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Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Conversations with the best investors and business leaders in the world. We explore their ideas, methods, and stories to help you better invest your time and money. Hear stock market and boardroom insights you can't find anywhere else. If you're a professional investor, CEO, entrepreneur, or business strategist, this is for you. Explore all our episodes and learn more at https://www.joincolossus.com
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Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
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Now displaying: March, 2023
Mar 31, 2023

Hello everyone. A few days ago, we discussed what we call forever episodes, which are the few episodes of our show that we think will be as popular a decade from now as they are today. When I re-listened to this episode with David Senra, I left wildly energized and wanting to share that feeling. So we are re-releasing it today for anyone who missed it the first time or hadn't yet discovered Invest Like the Best. Please share it with your friends and loved ones as I think anyone will benefit from David's perspective and enthusiasm. Have a great weekend and we'll be back with more next week.

David Senra has studied history’s great founders and entrepreneurs in more depth than anyone I’ve ever met, and I’d wager more than anyone else alive. In this conversation, we cover many of the most common themes he’s discovered studying hundreds of entrepreneurs like Estée Lauder, John Rockefeller, Enzo Ferrari, and Edwin Land. Please enjoy this great conversation with David Senra.

 

Follow Founders in your podcast player here.

 

For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here.

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This episode is brought to you by Tegus. Tegus, the modern research platform for leading investors. I’m a longtime user and advocate of Tegus, a company that I’ve been so consistently impressed with that last fall my firm, Positive Sum, invested $20M to support Tegus’ mission to expand its product ecosystem. Whether it’s quantitative analysis, company disclosures, management presentations, earnings calls - Tegus has tools for every step of your investment research. They even have over 4000 fully driveable financial models. Tegus’ maniacal focus on quality, as well as its depth, breadth and recency of content makes it the one-stop, end-to-end research platform for investors. Move faster, gather deep research to build conviction and surface high-quality, alpha-driving insights to find your differentiated edge with Tegus. As a listener, you can take the Tegus platform for a free test drive by visiting tegus.co/patrick.

 

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Invest Like the Best is a property of Colossus, LLC. For more episodes of Invest Like the Best, visit joincolossus.com/episodes

 

Past guests include Tobi Lutke, Kevin Systrom, Mike Krieger, John Collison, Kat Cole, Marc Andreessen, Matthew Ball, Bill Gurley, Anu Hariharan, Ben Thompson, and many more.

 

Stay up to date on all our podcasts by signing up to Colossus Weekly, our quick dive every Sunday highlighting the top business and investing concepts from our podcasts and the best of what we read that week. Sign up here.

 

Follow us on Twitter: @patrick_oshag | @JoinColossus

 

Show Notes

[00:03:01] - [First question] - When he first fell in love with reading

[00:07:01] - What’s rooted in his own history that’s made him obsessive about studying history’s great entrepreneurs and founders - Founders Podcast

[00:10:34] - The first time he connected with someone as a positive role model that he was reading about 

[00:13:45] - How often obsession is apparent in the founders he’s studied across hundreds of biographies 

[00:18:08] - What is often behind obsession and how people listening can apply the lessons to their own lives

[00:22:45] - The dynamic and relationship between inspiration and perspiration 

[00:27:11] - Commonalities between the layers of leadership and support underneath founders

[00:31:52] - Where else he’s seen ego rear its head in good and bad ways 

[00:38:34] - How often do great founders break the law or enter gray areas of it 

[00:41:22] - The role constant learning and listening plays in success

[00:45:12] - Talking about how anything worth doing is worth doing to excess 

[00:52:18] - Describing the soul of founders and businesses

[00:58:39] - What he’s learned about all of these founders as it relates to marketing 

[01:04:38] - A common story that process is often art 

[01:08:10] - Who his idols are in podcasting specifically 

[01:14:55] - Major aspects of people he’s studied that haven’t been discussed yet

[01:19:55] - The kindest thing anyone has ever done for him

 

