Podcast
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Hosted by Colossus | Investing & Business Podcasts · EN
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.colossus.com
180episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
Gavin Baker - AI Market Jitters - [Invest Like the Best, EP.485]
Yesterday01:05:04Summary readyMy guest today is Gavin Baker, founding partner and CIO of Atreides Management. This is our seventh conversation, and just two months after Gavin's last appearance. It's about the gap between what the market is doing and what companies are seeing. It's been a tough month or so for public AI names, but there's no sign of a slowdown on the ground in Silicon Valley. We discuss the latest moves, contracted vs. spot GPU prices, the game theory of memory supply agreements, and why Claude has become the Walter Cronkite of the stock market. We close on SpaceX, orbital compute, and what Gavin sees as the single biggest risk to all of it. Please enjoy this conversation, from the famous table at Benchmark, with my friend Gavin Baker. For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here. ----- Become a Colossus member to get our quarterly print magazine and private audio experience, including exclusive profiles and early access to select episodes. Subscribe at colossus.com/subscribe. ----- Ramp's mission is to help companies manage their spend in a way that reduces expenses and frees up time for teams to work on more valuable projects. Go to ramp.com/invest to sign up for free and get a $250 welcome bonus. ----- Trusted by thousands of businesses, Vanta continuously monitors your security posture and streamlines audits so you can win enterprise deals and build customer trust without the traditional overhead. Invest Like the Best listeners get a special offer of $1,000 off Vanta when you go to vanta.com/invest. ----- WorkOS is the infrastructure B2B and AI-native companies use to sell to enterprise. It covers everything enterprise security requires: SSO, SCIM, RBAC, Audit Logs, AI governance, and more. Trusted by 2,000+ fast-growing companies, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Cursor, and Vercel. ----- Rogo is the AI platform for finance. They're building agents for Wall Street that are trained to understand how bankers and investors actually do work: from diligence and modeling, to turning analysis into deliverables. To learn more, visit rogo.ai/invest. ----- Ridgeline has built a complete, real-time, modern operating system for investment managers. It handles trading, portfolio management, compliance, customer reporting, and much more through an all-in-one real-time cloud platform. Visit ridgeline.ai. ----- Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant. Timestamps: (00:00:00) Welcome to Invest Like The Best (00:02:35) First Question: July Was 2022 in a Month (00:04:08) The Private Companies Public Markets Can't See (00:05:06) Old GPUs Repricing Higher (00:06:53) Walking Through the Month (00:08:22) Kimi, GLM 5.2 & the Open Source Freak-Out (00:10:51) Real Yields, Spreads & CDS (00:11:54) Does the Build-Out Need Credit? (00:15:22) A Sell-Off With No Clear Villain (00:17:35) Open Source as Dark Matter (00:18:39) Nvidia's Lowest Forward PE in 10 Years (00:21:35) Claude as Walter Cronkite for the Stock Market (00:23:55) Continual Learning & Sample Efficiency (00:25:19) What Would Actually Scare Him (00:26:38) Routers & the Multi-Model Future (00:30:51) Tokens as a Percent of Comp Spend (00:33:37) The Game Theory of Breaking an LTA (00:36:41) Nvidia's Credit Wrapper & Revenue Share (00:37:45) What He'd Do If He Ran Hynix (00:41:46) Who's More Bullish than Him (00:43:28) China's DUV Machine (00:46:10) Bull Case for Software (00:48:16) The RSI Maximalist View (00:49:31) Inference Clouds Growing Without Burning Cash (00:50:35) The Biggest Risk Is Regulation (00:53:44) Telling the Story Better (00:57:15) Dark Horses (00:58:02) SpaceX in the Public Markets
Summary
Sam Altman - How to Make an Abundant Future - [Invest Like the Best, EP.484]
