Podcast Summary: "Mala Gaonkar: Building SurgoCap, Identifying Great Businesses and Learning from Mistakes"

Podcast: In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen
Host: Nicolai Tangen (Norges Bank Investment Management)
Guest: Mala Gaonkar, Founder of SurgoCap (formerly at Lone Pine Capital)
Date: January 21, 2026

Overview

This episode features a candid and insightful conversation between Nicolai Tangen and Mala Gaonkar, founder of SurgoCap Partners, one of the fastest-growing hedge funds globally. The discussion explores Mala’s investment philosophy, her unique approach to building a fund, how she identifies exceptional businesses, lessons learned from past mistakes, and how her personal and philanthropic interests inform her investment decisions.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Building SurgoCap: Strategy, Constraints, and Team Structure

• Objective: SurgoCap aims to “beat the market over a three to five year cycle with less risk than the market. Risk defined as loss of capital, not volatility.” (Mala, 00:41)
• Definition of Great Businesses: Focuses on businesses with “very long duration moats” – durable competitive advantages.
• Team Philosophy:
  • Small, focused, collaborative teams: "We'd like to stay at one pizza box in terms of our team size." (Mala, 03:47)
  • Leverages collaborative, cross-border thinking for creative idea generation.

2. Technological Edge & Non-Tech Business Disruption

• “Every business is a technology business at its backbone.” (Mala, 01:49)
• Emphasis on understanding how old technologies (like lithium-ion batteries, GPUs) can drive disruption in new sectors such as AI and automotive.
• Distinguishes SurgoCap by exploring “where technology intersects with non-technology businesses... how old tech is disrupting in new ways.” (Mala, 02:59, 04:26)

3. Modern Data Science in Investing

• Use of machine learning and survey bots to track things like product adoption and customer behavior at scale—tasks that were slow and manual in the past. (Mala, 05:09)
• “Now we actually can use survey bots ... augmented human surveyors ... and scrape the web” for real-time data. (Mala, 05:09)

4. Investment Organization Structures

• Future of teams: “I suspect they [investment orgs] will be, and they probably should be [smaller].” (Mala, 06:13)
• Sees greater innovation from small, cross-industry collaborative teams.

5. AI’s Counterintuitive Benefits

• Greatest impact not always visible:
  • Medical Imaging: “Accuracy and the speed at which these images can be conducted are now improving at a pace of almost 70% versus a few years ago.” (Mala, 06:48)
  • Robotic Surgery: “About 300 million surgeries... just beginning to be penetrated by what’s happening with robotic surgery.” (Mala, 07:40)
  • Healthcare Cost: “I have some hopes that AI applied intelligently can help contain healthcare costs.” (Mala, 08:35)

6. Portfolio Construction: Concentration and Thematic Focus

• Focuses investments in four verticals:
  • Enterprise data/tech
  • Financial services
  • Healthcare services
  • Industrial technologies
• Prefers a concentrated approach to maintain discipline and exploit clear tech-driven moats. (Mala, 09:04)
• “That allows you to play offense ... allows us to play offense during factor rotations.” (Mala, 09:54)

7. Debiasing Investment Decisions

• Reliance on robust checklists and data-driven processes to reduce human bias (“system 2 thinking” over “system 1 intuition”).
• “My ideas are as much about steering the team as they are about specific stocks.” (Mala, 16:58)
• “I like to tell my team it’s not FOMO [Fear of Missing Out], it's TOMO—thoughtfully missing out.” (Mala, 16:55)

8. Recognizing Mistakes and Learning

• Pattern Recognition Evolution: Moved from overemphasizing leadership (“the hero model”) to appreciating context and systemic factors. (Mala, 11:48)
• Notable investment mistakes discussed:
  • Shorting Nokia: missed value as an acquisition target (Mala, 27:37)
  • Investment in Altice: learned dangers of balance sheet leverage (Mala, 28:37)
  • Selling Nvidia too soon due to sunk cost bias (Mala, 29:30)
• “Systemic, not silo thinking” was the most important lesson. (Mala, 30:37)

9. Private vs. Public Investments

• Chooses to invest in private companies “because change happens at the edges, not at the core.” (Mala, 13:39)
• Private companies often drive disruptive innovation.

10. Idea Generation and Evaluation

• Sources ideas from reading, talking to people, and industry fieldwork in less-obvious places—not just established networks. (Mala, 14:34)
• Emphasizes long incubation and a checklist-driven approach with systematic tracking to minimize bias. (Mala, 15:31)

11. Quality & Moats: What She Looks For

• “A business that has very high incremental ROICs... multiple ways... not just by driving price, but feature innovation and market growth.” (Mala, 20:08)
• Must have scale opportunities to reinvest at high returns and strong execution capacity.