Mar 28, 2023

My guest today is David Einhorn. David is the President of Greenlight Capital, a long-short hedge fund that he co-founded in 1996. He is a prominent value investor with a reputation for rigorous security analysis. In 2002, he revealed a short position in Allied Capital, which was ultimately proven correct and similarly in early 2008, he told the Sohn Conference he was short Lehman Brothers. Over his near three decades managing money at Greenlight, he has delivered impressive returns but it has not been without challenge. Our conversation covers both the highs and the lows, his views on the current banking issues, and how he has evolved as an investor. I’m on the planning committee for this year's Sohn conference where David will be featured with others like Stan Druckenmiller, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Stripe CEO Patrick Collison, and Bridgewater CIO Karen Karniol-Tambour. If you’ve enjoyed Invest Like the Best and are willing to contribute to a great cause—Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center—I’d deeply appreciate you buying a ticket at the link available in the show notes and join us in May for what will be an incredible day of investing and business presentations and interviews. Now, please enjoy my great conversation with David Einhorn.

 

Buy a ticket to The Sohn Conference 2023

Listen to Founders Podcast

Founders Episode 136 - Estee Lauder

Founders Episode 288 - Ralph Lauren

 

For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here. 

 

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This episode is brought to you by Tegus. Tegus, the modern research platform for leading investors. I’m a longtime user and advocate of Tegus, a company that I’ve been so consistently impressed with that last fall my firm, Positive Sum, invested $20M to support Tegus’ mission to expand its product ecosystem. Whether it’s quantitative analysis, company disclosures, management presentations, earnings calls - Tegus has tools for every step of your investment research. They even have over 4000 fully driveable financial models. Tegus’ maniacal focus on quality, as well as its depth, breadth and recency of content makes it the one-stop, end-to-end research platform for investors. Move faster, gather deep research to build conviction and surface high-quality, alpha-driving insights to find your differentiated edge with Tegus. As a listener, you can take the Tegus platform for a free test drive by visiting tegus.co/patrick.

 

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Invest Like the Best is a property of Colossus, LLC. For more episodes of Invest Like the Best, visit joincolossus.com/episodes

 

Past guests include Tobi Lutke, Kevin Systrom, Mike Krieger, John Collison, Kat Cole, Marc Andreessen, Matthew Ball, Bill Gurley, Anu Hariharan, Ben Thompson, and many more.

 

Stay up to date on all our podcasts by signing up to Colossus Weekly, our quick dive every Sunday highlighting the top business and investing concepts from our podcasts and the best of what we read that week. Sign up here.


Follow us on Twitter: @patrick_oshag | @JoinColossus

 

Show Notes

(00:03:50) - (First question) - Why he is glad he started his fund in 1996 rather than today

(00:05:58) - His view of how companies’ personnel and goals have changed since the 90’s

(00:07:01) - His counter-momentum approach to markets and how he views current trends

(00:11:17) - The jelly-donut theory of monetary policy

(00:14:46) - His outlook on inflation and the Fed from a fiscal perspective

(00:15:45) - Commodities and other assets that become relevant

(00:16:48) - The evolution of Greenlight’s portfolio and philosophy through history

(00:20:11) - Periods in his career that stand out as the most challenging

(00:25:58) - How tech advances have influenced his core concept of figuring out worth

(00:28:17) - His three-step process to picking investment targets

(00:29:10) - The companies he has learned the most from studying

(00:30:52) - His experience with investing in Apple

(00:33:33) - How he considers the notion of quality in a business

(00:35:05) - His views on shorting, concentration, and holding periods

(00:38:37) - What he learned from a deep dive on airline businesses

(00:40:31) - His perspective on sports franchises as an asset

(00:42:12) - His new interest in poker and how he got so good at it

(00:45:22) - Applying traditional valuation styles to the modern market

(00:47:13) - Cultivating relationships with his limited partner investors and his team

