Prince Harry was outside this week! On Thursday, he made a surprise (unannounced) appearance at the Upfront Summit, a venture capital event in LA. Serena Williams was also at the event as a speaker, so my guess is that Serena probably told Harry about the event, or maybe Serena’s manager Jill Smoller (who also reps Harry’s wife). Harry made a speech and he also did an informal Q&A session. I’m doing highlights from People Mag’s coverage because I don’t think Harry was as repetitive as they make him sound.
His investment in companies? Prince Harry assured the crowd that he had not “wandered into the wrong room,” pivoting to a discussion about how individuals and companies alike can invest in “companies that are developing technological solutions to address the root causes of societal challenges. I’ve spent the last five years — sometimes publicly but primarily quietly — investing in companies that align with my values and vision of a better tomorrow, companies that understand the power and significance of service,” he shared, noting a commitment to causes supporting “mental fitness to carbon sequestration, early education to veteran employment.”
Looking for solutions: “I’m here to talk about something that I believe will resonate with all of you as leaders, creators, builders and changemakers: How do we invest in our shared future to solve the challenges we face today as a divided society? As a dad, this has me constantly looking for solutions. As a man who was born into a life of service, I recognize that with power and a platform comes responsibility. And these days, I am determined to find and invest in solutions.”
Service to others is the cornerstone: “From my institutional role traveling the world to my decade of duties in the military, I saw the power of serving others firsthand. My personal experiences overseas taught me that when you put others first, you build stronger, more sustainable systems.That’s true from Nigeria to Nepal, and from Sydney to Santa Barbara. It’s the same approach I’ve taken in founding charities like The Invictus Games Foundation back in 2014, that supports and rehabilitates wounded and injured service personnel and veterans through sport, and more recently with The Archewell Foundation, where we show up and do good for those who need it most, supporting social impact initiatives—including digital safety and education—all under the umbrella of protecting our collective mental health.”
His evolving perspective since moving to the US: “The way that I answer the question of how we invest in our shared future is different now living in the U.S, to when I was living in the U.K. Why? Because before I moved, so much of my life revolved around charity. Since then, while my charities remain a core part of my life’s work, I’ve also been focusing on upstream solutions and prevention, driven by decisions and investments that address problems before they require fixing. Still, I’ve approached everything in my life through the lens of service.”
He’s never even voted: “I’m not one to be caught in the divide between left or right views, not cornered by a belief in blue or red. Hell, I’ve never even been allowed to vote!”
I bet Harry is so popular at these kinds of events with tech bros, venture capitalists and C-suite types. He honestly speaks their language (in a posh accent) and he makes them feel better about the choices they’re making. As for not voting… obviously, he can’t vote in American elections because he’s not a citizen. Technically, he was probably “allowed” to vote in the UK, but most of the Windsor clan avoids it anyway. Anyway… I wonder if he got paid for this? Or was it like my original theory, that he did this because of Serena and Jill Smoller?
always good to see and catch up with my boy prince harry. proud of you brother ✊🏾 pic.twitter.com/QMjz08IcDr
— Jalen Drummond (@jalen_drummond) February 27, 2025
I did not predict Prince Harry would ever speak at @upfrontvc Summit. He’s discussing his investments focused on larger societal good and decreasing the societal split that is dividing us all. pic.twitter.com/4FKzJW8LKq
— Ben Parr (@benparr) February 27, 2025
Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Cover Images.
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- Vancouver, CANADA – Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex makes a speech during the opening ceremony of the 2025 Invictus Games in Vancouver. Pictured: Prince Harry BACKGRID USA 9 FEBRUARY 2025 USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
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- Vancouver, CANADA – Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex makes a speech during the opening ceremony of the 2025 Invictus Games in Vancouver. Pictured: Prince Harry BACKGRID USA 9 FEBRUARY 2025 USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
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- The opening ceremony of the 2025 Invictus Games in Vancouver Featuring: Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex Where: Vancouver, Canada When: 08 Feb 2025 Credit: Dutch Press Photo/Cover Images **NOT AVAILABLE FOR PUBLICATION IN THE NETHERLANDS OR FRANCE**
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- Prince Harry attending the wheelchair basketball bronze medal final at the Vancouver Convention Centre during the 2025 Invictus Games Featuring: Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex Where: Vancouver, Canada When: 13 Feb 2025 Credit: PA Images/INSTARimages **NORTH AMERICA RIGHTS ONLY**
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- The Duke of Sussex presents gold medals to team France at the end of the wheelchair basketball final at the Vancouver Convention Centre during the 2025 Invictus Games in Vancouver Featuring: Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex Where: Vancouver, Canada When: 13 Feb 2025 Credit: PA Images/INSTARimages **NORTH AMERICA RIGHTS ONLY**
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- Swimming during the 2025 Invictus Games Featuring: Prince Harry Where: Vancouver, Canada When: 14 Feb 2025 Credit: PA Images/INSTARimages **NORTH AMERICA RIGHTS ONLY**
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- Swimming during the 2025 Invictus Games Featuring: Prince Harry Where: Vancouver, Canada When: 14 Feb 2025 Credit: PA Images/INSTARimages **NORTH AMERICA RIGHTS ONLY**
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- The Duke of Sussex during the medal presentation following the sitting volleyball final at Vancouver Convention Centre (VCC), at the 2025 Invictus Games in Vancouver, Canada Featuring: Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex Where: Vancouver, Canada When: 15 Feb 2025 Credit: PA Images/INSTARimages **NORTH AMERICA RIGHTS ONLY**
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- Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex at the Closing Ceremony of the 2025 Invictus Games at the Rogers Arena Featuring: Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex Where: Vancouver, Canada When: 16 Feb 2025 Credit: Dutch Press Photo/Cover Images **NOT AVAILABLE FOR PUBLICATION IN THE NETHERLANDS OR FRANCE**
Well Harry the rest of America may not be allowed to vote either if the orange stain has his way. Good to see Harry out at these events.
