I intentionally avoid the world of quantitative investing on this podcast. The whole point of this format is to learn about many different fields, and the vast majority of my time is already spent in quant world. Occasionally I’ve broken this rule because of something unique, including this week’s conversation with Richard Craib, the founder and CEO of Numerai. If you listen to the podcast often you’ll have heard me reference Numerai, a hedge fund which blends quant investing, cryptocurrencies, ...
Sep 04, 2018•50 min•Ep. 102
My guest this week has a fascinating background. He has a PhD in biology but has split his time as both an investor and an operator. As an investor, he’s involved in companies like Airbnb, Coinbase, Instacart, Opendoor, Stripe, Square, and Pinterest—not too shabby. As an operator, he helped both Google and Twitter scale their businesses, in the case of Twitter from 100 employees to 1500 over two years. He’s just written a book about these experiences called the High Growth Handbook. Our talk cen...
Aug 28, 2018•38 min•Ep. 101
For the 100th episode, I’ve brought back my good friend Brent Beshore. Brent was the 10th guest on the podcast, after we met because of a mutual interest in capital allocation. I quickly learned that Brent was one of the most unique and thoughtful investors around. He was an entrepreneur from the moment he left school, trying many different things before finding a fit buying smaller business with the intention of owning them forever. What amazes me about Brent is his encyclopedic understanding o...
Aug 21, 2018•52 min•Ep. 100
Today’s conversation is a continuation of my discussion on applying the lessons of tracking animals in the wild to tracking in your own life. I encourage to listen to that episode first. In this second part, Boyd’s sister Bronwyn joins and offers perspective on business and life. Given that Boyd and Bron grew up in this wild place, their perspective on the world is refreshing and very different. We discuss a wide range of things, But the section on restoration near the end is just phenomenal stu...
Aug 15, 2018•1 hr 6 min
An interesting question that I think about a lot: how do you balance exploring the new with savoring what you already know and love? Most of the time I prefer to explore, but the best part of this podcast experience for me has been meeting people who become close friends. For episodes 99 and 100, I’m bringing back two of the most popular past guest who are both now dear friends. This week’s episode is split into two parts, today and tomorrow. Today’s episode is with Boyd Varty and tomorrow is wi...
Aug 14, 2018•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 99
Ryan Selkis - The Crypto Barbell and Token Curated Registries - [Invest Like the Best, EP.98] This week’s conversation is for those interested in the nitty gritty of cryptocurrencies and for those who, like me, are fascinated by that world but more than a bit skeptical of the investing prospects for the many cryptocurrencies now in existence. My guest is Ryan Selkis, who I met at an event hosted by Union Square Ventures and Blocktower Capital. At that event, in a crowd of many brilliant people, ...
Aug 07, 2018•58 min•Ep. 98
My guest this week is Cathie Wood, the founder of ARK invest. Cathie and her team believe that disruptive innovation is the key to long-term growth and, therefore, alpha in the public markets. Because their style of investing is entirely contingent on what will happen and change in the future, it is about as different a style as exists from the quantitative approach to investing, which relies on what is currently knowable about stocks and businesses. The future is notoriously hard to predict, so...
Jul 31, 2018•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 97
I’ve often heard that good investors are a bit like journalists: doggedly collecting evidence and building an understanding of how all the pieces of a company or investment fit together. My guest this week is one of my favorite writers and journalists, Bethany McLean. Across her career, Bethany has covered many of the most interesting stories in business and investing, including Enron (which became the famous book and documentary, the Smartest Guys in the Room), Valeant, Wells Fargo, SAC Capital...
Jul 24, 2018•59 min•Ep. 96
A very short introduction today because my guest is anonymous. Suffice it to say he manages a large pool of private capital. He goes by the pseudonym “modest proposal” and his twitter presence is one of the reasons I first got on and now stay on the platform. He is level headed, smart, and skeptical by nature, all of which made for a great conversation. We discuss how difficult the market has become for active investors, thematic investment opportunities, and the potential sources of market misp...
Jul 17, 2018•1 hr 40 min•Ep. 95
With Patrick out of the country this week, we thought we'd play an old favorite that many of you have not heard. Please Enjoy! This week we explore a rare and underappreciated skill through the lens of an incredible story. My guest is Eric Maddox, whose name you probably don’t know but won’t soon forget. Just trust me that you need to listen to this entire episode, and listen carefully—because that is what the episode is ultimately all about: how to listen to others, with care and empathy, in th...