(00:51:06) - The joy and drive that keep him buying and selling

(00:54:26) - His perspectives on the insurance space

(00:57:33) - The health of the economy and financial infrastructure as he understands it

(01:01:51) - How he thinks about housing and the construction industry

(01:03:54) - How AI and other high-tech are affecting his investment decisions

(01:05:28) - Other topics on his mind, from national politics to social psychology

(01:08:22) - The kindest thing anyone has ever done for him

Mar 21, 2023

My guest today is Avi Goldfarb. Avi is a Professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, the Rotman Chair in Artificial Intelligence and Healthcare, as well as the co-author of two bestselling books on AI and its economic impact. His most recent book, Power and Prediction, is probably the best piece of content I have read in explaining how AI may reshape business models, systems, and products. We recorded this before GPT-4’s release last week which, if anything, makes Avi’s ideas on AI’s impact all the more poignant. Please enjoy my conversation with Avi Goldfarb.

 

For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here

 

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This episode is brought to you by Tegus. Tegus is the modern research platform for leading investors. I’m a longtime user and advocate of Tegus, a company that I’ve been so consistently impressed with that last fall my firm, Positive Sum, invested $20M to support Tegus’ mission to expand its product ecosystem. Whether it’s quantitative analysis, company disclosures, management presentations, earnings calls - Tegus has tools for every step of your investment research. They even have over 4000 fully driveable financial models. Tegus’ maniacal focus on quality, as well as its depth, breadth and recency of content makes it the one-stop, end-to-end research platform for investors. Move faster, gather deep research to build conviction and surface high-quality, alpha-driving insights to find your differentiated edge with Tegus. As a listener, you can take the Tegus platform for a free test drive by visiting tegus.co/patrick.

 

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Invest Like the Best is a property of Colossus, LLC. For more episodes of Invest Like the Best, visit joincolossus.com/episodes

 

Past guests include Tobi Lutke, Kevin Systrom, Mike Krieger, John Collison, Kat Cole, Marc Andreessen, Matthew Ball, Bill Gurley, Anu Hariharan, Ben Thompson, and many more.

 

Stay up to date on all our podcasts by signing up to Colossus Weekly, our quick dive every Sunday highlighting the top business and investing concepts from our podcasts and the best of what we read that week. Sign up here.

 

Follow us on Twitter: @patrick_oshag | @JoinColossus

 

Show Notes

(00:03:15) - [First question] - His initial reaction to chat GPT when it first launched 

(00:07:08) - Prediction Machines; The impact price has on how much something is used by humans

(00:11:07) - The shift from steam powered factories to electric ones and the transition between the two in regards to systems and application solutions; Power and Prediction

(00:17:06) - Midpoints between a point solution and a systems solution and applications that are being built in the middle of them

(00:19:10) - What application, system, and point solutions feel like today in the world of AI

(00:27:03) - The transition from a world governed by rules to one by decisions  

(00:30:58) - How the power of prediction moves us from a binary to a decimal framework

(00:34:48) - Ways power disruption will occur as we navigate the emerging AI frontier

(00:44:33) - Other functions like personalization that entrepreneurs should think about putting into their products and features

(00:47:18) - How we should be thinking about the generation of information and data 

(00:51:32) - A future where technology either desimates or empowers specific industries

(00:54:16) - What he’s most excited and worried about given the emerging frontier of AI 

(00:55:41) - The kindest thing anyone has ever done for him 

Mar 14, 2023

My guest this week is Auren Hoffman. Auren is the CEO of Safegraph, which curates data on physical locations. He also founded LiveRamp, a public data connectivity business. Auren knows more about data businesses than almost anyone I know and that is the topic of today’s discussion. We look at the business of data from every angle and finish with a fun masterclass on how to host a dinner party. Please enjoy my conversation with Auren Hoffman.

 

For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here.