He appears to be very busy and involved despite being” bored in California with nothing to do” .
He is the perfect person to be paid for speaking engagements, I know I would pay to hear him speak if it was near me, a lot of people make a career out of public speaking. I hope we see him do more public speaking in the future.
Gathering of the rich paying to attend, they should be paying speakers.
I doubt Harry did this for free because Serena asked him to. Serena was probably paid for this and I believe Harry was too. He is signed with a speaking agency. This is the type of thing that people are paid for.
I hope they post a video of the Q&A. I would love to see it.
It’s so funny. I read the comments from the people article and a couple people talk about how he’s dumb or a ‘dim bulb’. Are they reading what he is saying? Have they ever seen him do an impromptu interview and his off cuff answers are always thoughtful and well articulated? I don’t get the Harry is dumb comments. He obviously is very well read.
It’s a narrative they refuse to let go of because they refuse to be wrong. If you listen to any of his Invictus speeches, speeches at the Espys, or like you said off the cuff interviews, or pre-planned interviews with people like Stephen Colbert it’s clear that he’s intelligent and funny.
Harry just wasn’t academic at school, admitting to not being interested or focused. But more than proved how smart he is by subsequently becoming such a good Apache helicopter pilot (graduated top of class). Not an easy aircraft to fly. There’s more than one kind of intelligence and he also has his mother’s EQ in abundance.
It’s pretty clear Harry is very intelligent. He isn’t supposed to be ( they want it to be William) but he is. The “dumb” narrative is something they will never let go of. Luckily, people are seeing for themselves how smart Harry is, and always was.
Given the lengths the Royal Family went to, in order to destroy Meghan, I would hazard a guess that Harry was set up to not be bright. These people are hideous.
They tried to wipe out Meghan‘s academic achievements to shore up Kate. What makes you think that they did not do the same to Harry?
Look at Harry now, look at what he has created, done.
Then look at William and the nothing he has achieved, and tell me who is the smart one.
It’s something they’re conditioned to from birth in the UK, and a narrative that must be protected at all costs as a means of propping up the heir (in this case, William) and making sure the public never loves the spare(s) more…or secretly wishes for them to be King/Queen instead.
So the spare must be fatally flawed in some way: frivolous, dumb, uninteresting, selfish, untrustworthy, disloyal, even cruel (pick your narrative or combination, thereof…we’ve seen them all in history). How many spare(s) were reputed as party boys/girls, lotharios, unserious, or slightly dim? The only way to escape is to be a bland, uncomplaining workhorse like Anne or Edward, and even then they’ve really just benefitted from Andrew pulling SO much focus.
Sure, it’s in the institutions interest for the spare(s) to be well-regarded, but if the spare(s) are ever seen as more charismatic, more popular, more interesting, smarter, savvier, or kinder — just “better’ in any substantive way — than the future king/queen, that’s not good for a nation (and literal church) that are meant to feel singular fealty to the monarch and designated heir, only.
And it’s one often spoken so much, it can become true, by educating the spares less, exposing them to more, building resentment (down to feeding them less food or giving them less attractive charitable assignments), and indulging frivolous pursuits and bad behavior in ways that are breathlessly covered and pull focus from the bad behaviors and habits of the current or future monarch. Sometimes you tell a child they’re “just” something long enough, they believe it. Other times they do, then they meet someone like Meghan, learn better, know better, and do better…and then everyone loses their minds.