Jul 10, 2018•1 hr
This week’s episode covers a new set of topics. The conversation, with Niel Robertson, covers media, e-sports, content distribution, marketing, and a lot more. Niel started a software company out of his bedroom when he was 14, and sold his first company in 1999 for $280 million, when he was 24 years old. He has started and sold other companies to Twitter and Cisco. He started another large business that ultimately failed. He’s been an investor, venture partner, and serial entrepreneur. You can f...
Jul 03, 2018•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 94
My guest this week is Eric Balchunas, the senior ETF analyst for Bloomberg and the author of the Institutional ETF toolbox. This episode is intended for those in the asset or wealth management industry who have considered using ETFs in their portfolios, or for the individual investor who likes to stay up to date on trends in the market for asset management products. We cover all aspects of ETFs in some detail, and luckily in ways that have little overlap with a few other recent ETF-centric episo...
Jun 26, 2018•1 hr•Ep. 93
My guests this week are Kyle Samani and Tushar Jain, both managing partners at Multicoin Capital. I’ve taken a bit of a break from crypto because I hadn’t sensed many new angles to explore in this forum, from an investor’s point of view. I felt that while things keep evolving, the major investment theses have been established and explored. Kyle and Tushar are interesting because of their often divergent views. For example, Kyle has been an outspoken supporter of Ethereum relative to bitcoin. Thi...
Jun 19, 2018•59 min•Ep. 92
My guest this week is Michael Recce, the chief data scientist for Neuberger Berman. The topic of our conversation is the use of data in the investment process, to help cultivate what is commonly referred to as an information edge. I call the episode “Tim Cook’s Dashboard” because of an interesting question that Michael poses: if you armed the best apple analyst in the world with Tim Cook’s private business dashboard, what might that be worth? Effectively Michael’s goal is to recreate the equival...
Jun 12, 2018•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 91
My guest this week is Ash Fontana, a managing partner at venture capital firm Zetta, who invests in companies which build software that uses artificial intelligence methods like machine learning to predict and prescribe outcomes. Ash’s combined experience as a founder, entrepreneur, and investor give him the perfect background to discuss with us one of the hottest topics in business and investing. This conversation is useful for anyone trying to evolve their own way of dealing with data. Of part...
Jun 05, 2018•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 90
My guest this week is remarkable. He now applies his talents on Wall Street, searching for smaller cap companies trading at huge discounts in an effort to compound wealth for his investors. He is classically trained, having earned his graduate degree from Colombia, a school known for producing value investors. But his method also reflects what he learned across more than a decade of active duty in the U.S. military. Mike Zapata served us all as a Navy SEAL in the aftermath of 9/11 and ultimately...
May 29, 2018•59 min•Ep. 89
I came across this week’s guest thanks to the overlap of three passions of mine: data informed investing, value creation, and basketball. Sam Hinkie worked for more than a decade in the NBA with the Houston Rockets, and then most recently as the President and GM of the Philadelphia 76ers. He helped launch basketball's analytics movement when he joined the Houston Rockets in 2005, and is known for unique trade structuring and a keen focus on acquiring undervalued players. Today, he is also an inv...
May 22, 2018•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 88
My guest this week is a bundle of curiosity, and that is one of the nicest things I could say about someone. For several years, Tren Griffin has been writing a weekly blog post that highlights things he has learned from various investors, businesspeople, musicians, comedians, and more. Lately, he has also been tackling individual businesses, and broad topics like scaling, competitive forces, and product market fit. Tren’s full time job is serving as a director at Microsoft. He’s also worked with...
May 15, 2018•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 87
I believe that any investment strategy that will deliver strong returns in the future must evolve. Any strategy should rest on rock solid foundational principles, which change rarely if ever—things like price discipline, or business growth. But the features of the strategy must keep getting better, because the marketplace is incredibly competitive. That evolution is the topic of today’s conversation with Jason Karp. Jason is the founder and CIO of Tourbillon Capital Partners, a multi-billion dol...
May 08, 2018•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 86
My guest this week is Chris Douvos, a managing partner at Venture Investment Associates, which allocates 1.6B in behalf of investors. Chris is the first professional allocator I’ve spoken with who focuses specifically on venture capital funds, so I had a ton of questions for him on how to build a portfolio in an asset class known for uncertain, but often enormous, outcomes. We discuss the major recent changes in the asset class and where things might be going. I sought Chris out because while th...