1w ago00:53:33Summary readyMy guest today is Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI. It's a conversation spanning the history, present, and future of OpenAI, from the origin of ChatGPT through Codex, hardware, and their new Jalapeno chip. We discuss the early decision to buy compute at a scale nobody thought was rational, and the plan to build a gigawatt of new capacity every week. We talk about Kimi and distillation, the Hugging Face incident and what it means for the pace of AI development, and what it's like to raise kids who will grow up never knowing a world without abundant intelligence. Please enjoy my conversation with Sam Altman. For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here. ----- Become a Colossus member to get our quarterly print magazine and private audio experience, including exclusive profiles and early access to select episodes. Subscribe at colossus.com/subscribe. ----- Ramp’s mission is to help companies manage their spend in a way that reduces expenses and frees up time for teams to work on more valuable projects. Go to ramp.com/invest to sign up for free and get a $250 welcome bonus. ----- Trusted by thousands of businesses, Vanta continuously monitors your security posture and streamlines audits so you can win enterprise deals and build customer trust without the traditional overhead. Invest Like the Best listeners get a special offer of $1,000 off Vanta when you go to vanta.com/invest. ----- WorkOS is the infrastructure B2B and AI-native companies use to sell to enterprise. It covers everything enterprise security requires: SSO, SCIM, RBAC, Audit Logs, AI governance, and more. Trusted by 2,000+ fast-growing companies, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Cursor, and Vercel. ----- Rogo is the AI platform for finance. They're building agents for Wall Street that are trained to understand how bankers and investors actually do work: from diligence and modeling, to turning analysis into deliverables. To learn more, visit rogo.ai/invest. ----- Ridgeline has built a complete, real-time, modern operating system for investment managers. It handles trading, portfolio management, compliance, customer reporting, and much more through an all-in-one real-time cloud platform. Visit ridgeline.ai. ----- Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant. Timestamps: (00:00:00) Welcome to Invest Like The Best (00:02:02) Intro: Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI (00:02:35) Refocusing (00:05:43) OpenAI’s Compute Bets (00:09:07) Data Centers (00:11:14) Jalapeno Chip (00:11:52) Kimi, Distillation & Open Source (00:14:39) The Hugging Face Incident (00:17:46) OpenAI's Mission & Vision (00:22:14) All the Returns Are at the Frontier (00:22:27) Bottlenecks: Compute, Research, Data (00:23:49) Sam's View on AI & Jobs (00:26:56) Unpopular Bets That Turned Out Right (00:27:45) Model Cycles (00:29:45) How Sam Uses AI (00:32:44) Having Kids (00:34:56) Why Sam Has No Equity in OpenAI (00:35:33) Robotics (00:36:48) The Origin Story of ChatGPT (00:39:22) How to Get AI into More Hands (00:42:20) How Sam Recruited Great AI Researchers (00:43:57) What Sam Learned From Being an Investor (00:45:22) What the Next 6–36 Months Look Like (00:46:31) Codex (00:49:36) Could We Be Oversupplied in Compute in Two Years? (00:50:09) Sam's View on Scaling Laws (00:50:20) Alec Radford (00:51:12) Formative Moments (00:53:50) Kindest Thing
Summary
Matthew Smith — Natural Gas: The Next Bottleneck - [Invest Like the Best, EP.483]
2w ago00:56:37Summary readyMy guest today is Matthew Smith. Matthew is the founder and CIO of Chronometer Partners, which invests in energy, industrials, materials, power and utilities, and related infrastructure. For the last 18 months he and his team have modeled nearly every natural gas well, pipeline, and processing asset in the United States. He's reached a conclusion most of the market doesn't share. Starting in 2028, AI data centers and LNG exports will need more gas than the country can produce and deliver. By his math, the US could exhaust its working natural gas storage by 2030. In his words, the upside risk to prices becomes unbounded and convex. We talk about why this was set in motion long before AI arrived, why the US can't just turn off exports, who wins and loses among producers, nuclear, solar, and the hyperscalers, and what he sees as the only long-term solution. Please enjoy my conversation with Matthew Smith. For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here. ----- In June, Matthew wrote a letter to a small group of confidants laying out the full case behind his natural gas forecast. He has allowed us to publish it. You can read the full letter here. ----- Become a Colossus member to get our quarterly print magazine and private audio experience, including exclusive profiles and early access to select episodes. Subscribe at colossus.com/subscribe. ----- Ramp’s mission is to help companies manage their spend in a way that reduces expenses and frees up time for teams to work on more valuable projects. Go to ramp.com/invest to sign up for free and get a $250 welcome bonus. ----- Trusted by thousands of businesses, Vanta continuously monitors your security posture and streamlines audits so you can win enterprise deals and build customer