 

-----

 

This episode is brought to you by Tegus, the modern research platform for leading investors. I’m a long-time user and advocate of Tegus, a company that I’ve been so consistently impressed with that last fall my firm, Positive Sum, invested $20M to support Tegus’ mission to expand its product ecosystem. Whether it’s quantitative analysis, company disclosures, management presentations, earnings calls - Tegus has tools for every step of your investment research. They even have over 4000 fully driveable financial models. Tegus’ maniacal focus on quality, as well as its depth, breadth and recency of content makes it the one-stop, end-to-end research platform for investors. Move faster, gather deep research to build conviction and surface high-quality, alpha-driving insights to find your differentiated edge with Tegus. As a listener, you can take the Tegus platform for a free test drive by visiting tegus.co/patrick.

 

-----

 

Invest Like the Best is a property of Colossus, LLC. For more episodes of Invest Like the Best, visit joincolossus.com/episodes

 

Past guests include Tobi Lutke, Kevin Systrom, Mike Krieger, John Collison, Kat Cole, Marc Andreessen, Matthew Ball, Bill Gurley, Anu Hariharan, Ben Thompson, and many more.

 

Stay up to date on all our podcasts by signing up to Colossus Weekly, our quick dive every Sunday highlighting the top business and investing concepts from our podcasts and the best of what we read that week. Sign up here.

 

Follow us on Twitter: @patrick_oshag | @JoinColossus

 

Show Notes

[00:03:16] - [First question] - His 2x2 matrix for categorizing different types of data businesses

[00:04:59] - An example of what he calls a religion company in his matrix

[00:07:03] - His notion of data currency

[00:08:23] - His definition of a great business

[00:09:46] - An example of a so-called application religion company in his proverbial matrix

[00:11:24] - Co-op and non-profit business models within and outside of the data sphere

[00:13:35] - The truth application quadrant of his matrix

[00:15:00] - The more pure-data-oriented truth category of the matrix

[00:16:18] - How data has exploded in prevalence for the business world as a whole

[00:18:57] - How to think about the end market for data and its demand

[00:21:09] - Characteristics of a good data set and how to identify it

[00:23:14] - Other factors that impact the usability of a data set

[00:24:30] - Optimizing data collection itself

[00:26:30] - The slow growth that’s typical of early-stage data companies

[00:27:27] - Market share considerations for data businesses

[00:28:47] - Brand-building for data companies and how it can supercharge market share

[00:30:03] - Common struggles for data entrepreneurs

[00:31:55] - How he found a big problem that he could feasibly solve with data

[00:34:01] - The genesis of his business; SafeGraph

[00:35:15] - Progress in privacy protocols for gathering and mobilizing people’s data

[00:37:08] - The power of self-maintained and user-maintained databases

[00:38:34] - The kinds of data that SafeGraph gathers and how he foresees it expanding

[00:40:16] - Typical customers and use cases for SafeGraph’s data

[00:41:08] - How SafeGraph and other companies protect against data theft

[00:42:12] - Frequency of change as a proxy for the value of a given data set

[00:43:27] - How to optimize the systems of a business to continually gather and maintain accurate databases

[00:45:32] - Categorizing inbound data based on the most important criteria

[00:47:07] - The founder personalities he finds in the data industry

[00:48:36] - The most noteworthy or quintessential data businesses in his opinion

[00:49:53] - Why he feels the data truth quadrant of his matrix is underdeveloped

[00:50:30] - Bloomberg as an important data company to study

[00:51:42] - The importance of transparency in business and in data distribution

[00:53:07] - Failure modes that he sees most commonly in data-based startups

[00:53:53] - Data businesses becoming application businesses and vice-versa

[00:55:29] - Innovations in the join keys and mechanisms that enable data to travel

[00:57:35] - The great dinner parties he’s known for

[00:59:50] - How he makes the dinner parties appeal to introverts

[01:03:11] - Dead people he would most like to have as dinner guests

[01:04:09] - Questions he would ask the most influential religious figures

[01:04:58] - Why he thinks people are generally good and want to be inspired and passionate