And that’s why they don’t know what to do, so they just keep repeating the same lies over and over again, as stupid as it makes them look. Because they NEED Harry to be less interesting, less honest, less kind, and more selfish than William. They need the love story of Harry and Meghan to be less impressive than William and Kate, and H&M aren’t giving them what they want. Rather than adapting, they just melt down.
This is precisely how the institution’s inept wannabe Machiavellians think and believe and do.
Growing up in the UK the ‘dumb, wayward, clown Prince’ has always been the main message in the media about Harry. Sometimes done subtly sometimes very blatant but always in juxtaposition to ‘perfect Prince’ TOB.
If you’re told something in a myriad of ways consistently throughout your whole life then it seeps into your consciousness and you rarely question the narrative. A combination of marrying Meghan (and how the press treats her), SM and Spare has opened the eyes of many Brits who are seeing the respective personalities of TOB and Harry as they really are for the first time.
Some now see the previous propaganda as the load of BS it always was but others can’t bear to have that old narrative challenged because they refuse to admit they’d been conned and manipulated by the RF & the tabloids.
Harry has clearly always been the bright, dynamic, forward thinking one and we all finally get to see that in real time.
Aren’t Harry and Meghan repped by the Walker agency? Serena too. If I remember correctly, this isn’t the first time Harry and Serena have both been guest speakers at the same conference.
Serena is a very impressive businesswoman as well as one of the greatest tennis players?
It’s interesting that both he and Meghan are speaking more about their investments in ethical companies. Her’s, or at least the one’s she publicized have been small business mainly ran by women. I wonder if Harry invests more on the tech side. Smart way to diversify in any case, and good to see that they both are out and about in 2025 consistently. I wonder what’s big on his agenda for the rest of the year since Invictus was done early this year.
Harry has the gravitas of a statesman, without representing a state.
And he has that rare gift to be able to charm people while bringing his message across.
Diana’s true and only heir has *style* and *substance*, and an always well-thought-out message, even if it’s a spontaneous Q&A, or an off-the-cuff message to groups of competitors at Invictus.
Would love more info on the companies they are investing in. As someone who does not have the bank account for this type of investing I do find it very interesting.
So, are we just going to ignore the fact that he is speaking as if we are in a normal political time? “I’m not one to be caught in the divide between left and right views, not cornered by a belief in blue or red.” I find this sentence to be incredibly disappointing and rather tone deaf. If you don’t want to enter the political fray, just don’t go there. Don’t pretend that your adopted home country has not just gone fully fascist.
@Brassy Rebel: you do realize that if he does take a side, he’ll be shred to pieces?! while he he may not say it, i doubt he likes trump before and after trump spoke shit about his wife. Also, why should Harry, who isnt a US citizen take a side? I think he spoke perfectly. Harry and Meghan also have friends who arent democrats. Its a rich people thing….not making friends according to political beliefs, because their lives arent similar to that of the middle class.
I agree. I think the media is trying to get H&M on Trump’s radar for their deporting fantasy with articles about how h&m are funding democratic operatives ie supporting Ashleigh Biden’s women’s wellness centre. And I think that comment is slight push back to this narrative which I can’t blame him for cos I wouldn’t want to be in MAGA’s spot night as an enemy of Trump either. But in these troubled political times it’s a very unhelpful comment & I didn’t like it either
He could have said nothing alluding to politics because in the context of Americans suffering and dying under this regime, what he did say was pretty awful.
Meghan and Harry have to be extremely strategic with anything they say out loud. Every word they speak will be parsed for whatever the haters want to see. Why expect them to act in good faith when no one esle will extend them the same courtesy? I think we expect people like the Sussexes, the Obamas, and Kamala Harris, among others, to martyr themselves for the rest of us. No one has any right to expect that of them. We all have to figure out a way to survive what’s coming. Their wealth shields them to a degree, but Harry has an enormous target on his back, plus a wife and young children to protect (and all of them, even the kids, have targets on their backs). He can’t afford to be our human shield.
Instead of asking (or expecting) Harry to speak out against fascism, I want the people with greater “ins” to the system to speak out. People like Mitt Romney, Bill Gates, Geroge Clooney (payback for what he did to Biden), John Stewart–people who could benefit from the status quo, who have some power and influence of their own. They can afford to stand up and take the hits, and quite frankly, they need to stand up and take the hits if they want to be counted among the good guys.
Again, not asking him to martyr himself or speak against fascism. Just begging him not to normalize a very abnormal political time. And I should have added that it isn’t just Americans suffering and dying under the regime. Because of the decimation of USAID, people in other countries can’t get the help they need. And having AIDS medication suddenly stopped will result in drug resistant strains of the virus emerging. None of this is about “left or right”. It’s about right or wrong.
