private markets

My guest today is Michael Simanovsky. Mike is the Managing Partner of Conversant Capital, a real estate investment firm he founded in early 2020. Conversant aims to be the most flexible capital provider in real estate, investing across public and private markets as well as equities and credit. The firm will also incubate platforms where they see an opportunity to take advantage of a compelling theme that lacks existing business models for investment. We cover the most undersupplied part of the market, why he’s building Conversant to be so flexible, and the surprising appeal of billboards. Please enjoy my conversation with Mike Simanovsky. Listen to Founders Podcast Join Colossus live in NYC with Patrick O’Shaughnessy and David Senra on Oct. 19. 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. Tegus is the modern research platform for leading investors, and provider of Canalyst. Tired of calculating fully-diluted shares outstanding? Access every publicly-reported datapoint and industry-specific KPI through their database of over 4,000 drivable global models hand-built by a team of sector-focused analysts, 35+ industry comp sheets, and Excel add-ins that let you use their industry-leading data in your own spreadsheets. Tegus’ models automatically update each quarter, including hard to calculate KPIs like stock-based compensation and organic growth rates, empowering investors to bypass the friction of sourcing, building and updating models. Make efficiency your competitive advantage and take back your time today. As a listener, you can trial Canalyst by Tegus for free 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 (00:03:32) (First question) - Real estate investing through the lens of the capital cycle (00:06:50) - The capital cycle in practice (00:12:07) - Using evaluation of supply to determine where you are in a capital cycle (00:13:16) - Why real estate drew Mike in  (00:15:35) - The quality of investors in real estate (00:16:41) - What the US market needs most (00:20:26) - The range of returns in real estate (00:23:01) - Insights that stand out (00:26:45) - Starting a new company vs. building a portfolio of assets (00:28:46) - Key trade-offs and choices when building a firm (00:31:10) - Where things go wrong (00:33:59) - Best investment decision he ever made (00:38:06) - Philosophy on CapEx (00:39:52) - Misconceptions about real estate investing  (00:41:31) - Cold storage real estate (00:43:13) - The most interesting corners of the real estate market (00:46:13) - AI and its impact on the future (00:48:30) - Common investor missteps  (00:50:51) - Three guests Mike would invite to a dinner party  (00:52:34) - The most impactful questions to ask a real estate investor (00:53:17) - A defining moment of his career (00:53:17) - The premise of the platform approach (00:56:20) - Possible opportunities and an understanding of the current landscape (01:03:38) - Lessons Mike learned from basketball coach John Wooden’s philosophies  (01:04:30) - The kindest thing anyone has ever done for him

Acquired's Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal join the show to discuss how they think about public market investments (1:43), VC token sales (27:25), a VC market overview (45:40), the Vision Fund's impact on Silicon Valley (1:00:33), and Amazon's core pillars! (1:13:21)

(0:00) Jason intros today's guests and topics: Crossover Pod with Acquired!

(1:43) Private markets overview, Jay Trading, Ben's investment thesis for TSMC and Shopify

(13:44) Embroker - Use code TWIST to get an extra 10% off insurance at https://Embroker.com/twist 

(14:52) Jason makes two live Jay Trades, better solutions for employee stock options

(26:14) Dell - Apply for Dell for Startups and get an additional 10% off Dell Latitude products at https://dell.com/twist 

(27:25) Crypto regulation, VC token sales

(39:33) Zapier - Try for free today at https://zapier.com/TWIST

(41:02) The burden of going public, final ideas on digital asset regulation

(45:40) Major takeaways from PitchBook's Q2 US VC Monitor: exit value collapse, deal volume down, seed not impacted as much, signs of life in the early-stage

(1:00:33) Reflecting on Masa's precarious position and the impact that SoftBank's Vision Fund has had on the VC industry

(1:13:21) Ranking the most impressive pillars of Amazon's business: AWS, Prime, marketplace, advertising

