involved in San Francisco Standard. But most importantly, from our point of view, Michael has a new and excellent book out called Ausländer, One Family's Story of Escape and Exile, which I absolutely recommend to you all. Michael, welcome.

**Michael Moritz** (1:16)
Thank you for that very kind and flattering introduction.

**Tyler Cowen** (1:20)
I have many questions for you in many areas. So let's start with Wales.
Did the non-conformism of Methodist Wales make it easier for Jews to settle and feel at home there?

**Michael Moritz** (1:32)
I'm not sure that actually was the case. I think the principal reason that Jews, particularly the ones of my parents' generation settled in Wales, were that those with entrepreneurial attributes were encouraged to settle in South Wales and in some other parts of Britain to set up businesses to encourage local employment and stimulate job growth. I don't think that any aspect probably of the established church or churches made the new immigrants to Wales feel any more comfortable.

**Tyler Cowen** (2:13)
How was Welsh antisemitism different from English antisemitism?

**Michael Moritz** (2:17)
First of all, I want to be really careful here because Britain opened its doors to my parents. My parents were refugees from Nazi Germany. They both were permitted to come into Britain as teenagers. Both of them were around 14 years old when they were fortunate enough to land in Britain. So, Britain was one of the few countries, albeit with quotas, that opened the doors to Jews desperately trying to flee the Nazi stain that was spreading all over Europe. But in the late 1930s, and certainly during the time that I was growing up there, which was predominantly in the 1950s, 60s and early 70s, was far less a multicultural country than it is today. So anybody from abroad, they could have been Italian waiters in Soho, or there were very few blacks, or anybody from Asia in Britain at the time that I was growing up. So anybody who looked out of the ordinary was considered by the majority of the people, as always happens, a bit of an outsider that was displayed in a whole variety of ways. But nonetheless, whether it was in Wales or to answer your question, in England, I'm not sure that it differed all that much.

**Tyler Cowen** (3:37)
According to some sources, the population of Welsh Jews peaked in around 1919, at around 5,000, and then it declined radically. Why did so many Jews leave Wales? Is it just movement to London?

**Michael Moritz** (3:50)
I don't think it declined that rapidly. I think there were, I don't know how many, in the 60s when I was growing up. Maybe there were 600 families around Wales that were Jewish. Out of a population of around, probably back then, about 2.5 million. I think the younger people tended to leave for opportunity. Small countries, or Wales and other parts of the United Kingdom, that presented limited opportunity for people with ambition, meant that the younger people in particular tended to leave, and they tended, on the whole, to head towards London.

**Tyler Cowen** (4:29)
You left Wales at age 19, correct?

**Michael Moritz** (4:32)
18, 19

**Tyler Cowen** (4:33)
What was your thought process at the time? Was it screaming, I have to get out of here, or a marginal decision?

**Michael Moritz** (4:39)
It was far more conventional than that. I left Wales after I finished high school and I went to university. So that was the first time I'd lived in England. Then outside of vacations, I never really went back to Wales. Since 1973, my life has been really spent outside of Wales.

**Tyler Cowen** (4:57)
At that young age, were you already interested in art and fiction?

**Michael Moritz** (5:01)
Funnily enough, I was, in both. I take the art first. And I think I owe this to my mother, whom I... Otherwise, I had a fairly strained relationship with. But...