In a rare wide-ranging interview with The Wall Street Journal, Ray Dalio, founder of Westport-based Bridgewater Associates, says he built the world’s largest hedge fund by creating a culture of “radical truth and radical transparency.” 
Ray Dalio: wants everyone to “understand the machine.” Forbes.com photo
In the interview published online tonight and appearing in the newspaper’s Saturday weekend edition, Dalio said that “everything is a machine”—including organizations and even the individual people within them.
It has been more than three years since Dalio has talked extensively about the firm that is Westport’s largest employer, an estimated 1,600 workers scattered over four locations. (And one which has been working to move to Stamford.) The last time was in 2011 in a CNBC interview when he went public to dispel what he said was a misunderstanding about the culture of the company. (See WestportNow March 3, 2011)
The Journal said at Bridgewater, “the idea is to encourage everyone to accept unvarnished criticism as a treasured opportunity to learn and to solve problems. This is intended to allow constant refinement of business processes—also known as machines within the firm—from how Bridgewater buys office furniture to how it evaluates the world oil market.”
For most new Bridgewater employees, “it’s a little bit like entering the Navy SEALs,” Dalio told the newspaper. “There’s a period—usually about 18 months—of sort of adaptation to this. And some make it and some don’t make it. And so we call it ‘getting to the other side.’”
The Journal said emphasis on transparency within the company does not mean that Dalio is seeking media attention.
“No, I hate it,” he said. But the Journal said he consented to the interview, and has published papers and a video online at EconomicPrinciples.org, “because he wants everyone, including Washington policy makers, to look at the economy in a new way—to understand the machine.”