My guest today is Justin Fishner-Wolfson, founder of 137 Ventures, a venture capital fund focused on providing liquidity solutions to founders, investors, and employees of private businesses. In our conversation, we discuss what early career experiences led Justin to start 137 Ventures, the counter-intuitive information asymmetry between public and private markets, and the interesting trend of digitization in the physical world. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Justin.   For the full show notes, transcript, and links to the best content to learn more, check out the episode page here. ------   Invest Like the Best is a property of Colossus, Inc. For more episodes of Invest Like the Best, visit joincolossus.com/episodes.    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 [00:03:47] - [First question] - Why he started 137 Ventures and what’s unique about it [00:05:31] - Overview of secondary equity markets in the tech sector [00:07:06] - Step by step process of how a secondary market investment works [00:09:37] - Scale of secondary transactions in markets today [00:10:19] - Valuations of secondary transaction rounds versus primary ones [00:11:37] - Defining great in private market investments and the competitive landscape [00:13:13] - Why there seems to be more information available in private markets [00:16:23] - How better capital allocation may result from less asymmetry [00:19:14] - What excites him about companies when meeting them for the first time [00:20:34] - Example of applying his philosophy of investing in a defensible business [00:22:20] - Counter positioning and inversion models to gain an advantage [00:24:17] - Lessons learned from Palantir about unlikely competitive advantage  [00:25:57] - Building good businesses when selling them to the government [00:26:59] - What technology means in the current era [00:28:34] - Methods for evaluating potential sources of defensibility and a lack thereof [00:30:30] - Considering focus and expansion when scaling [00:32:52] - Shared qualities of entrepreneurs who build these types of businesses [00:33:50] - The business that individually taught him the most writ large [00:35:01] - Defensabilities that might appear beyond the seven powers framework [00:36:21] - Thoughts on what seems to be craziest in the world today [00:37:15] - What’s surprising on the low end of the valuation side [00:38:11] - Interesting business models and ones he’s averse to  [00:40:31] - Constructing a portfolio with companies that have a customer focus [00:41:21] - Additional companies in their portfolio that aren’t of a similar model  [00:42:08] - Lessons learned from SpaceX’s growth [00:44:46] - Watching a SpaceX launch in person [00:46:03] - Advice for entrepreneurs when seeking capital and capital partners [00:48:04] - Investors he finds most impressive that he knows well [00:49:26] - Defining the cost of capital and what it means to him as a venture investor [00:50:56] - Is giving entrepreneurs too much money dangerous? [00:54:14] - What great capital allocation looks like to him [00:55:29] - Accelerating learning curves with tighter feedback loops [00:55:57] - Useful metrics for customer acquisition and retention [00:57:06] - Whether or not investing firms can and should behave defensibly [00:59:13] - What is going in the world that has his attention lately [01:02:06] - Key factors that have allowed him and his firm to succeed [01:03:47] - What he thinks about when his mind isn’t focused on investing [01:04:08] - The kindest thing anyone has ever done for him

FOLLOW Howard: https://twitter.com/howardlindzon
FOLLOW Jason: https://linktr.ee/calacanis