trust without the traditional overhead. Invest Like the Best listeners get a special offer of $1,000 off Vanta when you go to vanta.com/invest. ----- WorkOS is the infrastructure B2B and AI-native companies use to sell to enterprise. It covers everything enterprise security requires: SSO, SCIM, RBAC, Audit Logs, AI governance, and more. Trusted by 2,000+ fast-growing companies, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Cursor, and Vercel. ----- Rogo is the AI platform for finance. They're building agents for Wall Street that are trained to understand how bankers and investors actually do work: from diligence and modeling, to turning analysis into deliverables. To learn more, visit rogo.ai/invest. ----- Ridgeline has built a complete, real-time, modern operating system for investment managers. It handles trading, portfolio management, compliance, customer reporting, and much more through an all-in-one real-time cloud platform. Visit ridgeline.ai. ----- Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant. Timestamps: (00:00:00) Welcome to Invest Like the Best (00:02:02) Episode Intro: Matt Smith (00:03:33) The Conclusion After 18 Months (00:04:56) The Die Was Cast Before AI (00:07:24) Sizing AI's Gas Demand (00:09:33) Why Not Just Stop Exporting? (00:11:38) Is the Gas Even There? (00:13:53) The Timing Problem, Not Supply (00:15:15) Flow Versus Stock (00:19:10) What Slows Gas to Market (00:22:21) If Nothing Changes by 2030 (00:26:11) Could Prices Hit Twenty Dollars? (00:27:00) Gas Producers Poised to Win (00:28:54) Utility-Scale Solar's Windfall (00:30:08) What About Nuclear? (00:32:40) SMRs (00:34:29) The US Consumer Pays (00:36:37) Turbine Makers Building Too Late (00:37:57) Are Hyperscalers Exposed Too? (00:44:25) Kickstarting the Nuclear Build (00:46:20) Put Solar on Every Roof (00:46:52) Implications for the World (00:49:26) No One's Securing Supply (00:52:57) The Challenge for Energy CEOs
Summary
John Kim - How to Raise a Few Billion Dollars - [Invest Like the Best, EP.482]
3w ago00:50:20Summary readyToday my guest is John Kim. John is one of the world's top and most prolific fundraisers. He was chief client officer at General Catalyst, where he helped raise many of the firm's flagship funds. He is now chairman and president of corporate development at Lila Sciences, a company building scientific superintelligence, where he has helped raise several hundred million dollars. He is also the author of The Tao of Fundraising. This conversation is really a guide on how to raise money from someone who has done it at the highest level. We talk about why persuasion equals desire minus fear, the difference between belief and trust, the laws of fundraising, and how to build the consensus that moves big pools of capital. Please enjoy my conversation with John Kim. For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here. ----- Become a Colossus member to get our quarterly print magazine and private audio experience, including exclusive profiles and early access to select episodes. Subscribe at colossus.com/subscribe. ----- Ramp’s mission is to help companies manage their spend in a way that reduces expenses and frees up time for teams to work on more valuable projects. Go to ramp.com/invest to sign up for free and get a $250 welcome bonus. ----- Trusted by thousands of businesses, Vanta continuously monitors your security posture and streamlines audits so you can win enterprise deals and build customer trust without the traditional overhead. Invest Like the Best listeners get a special offer of $1,000 off Vanta when you go to vanta.com/invest. ----- WorkOS is the infrastructure B2B and AI-native companies use to sell to enterprise. It covers everything enterprise security requires: SSO, SCIM, RBAC, Audit Logs, AI governance, and more. Trusted by 2,000+ fast-growing companies, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Cursor, and Vercel. ----- Rogo is the AI platform for finance. They're building agents for Wall Street that are trained to understand how bankers and investors actually do work: from diligence and modeling, to turning analysis into deliverables. To learn more, visit rogo.ai/invest. ----- Ridgeline has built a complete, real-time, modern operating system for investment managers. It handles trading, portfolio management, compliance, customer reporting, and much more through an all-in-one real-time cloud platform. Visit ridgeline.ai. ----- Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant. Timestamps: (00:00:00) Welcome to Invest Like The Best (00:02:02) Introduction of John Kim (00:02:39) Money Moves at the Speed of Trust (00:05:06) How to Start a Fundraising Campaign (00:08:03) Persuasion Equals Desire Minus Fear (00:12:20) How to Raise a Few Billion Dollars (00:15:58) The Benchmark Story (00:18:36) The Law of Differentiation (00:24:13) Law of Tradeoffs and Law of Pipeline (00:27:52) The Karpman Drama Triangle (00:30:42) Oprah Winfrey (00:33:49) Most Common Fundraising Mistakes (00:38:35) Secretary of State (00:45:40) The Inner Game (00:47:38) The Kindest Thing