12. Long vs. Short Investing

• Shorts are “really the opposite muscle... require precise timing and are much more stressful.” (Mala, 25:23 & 26:29)
• Longs: time horizon is “certainly over a three to five year cycle” but prefers longer. (Mala, 24:46)

13. Woman in Finance & Meritocracy

• Largest hedge fund launch by a woman; Mala hopes this record will be broken soon. (Mala, 34:23)
• “I could be a green Martian with two horns in my head, but if I produce investment returns, there’ll be a line out the door wanting to get money. So I think it’s a very meritocratic industry.” (Mala, 35:03)

14. Personal Background & Perspective

• Growing up in India (and US) instilled a sense for giving back and shaped her awareness of social issues, inequality, and the need for context. (Mala, 32:07)
• Strong roots in philanthropy—early supporter of social entrepreneurs, co-founded Surgo Health tackling public health with data science and behavioral insights. (Mala, 35:50)

15. Creativity, Narrative, and Curiosity

• Pursues creative outlets (writing, theater projects), which feed her curiosity and capacity for systemic, non-siloed thinking.
• “Everything is a narrative.” (Mala, 40:45)
• Key to staying curious and humble: “It’s a virtuous circle... if you’re curious and humble, you learn and see how much more there is to learn.” (Mala, 42:00)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Tech as the Backbone:
  “If you want to deliver at scale and with quality, you have to be a tech business. And I think understanding the tech stack map of businesses is something we spend a lot of time on.” (Mala, 01:49)

• On Team Size:
  "We'd like to stay at one pizza box in terms of our team size." (Mala, 03:47)

• On Behavioral Biases:
  “Kahneman talks about System 1 and System 2 thinking... I try to focus on making sure my team and our portfolio is driven by System 2 thinking.” (Mala, 10:53)

• On Pattern Recognition:
  “My pattern recognition has expanded from being less driven by individual analytical viewpoints and more to thinking about the context.” (Mala, 11:48)

• Advice to Her Team:
  “It’s not FOMO [Fear of Missing Out], it’s TOMO—thoughtfully missing out.” (Mala, 16:55)

• On Investing as a Meritocracy:
  “I could be a green Martian with two horns in my head, but if I produce investment returns, there’ll be a line out the door wanting to get money.” (Mala, 35:03)

• On Narrative and Creativity:
  “Everything is a narrative, right?...That conflict between the narrative self and the social self is something I like to write about and think about.” (Mala, 39:26)

• On Humility and Curiosity:
  “It’s a virtuous circle... if you’re curious and humble, you learn and see how much more there is to learn. And that keeps you humble.” (Mala, 42:00)

Timestamps for Key Segments

• [00:41] SurgoCap's Investment Philosophy
• [01:49] Identifying Great Businesses & The Role of Technology
• [03:47] Team Size Philosophy – “One Pizza Box”
• [05:09] Modern Data Science Applications in Investing
• [06:48] Unexpected Impacts of AI in MedTech
• [09:04] The Four Vertical Investment Focus
• [10:53] Debiasing: System 2 vs. System 1 Thinking
• [11:48] Pattern Recognition Evolution & Importance of Context
• [13:39] Investing in Private Companies—Change at the Edges
• [15:31] Idea Generation and the Role of Checklists
• [20:08] What Makes a Business “High Quality”
• [25:23] Short Selling vs. Long-Term Investing
• [27:37] Major Lessons and Mistakes at Lone Pine (Nokia, Altice, Nvidia)
• [32:07] How Her Multicultural Upbringing Shaped Investment Philosophy
• [34:23] Being a Woman in the Investment World
• [35:50] Philanthropy—the Founding of Surgo Health
• [39:26] Creative Outlets and Narrative Thinking
• [40:45] How Creativity Feeds Investment Mindset
• [42:00] Staying Curious and Humble

Tone & Atmosphere

The conversation is thoughtful, candid, and practical—with both guests weaving anecdotes from personal, professional, and philanthropic experiences. There’s a constant thread of curiosity, humility, and an emphasis on the importance of context and process.

For Listeners

This episode is essential listening for anyone interested in:

• Building differentiated investing strategies
• Applying “second-level thinking” and debiasing decisions
• Leveraging small teams and modern data science
• Investing in innovation across non-obvious sectors
• Balancing ambition with humility and curiosity
• Lessons from one of the industry’s most thoughtful modern investors