My guest this week is Michael Mauboussin, the head of consilient research at Counterpoint Global. Michael is an all-time favorite guest here on the show, and this is his fourth appearance. We discuss one of the biggest topics in the world of investing: the shift from public to private markets that has taken place over the last several decades. We explore the reasons for this shift, the biggest overall changes in capital markets, and what the future may hold. Along the way we explore other fascinating topics like the rise of intangible asset investments, employee-based compensation as a form of financing, and more. If you enjoy this conversation I urge you to read Michael’s paper on the topic which will be linked in the shownotes. Please enjoy this conversation with Michael Mauboussin.   This episode of Invest Like The Best is sponsored by Canalyst. Canalyst is the leading destination for public company data and analysis.  If you’re a professional equity investor and haven’t talked to Canalyst recently, you should give them a shout. Learn more and try Canalyst for yourself at canalyst.com/Patrick.     For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast. Sign up for the book club and new email newsletter called “Inside the Episode” at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub. Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_oshag   Show Notes (2:27) – (First question) – Motivation for writing the book from public to private equity             (2:28) – Public to Private Equity in the US: A Long-Term Look             (3:02) – The Incredible Shrinking Universe of Stocks (4:48) – Size of the public vs private markets (7:20) – History and changes in the public to private markets (12:00) – Public market vs venture capital returns (16:48) – Persistence of returns (20:01) – Role of price and EBIDTA on the returns of a buyout (23:31) – How buyout forms are sourcing the debt (29:31) – Transition to businesses relying on intangibles             (29:42) – Capitalism without Capital: The Rise of the Intangible Economy             (30:13) – Endogenous Technological Change             (30:36) – Should Intangible Investments Be Reported Separately or Commingled with Operating Expenses? New Evidence             (34:18) – Explaining the Recent Failure of Value Investing (36:21) – Superstar firms and increasing returns (42:38) – Role on monopolies in creating network effects (4:52) – The allocators perspective in these investments (49:16) – How does this all impact public market active management (51:54) – Advice to young people getting into the investment industry             (52:30) – Jeremy Grantham Podcast Episode (53:30) – Other areas he is researching/looking into (55:44) – How investment work and Santa Fe research influence eachother (56:54) – Investors to learn from             (57:15) – John Collison Podcast Episode  Learn More For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast. Sign up for the book club and new email newsletter called “Inside the Episode” at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub. Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_oshag

My guest this week is Cliff Asness, the managing and founding principal at AQR Capital Management. 20 years after its founding in 1998, AQR manages $226 Billion dollars across a number of quantitatively based investing strategies. Cliff was an original quant researcher and he has long been one of the financial writers and thinkers that I look to for education and for inspiration. I distinctly remember reading one paper in particular—value and momentum everywhere—somewhat early in my career and thinking: this is the kind of research I want to do forever. You can always tell when talking to Cliff or hearing him speak that he just loves researching markets. There is a deep intellectual honesty in his work, and a respect for thinkers at different ends of the market spectrum, from Gene Fama and Ken French, to Jack Bogle, to Dick Thaler and Robert Shiller. Our conversation is about all things quant—past, present, and future. Cliff touches on many of the big issues facing quant investing and tells some great strong along the way. I hope you enjoy our discussion. Let’s dive in. For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast. Sign up for the book club, where you’ll get a full investor curriculum and then 3-4 suggestions every month at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub. Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_oshag   Show Notes 1:47 - (First Question) – Favorite superhero 2:43 – Why ‘Ka nama kaa lajerama’ is part of his twitter profile. 3:38 – How portfolios have shifted the way they use factors in a portfolio 10:15 – What are good questions clients are asking right now             13:24 – Contrarian Factor Timing Is Deceptively Difficult 15:40 – Does technology impact investing strategy 22:14 – When to share information vs keep it proprietary for clients sake 26:40 – How their research process is governed 31:14 – How they will incorporate machine learning into their process 34:21 – What they will do when red flags show up 37:01 – Wackiest question from a client 41:47 – The Three Sharpe Ratio Strategy             41:53 – Liquid Alt Ragnarök 48:10 – Does his thinking change when it comes to asset allocation vs portfolio building             50:17 – Parallels Between the Cross-Sectional Predictability of Stock and Country Returns             53:01 – Sin a Little 57:14 – Trends in fees and pricing 1:02:43 – Thoughts on private equity markets 1:11:03 – Common attributes of really good researchers 1:13:21 – What is he most curious about right now 1:15:43 – What excites him outside of finance 1:17:00 – How much he discusses his work with his kids             1:18:35 – The Devil in HML’s details 1:19:36 – Kindest thing anyone has done for him   Learn More For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast.  Sign up for the book club, where you’ll get a full investor curriculum and then 3-4 suggestions every month at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub Follow Patrick on twitter at @patrick_oshag