Summary
Jeremy Giffon - The Billion Dollar PDF - [Invest Like the Best, EP.481]
4w ago01:15:19Summary readyMy guest today is Jeremy Giffon. Jeremy has been on the show before as one of our most popular guests, and this conversation is every bit as enjoyable as the first. Over the last 18 months, Jeremy has had hundreds of conversations with founders and with the capital behind their companies. I don't know many investors with such a high rep count in the most interesting corners of private markets, so I asked him what he has learned. We talk about what those lessons mean for founders and investors, why everyone has become subservient to the poster class, the hidden intellectual history behind Silicon Valley and much more. Please enjoy my conversation with my friend, Jeremy Giffon. For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here. ----- Become a Colossus member to get our quarterly print magazine and private audio experience, including exclusive profiles and early access to select episodes. Subscribe at colossus.com/subscribe. ----- Ramp’s mission is to help companies manage their spend in a way that reduces expenses and frees up time for teams to work on more valuable projects. Go to ramp.com/invest to sign up for free and get a $250 welcome bonus. ----- Trusted by thousands of businesses, Vanta continuously monitors your security posture and streamlines audits so you can win enterprise deals and build customer trust without the traditional overhead. Invest Like the Best listeners get a special offer of $1,000 off Vanta when you go to vanta.com/invest. ----- WorkOS is the infrastructure B2B and AI-native companies use to sell to enterprise. It covers everything enterprise security requires: SSO, SCIM, RBAC, Audit Logs, AI governance, and more. Trusted by 2,000+ fast-growing companies, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Cursor, and Vercel. ----- Rogo is the AI platform for finance. They're building agents for Wall Street that are trained to understand how bankers and investors actually do work: from diligence and modeling, to turning analysis into deliverables. To learn more, visit rogo.ai/invest. ----- Ridgeline has built a complete, real-time, modern operating system for investment managers. It handles trading, portfolio management, compliance, customer reporting, and much more through an all-in-one real-time cloud platform. Visit ridgeline.ai. ----- Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant. Timestamps: (00:00:00) Welcome to Invest Like The Best (00:02:02) Jeremy Giffon (00:02:34) Lessons from 18 Months of Founder Conversations (00:07:01) The Billion-Dollar PDF (00:08:13) The Unifeed & Rise of the Timeline (00:17:02) Power Law & Breakout Content (00:18:48) AI Algorithms Driving Content (00:20:38) Timeline-Native White House (00:21:09) Traits of Great Posters (00:25:27) Peak Guy & the Billionaire Priest Class (00:32:13) Billionaires Now Defer to Posters (00:34:52) Freedom vs. Relevance (00:38:53) AI & White-Collar Job Displacement (00:40:53) Stewarding Your Gifts as Moral Duty (00:43:18) Next Wave of Finance: Equity-First Firms (00:53:26) East Coast vs. West Coast Finance (00:55:34) Beating the Market Is Not That Hard (01:00:40) SPV Feudalism & Allocation (01:02:10) Egregious SPV Fee Structures (01:04:50) Simplicity vs. Complexity in Investing (01:07:15) Hiring: Attracting Differentiated Talent (01:11:00) Silicon Valley's Hidden Intellectual Traditions
Summary
Etched - Building AI Hardware to Make Inference Faster and Cheaper - [Invest Like the Best, EP.480]
Jun 3001:27:21Summary readyMy guests today are Gavin Uberti and Rob Wachen, the founders of Etched. A few years ago, when they set out to build a better AI chip than the largest companies in the world, almost everyone I called told me it could not be done. They have since done it, taping out a working chip on their first attempt and becoming the first hardware company founded after ChatGPT to do so. They already have more than a billion dollars of customer demand for their first product, and have raised eight hundred million dollars to build it. Etched builds chips and systems designed to run AI models faster and at lower cost. They started the company in 2023, and that product is a complete rack for inference, the