May 01, 2018•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 85
My guest today is Arianna Simpson, who has spent her career in an around the world of technology working at startups, Facebook, and now in venture capital as an investor focused on the world of cryptocurrencies. I met Arianna when I hosted a panel at a big investing conference in New York City and she was one of the panelists. On the panel, I found her style to be very straightforward and compelling. It is clear that she loves to learn and that the best manifestation of her style of learning is ...
Apr 24, 2018•53 min•Ep. 84
We’ve always found that even in public equities, you learn more once you have a live portfolio. One of the best ways to learn is to put some capital at risk. For this episode, I asked two VCs to sit down with me and Brett and treat the conversation as they would a normal pitch meeting, so that we, the audience, can get a peek into their world and the types of questions they ask. The venture capitalists in question are Thatcher Bell, of CoVenture, and Taylor Greene, of Collaborative Fund. The fir...
Apr 17, 2018•1 hr 32 min•Ep. 83
My guest this week helps me complete the first trilogy of guests on the podcast. His name is Nikhil Kalghatgi. Along with past guests Ali Hamed and Savneet Singh, Nikhil is a partner at the asset management firm CoVenture. If you liked those two conversations, you will love this one—it is somehow even more wide-ranging than the first two. Nikhil is the CEO of CoVenture Crypto, but he ended up there because of an overarching investing style that he calls moonshot investing, which we explore right...
Apr 10, 2018•1 hr 24 min•Ep. 82
This week’s episode was the first one that I’ve recorded live. It was the second dinner in what I expect to be a long series where I bring together 30 people from a variety of backgrounds to discuss an interesting and emerging topic, whether that be cryptocurrencies, health, cannabis investing, or some other compelling, emergent thing. My guest, for the second time on the podcast, is Peter Attia, who has lead one of the more interesting careers I’ve ever come across and who is focused on underst...
Mar 27, 2018•1 hr 1 min
[After talking to the brilliant string of guests the past several weeks, Patrick’s brain needed a rest—oh and a concussion didn’t help matters. To hold you over until next week, here is one of the most interesting but less well known conversations from the invest like the best archives.] This week’s episode is the most unique to date. My guest is Boyd Varty, who grew up in the South African Bush, living among and tracking wild leopards. The main theme of our conversation is tracking, and how the...
Mar 20, 2018•1 hr 24 min
My guest this week is Albert Wenger, a managing partner at Union Square Ventures and the author of the book World After Capital. Albert studied economics at Harvard and earned a PhD in information from technology, but if you’d asked me to guess before looking those up, I’d have guessed that he studied philosophy because of how widely he has thought about the world and the impact of technology. Our conversation is about how technology is changing the world from an Industrial Age to a knowledge ag...
Mar 13, 2018•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 80
My guest this week is another in a recent series of people that makes me want to work harder, learn more, and do more for others. His name is Savneet Singh, and he has already accomplished a remarkable amount in the worlds of business and investing. He’s preferred to keep a bit of a low profile, but I’m hoping, for everyone’s sake, to change that a little bit. Savneet has invested in unique things like Spanish real estate, famous startups like Uber, cryptocurrencies before they were cool, and ev...
Mar 06, 2018•1 hr 21 min•Ep. 79
It has been a while since we discussed private equity on the show, so I was excited for this week’s conversation. My guest is Dan Rasmussen, the founder of Verdad advisers. Dan worked in private equity and has spent years studying the entire field. Dan identified several key drivers of private equity’s outsized returns: size, value, and leverage. His firm uses these factors as a starting point to build a portfolio of public equities that behave like their private brethren. We cover a ton of grou...
Feb 27, 2018•1 hr 23 min•Ep. 78
My guest this week, back for a second conversation, is Pat Dorsey. Pat ran equity research at Morningstar before leaving to start his own asset management company: Dorsey Asset Management. His areas of deep interest are competitive advantage and capital allocation. He believes that capital allocation should be in service of competitive advantage and invests in a concentrated portfolio that he and his team feel embody these ideas. If you have not already, I strongly recommend listening to our fir...
Feb 20, 2018•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 77
Long-time listeners will have heard me joke before that this podcast should really be called “this is who are you up against.” I’ve been waiting for the right episode to deploy the joke as a title, and this week we have it. The joke is meant to convey how incredibly impressive these people are who we get to hear from every week. My guest this week is Josh Wolfe, a founding and managing partner at Lux Capital in New York City. Lux is a venture capital firm, but a highly unique one. They’ve spent ...
Feb 13, 2018•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 76