[01:06:20] - The kindest thing anyone has ever done for him

Mar 7, 2023

My guest this week is Trae Stephens. Trae is a partner at Founders Fund and co-founder and Executive Chairman of Anduril. Trae’s philosophy can be boiled down to finding good quests, which has led him to investing in businesses that work closely with the government on societally important issues. Clearly, that extends to co-founding Anduril and I would highly recommend listening to my Business Breakdowns episode on Anduril if you haven’t already. In this conversation, we discuss the importance of lobbyists, why the high-tech defense firms of the past became stale, and how he hunts for disagreeableness in founders. Please enjoy my conversation with Trae Stephens.

 

For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here.

 

Listen to Founders Podcast

Founders Episode 136 - Estee Lauder

Founders Episode 288 - Ralph Lauren

 

-----

 

This episode is brought to you by Tegus, the modern research platform for leading investors. I’m a longtime user and advocate of Tegus, a company that I’ve been so consistently impressed with that last fall my firm, Positive Sum, invested $20M to support Tegus’ mission to expand its product ecosystem. Whether it’s quantitative analysis, company disclosures, management presentations, earnings calls - Tegus has tools for every step of your investment research. They even have over 4000 fully driveable financial models. Tegus’ maniacal focus on quality, as well as its depth, breadth and recency of content makes it the one-stop, end-to-end research platform for investors. Move faster, gather deep research to build conviction and surface high-quality, alpha-driving insights to find your differentiated edge with Tegus. As a listener, you can take the Tegus platform for a free test drive by visiting tegus.co/patrick.

 

-----

 

Invest Like the Best is a property of Colossus, LLC. For more episodes of Invest Like the Best, visit joincolossus.com/episodes

 

Past guests include Tobi Lutke, Kevin Systrom, Mike Krieger, John Collison, Kat Cole, Marc Andreessen, Matthew Ball, Bill Gurley, Anu Hariharan, Ben Thompson, and many more.

 

Stay up to date on all our podcasts by signing up to Colossus Weekly, our quick dive every Sunday highlighting the top business and investing concepts from our podcasts and the best of what we read that week. Sign up here.

 

Follow us on Twitter: @patrick_oshag | @JoinColossus

 

Show Notes

[00:03:17] - [First question] - Why Trae thinks most high-margin businesses are bad for society

[00:04:28] - What would he change to impact energy technology most if he were in charge

[00:06:18] - His investing focus on dynamism and mission-driven tech companies

[00:09:42] - Analyzing why relatively few people strive to make society-level advancements

[00:11:35] - What he’s done as a parent to enable his kids to develop passions

[00:12:41] - The most noteworthy adventures in his career

[00:14:41] - Founding Anduril and what it taught him about the tech industry

[00:18:40] - The cutting-edge of defense technologies today

[00:21:29] - What Shyam Sankar of Palantir taught him about defense tech

[00:23:34] - Why some of the biggest defense tech companies have stopped innovating

[00:28:29] - What he and Anduril have learned about sales and scaling in the public sector

[00:32:12] - Where lobbyists and decision makers play in to defense tech business models

[00:35:22] - His take on Peter Thiel’s notion that competition should be avoided

[00:38:24] - The importance of being psychologically disagreeable when building a start-up

[00:39:54] - The origin story that stands out the most from companies he has interviewed

[00:41:12] - How he developed an investor mindset on his unorthodox path to the venture world

[00:43:57] - What he has learned from playing supporting roles and aligning with great leaders

[00:46:11] - Important but uncommon lessons about entrepreneurship

[00:48:21] - Venture investing lessons he’s learned from Lauren Gross

[00:50:00] - His first VR project and aspirations for the future of VR

[00:54:50] - The role of religion and spirituality in his business philosophies

[00:59:13] - Why he tries to capitalize on morality as opposed to sin

[01:03:57] - The kindest thing anyone has ever done for him

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