My guest today is Gaurav Kapadia, founder of investment firm XN. Gaurav is a veteran of the investing arena. We cover his lessons while rising to partner at TPG Axon, co-founding Soroban Capital, and his decision to launch XN in 2020. We then discuss his approach to building XN around a culture of rigor and kindness, the importance of relationships in investing, and finding investments that are obvious in retrospect. Please enjoy my great conversation with Gaurav Kapadia.

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

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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.

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Show Notes
[00:03:05] - [First question] - What lead to kindness and rigor becoming pillars in XN’s company culture
[00:05:30] - The types of situations where it’s hardest to be kind or rigorous
[00:07:58] - Asking one question that can stump a founder can be a display of rigor
[00:08:58] - An example of looking at a situation and reducing the problem to a single variable
[00:12:51] - How he trains investors and team members to consider outcomes that would be obvious in hindsight
[00:14:28] - Developing the art of interacting with company management
[00:17:54] - Dimensions that typically find their way into his presentations and what tends to create complexity
[00:21:13] - Whether or not rigor has declined in public markets over the year...