I know you aren’t asking him to martyr himself, but the conventional white liberalism is doing that very thing: “some of you may have to die, but that’s a sacrifice I’m so sadly and reluctantly willing to make.” The same people who are asking why the Obamas and Harris aren’t “doing anything.” That’s what I was responding to–I know your particular take wasn’t that broad. I think we all need to be demanding that white establishment men (and marrying Meghan means that Harry has lost some establishment male status) step up. They need to be the front lines of this fight. Harry saying some weak “both sides” words is annoying but understandable. I don’t want to hear that kind of shit from the John Stewarts of the world. Those are the guys who need their words parsed, but I recognize they are also the guys who will be more likely to bail if they don’t get all the adulation they believe they deserve for “taking the risk to speak up.”
Thank you @lanne. Always the voice of reason speaking facts in the face of hysterics.
They are literally trying to deport this man and destroy his family and you’re worried about a couple words? Harry has more than once shown who he is and what he believes in tons of his speeches. I know you know that.
No offense but get off your high horse.
Agree, he could have simply said nothing about politics. But otherwise I love this for him.
The the issue with being disappointed with that is the presumption that conservative and trumpism are exactly the same. They are not. While it’s easy to believe that every single person who is conservative in the U.S. or world is a Trump supporting welcomer of fascism that’s just not true. The sheer amount of Republicans who were willing to speak at the DNC and campaign with Kamala shows you that.
We can’t demand that conservatism doesn’t exist, which is the point he was making. Every person who typically votes Democrat isn’t it the extreme liberal left either. People are going to have different views on social issues, tax issues, immigration issues, and how the government should play a role. It’s when we get into the realm of only my beliefs matter, even if they infringe upon yours that we have an issue. He didn’t say that that was okay, just that people are going to have different views and finding the common ground is what is important.
We have to remember that he is the son of a constitutional monarch and is not allowed to express political opinions.
I don’t get why people are expecting huge political statements from Harry and Meghan. They’re literally just trying to live their lives. Harry can’t vote in the UK or the US. They both live their lives trying to perform kindness and service in action and they’re supposed to be held to a standard that the actual president and his lunatic posse aren’t being held to. What exactly do some commenters here want from Meghan and Harry?:
Proud of Prince Harry’s growth and development as a public speaker. He is such an accomplished man for such a young age.
I think Harry has alluded to the current worst of times in both his Invictus speech and in this one.
That’s true Harry discussed weak moral character in the world at IG which some took to be aimed at certain leaders.
And actually in a way he has had to connect with both sides of the aisle for Invictus cos we’ve seen him meet with the reps of whatever government of the day is in charge whether it was Melania in 2016 at Toronto invictus or the Obamas & bidens in 2014. So could have been alluding to that too
Kaiser brings up a good point. Are working royals technically allowed to vote, but it’s discouraged? What about the monarch? As for Harry being non-partisan, Meghan’s new show could appeal to more conservative women, maybe even trad wives. I know that’s not necessarily her target demographic, but viewing eyeballs are still viewing eyeballs and a lot of these folks have money to spend on her future products. I doubt that Netflix cares who viewers vote for.
I think where Harry stands is clear. He says he’s investing in solutions, trying to put his money where it will yield dividends not just for himself but for those who need help.
If he can nudge some of these investors into doing the same thing — viewing their investments and making all decisions through the lens of service — that will be a good thing.
Sorry, had the same comment as Brassy Rebel, he could have not mentioned voting or anything right now.
It was interesting to hear Harry’s investment strategy and it seems to align with his values perfectly, as does Meghan’s investment strategy aligns with her values and how she is trying to move in the world. It seems to me that they are living their lives and making their investments and livings with clear purpose. I shouldn’t think it would be easy and and it’s clear Harry is moving and acting at a level more complex and thoughtful than his old life, and that of his family who rakes in taxpayer money and profits from resources that should belong to the people.
Wow, that not allowed to vote really hit hard for me. I always thought that the royals in the UK couldn’t vote at all (I’m open to correction) but I think they tend to skew conservative/centre right in their politics. But it’s so strange to me for Harry if he couldn’t vote as a royal in the UK and now still can’t vote in the US as an immigrant.
Do I bare my teeth at his red vs vlue comments? Yes. Absolutely.
But he has a very unique perspective. In both his home country and his adopted country, voting is a no go. The way the tabloids unlawfully invade his privacy, he would and has never been safe in the voting booth.
He has seen both red, blue, etc have absolutely lied and ignored their voters and what they were voting for. He has been able to see the values, policies, etc., both sides have yelled about and it never come to fruition.
I am very critical of Harry. Not because he’s been labeled thicko. We see that is media spin. But because he comes from such rarefied air.
That last is also why his perspective is interesting. He has no dog in the fight because he’ll always be fine. He genuinely wants to make the world a better place.
I don’t know. Maybe I am just seeing yes one side is absolutely terrible. Terrible. But the other side isn’t fighting for me either.