chip along with the boards, the power delivery, the interconnects, and the manufacturing to produce it all. We talk about the technical bets behind their architecture, how they hired industry legends and paired them with elite 22 year-olds, and why they believe inference will become one of the largest markets in the world. I think you will find the story of what they have built hard to forget. Please enjoy my conversation with Gavin and Rob. For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here. ----- Become a Colossus member to get our quarterly print magazine and private audio experience, including exclusive profiles and early access to select episodes. Subscribe at colossus.com/subscribe. ----- Ramp’s mission is to help companies manage their spend in a way that reduces expenses and frees up time for teams to work on more valuable projects. Go to ramp.com/invest to sign up for free and get a $250 welcome bonus. ----- Trusted by thousands of businesses, Vanta continuously monitors your security posture and streamlines audits so you can win enterprise deals and build customer trust without the traditional overhead. Invest Like the Best listeners get a special offer of $1,000 off Vanta when you go to vanta.com/invest. ----- WorkOS is the infrastructure B2B and AI-native companies use to sell to enterprise. It covers everything enterprise security requires: SSO, SCIM, RBAC, Audit Logs, AI governance, and more. Trusted by 2,000+ fast-growing companies, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Cursor, and Vercel. ----- Rogo is the AI platform for finance. They're building agents for Wall Street that are trained to understand how bankers and investors actually do work: from diligence and modeling, to turning analysis into deliverables. To learn more, visit rogo.ai/invest. ----- Ridgeline has built a complete, real-time, modern operating system for investment managers. It handles trading, portfolio management, compliance, customer reporting, and much more through an all-in-one real-time cloud platform. Visit ridgelineapps.com. ----- Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant. Timestamps: (00:00:00) Welcome to Invest Like The Best (00:02:07) Gavin Uberti and Rob Wachen (00:03:54) Two 21-Year-Olds Taking on NVIDIA (00:07:52) The Two Technical Bets Behind Their Architecture (00:14:15) Why Inference Becomes the Biggest Market (00:20:23) Rob and Gavin's Origins Stories (00:28:38) How They Recruit Industry Legends (00:36:30) Moving a Dozen Engineers to Bangalore for Six Months (00:38:01) Speed Wins (00:43:58) Getting More Concurrency Out of Every Megawatt (00:52:44) Vertical Integration (00:57:43) Hardest Obstacles to Overcome (01:01:09) Raising The Largest AI Chip Series A Ever (01:06:29) TSMC (01:13:20) Designing Gen 2 for Gigawatt-Scale Production (01:16:42) Why Machines Don't Think Like People (01:20:03) A Year of Compute Compressed Into a Month (01:23:44) The Trillion-Dollar Data Center (01:26:19) The Kindest Thing
Summary
Vlad Barbalat - Investing $120 Billion in Permanent Capital - [Invest Like the Best, EP.479]
Jun 2301:09:37Summary readyMy guest today is Vlad Barbalat, the Chief Investment Officer of Liberty Mutual Investments, the $120 billion investment platform that sits within one of the largest insurance companies in the world. Vlad grew up in Soviet Moldova, came to America in 1990, and built a career that eventually led him to one of the most distinctive capital allocator seats anywhere in finance. Today we talk about how the mutual insurance structure creates a unique investment platform, what Liberty looks for in a new deal or partner, and what it means to build a career and a life in a country that gave you opportunities you never would have had anywhere else. Please enjoy my conversation with Vlad Barbalat. For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here. ----- Become a Colossus member to get our quarterly print magazine and private audio experience, including exclusive profiles and early access to select episodes. Subscribe at colossus.com/subscribe. ----- Ramp’s mission is to help companies manage their spend in a way that reduces expenses and frees up time for teams to work on more valuable projects. Go to ramp.com/invest to sign up for free and get a $250 welcome bonus. ----- Trusted by thousands of businesses, Vanta continuously monitors your security posture and streamlines audits so you can win enterprise deals and build customer trust without the traditional overhead. Invest Like the Best listeners get a special offer of $1,000 off Vanta when you go to vanta.com/invest. ----- WorkOS is the infrastructure B2B and AI-native companies use to sell to enterprise. It covers everything enterprise security requires: SSO, SCIM, RBAC, Audit Logs, AI governance, and more. Trusted by 2,000+ fast-growing companies, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Cursor, and Vercel. ----- Rogo is the AI platform for finance. They're building agents for Wall Street that are trained to understand how bankers and investors actually do work: from diligence and modeling, to turning analysis into deliverables. To learn more, visit rogo.ai/invest. ----- Ridgeline has built a complete, real-time, modern operating system for investment managers. It handles trading, portfolio management, compliance, customer reporting, and much more through an all-in-one real-time cloud platform. Visit ridgeline.ai. ----- Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant. Timestamps: (00:00:00) Welcome to Invest Like The Best (00:00:53) Vlad Barbalat (00:01:28) The Most Interesting Seat in the Market (00:05:53) Breaking Down the $120B (00:10:41) How the Portfolio Is Constructed (00:11:00) The House View (00:13:49) What Liberty Looks for in a GP (00:16:32) Why Not Just Buy Bonds (00:18:30) Benefits of the Mutual Structure (00:23:40) The Luxury of the American Citizen Through Immigrant Eyes (00:30:26) How Immigration Shaped His Worldview (00:32:45) Direct Deals vs. GP Allocations (00:35:23) Branded Capital (00:39:07) Geopolitics & Investing (00:43:48) AI's Impact on Investing (00:46:22) The Valuation Debate (00:50:47) Public vs. Private Markets (00:53:53) Lessons from Goldman (00:54:41) Why Excellence Matters (00:57:30) Managing Permanent Capital (01:03:54) The Kindest Thing
Summary
Kareem Amin - The Unusual Approach to Company Building - [Invest Like the Best, EP.478]
Jun 1600:56:41Summary readyMy guest today is Kareem Amin, co-founder and CEO of Clay. Clay has become one of the fastest-growing software companies of the last few years, valued at over four billion dollars. It helps companies find their best customers and reach them at scale. But this conversation is about a lot more than Clay. Kareem is one of the most original thinkers I know. We talk about the statues he keeps at the center of how he runs Clay — truth, justice, and courage — and what those words demand of him in practice. We talk about risk, ambition, and what he learned about both on a ten-day silent meditation retreat. I've had a lot of conversations with Kareem over the years. This is one I'll remember. Please enjoy this unique conversation with Kareem Amin. For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here. ----- Become a Colossus member to get our quarterly print magazine and private audio experience, including exclusive profiles and early access to select episodes. Subscribe at colossus.com/subscribe. ----- Ramp’s mission is to help companies manage their spend in a way that reduces expenses and frees up time for teams to work on more valuable projects. Go to ramp.com/invest to sign up for free and get a $250 welcome bonus. ----- Trusted by thousands of businesses, Vanta continuously monitors your security posture and streamlines audits so you can win enterprise deals and build customer trust without the traditional overhead. Invest Like the Best listeners get a special offer of $1,000 off Vanta when you go to vanta.com/invest. ----- WorkOS is the infrastructure B2B and AI-native companies use to sell to enterprise. It covers everything enterprise security requires: SSO, SCIM, RBAC, Audit Logs, AI governance, and more. Trusted by 2,000+ fast-growing companies, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Cursor, and Vercel. ----- Rogo is the AI platform for finance. They're building agents for Wall Street that are trained to understand how bankers and investors actually do work: from diligence and modeling, to turning analysis into deliverables. To learn more, visit rogo.ai/invest. ----- Ridgeline has built a complete, real-time, modern operating system for investment managers. It handles trading, portfolio management, compliance, customer reporting, and much more through an all-in-one real-time cloud platform. Visit ridgelineapps.com. ----- Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (https://thepodcastconsultant.com). Timestamps: (00:00:00) Welcome to Invest Like The Best (00:02:29) Kareem Amin (00:03:07) Clay's Origin (00:10:50) Truth, Courage and Justice (00:16:09) Adulation (00:18:28) Risk, Courage & Self-Respect (00:21:14) Jony Ive & Steve Jobs (00:21:42) Role of Introspection (00:23:08) Lack to Wholeness (00:27:27) The Day Five Insight (00:29:57) Running a Startup Unusually (00:34:41) Learning from Magicians (00:36:27) Music's Role in Your Life (00:39:38) Making People Feel Something New (00:41:20) Vision in Company Building (00:44:29) Wealth & What It's Taught You (00:47:40) All Problems Are Communication Problems (00:52:14) Death Doula & Scaling (00:55:06) The Kindest Thing
Summary
Alex Sacerdote - How to Invest Through Technology Cycles - [Invest Like the Best, EP.477]
Jun 901:10:47Summary readyMy guest today is Alex Sacerdote, founder of Whale Rock Capital Management. Whale Rock is a technology focused investment firm that manages more than $17 billion across hedge fund, long only, and hybrid strategies. Over the past three years it has been one of the best performing hedge funds, compounding at roughly 44 percent a year. Alex invests through a single lens that he has refined over twenty years. He looks for technology S-curves, durable competitive advantages, and underappreciated earnings power. This conversation is a tour through how he applies that framework right now. We start with his highest conviction position, which is Anthropic, and use it to work through the entire AI stack from chips to models to applications. Please enjoy my conversation with Alex Sacerdote. For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here. ----- Become a Colossus member to get our quarterly print magazine and private audio experience, including exclusive profiles and early access to select episodes. Subscribe at colossus.com/subscribe. ----- Ramp’s mission is to help companies manage their spend in a way that reduces expenses and frees up time for teams to work on more valuable projects. Go to ramp.com/invest to sign up for free and get a $250 welcome bonus. ----- Trusted by thousands of businesses, Vanta continuously monitors your security posture and streamlines audits so you can win enterprise deals and build customer trust without the traditional overhead. Invest Like the Best listeners get a special offer of $1,000 off Vanta when you go to vanta.com/invest. ----- WorkOS is the infrastructure B2B and AI-native companies use to sell to enterprise. It covers everything enterprise security requires: SSO, SCIM, RBAC, Audit Logs, AI governance, and more. Trusted by 2,000+ fast-growing companies, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Cursor, and Vercel. ----- Rogo is the AI platform for finance. They're building agents for Wall Street that are trained to understand how bankers and investors actually do work: from diligence and modeling, to turning analysis into deliverables. To learn more, visit rogo.ai/invest. ----- Ridgeline has built a complete, real-time, modern operating system for investment managers. It handles trading, portfolio management, compliance, customer reporting, and much more through an all-in-one real-time cloud platform. Visit ridgelineapps.com. ----- Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (https://thepodcastconsultant.com). Timestamps: (00:00:00) Welcome to Invest Like The Best (00:02:29) Alex Sacerdote (00:03:08) Anthropic: Highest Conviction Position (00:13:23) Investing in Private Markets at Scale (00:19:08) S-Curves: The Full Framework (00:25:08) When to Buy Tech Companies (00:30:20) Identifying the Leader from the Pack (00:34:04) Anthropic & OpenAI's Competitive Moats (00:37:31) AI's Threat to Enterprise Software (00:43:18) Network Effects in the Agent Era (00:44:22) The Hardware Renaissance: Chips & Infrastructure (00:53:56) Why So Few Investors Get This Right (00:55:36) Key Risks to the AI Bull Case (00:57:47) The Application Layer (00:59:40) How AI Is Changing Research at WhaleRock (01:02:53) The Role of Investor Networks & Idea Sharing (01:03:40) Building a Multi-Product Firm (01:07:58) WhaleRock as a Learning Machine (01:09:15) The Kindest Thing
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Dara Khosrowshahi - Uber's Bet on AVs, AI, and Building a Super-App - [Invest Like the Best, EP.476]
Jun 301:07:17Summary readyMy guest today is Dara Khosrowshahi, the CEO of Uber. Before Uber, Dara ran Expedia for thirteen years. We start with why he took this job in 2017, and a big part of that story is Daniel Ek, who told him that life is not about happiness, it is about impact. We talk about what the chaos felt like on day one, and how his family leaving Iran when he was nine shaped the way he handles pressure today. We spend most of our time on autonomous vehicles and Uber's role as the demand aggregator in a world of physical AI. Dara explains why Uber is a supply-led company, what it will take to win, and why he expects many winners in AVs rather than one. We also discuss Uber's $10 billion in free cash flow, the push toward a single app for everything, and what he has learned from Allen & Co, Barry Diller and Reed Hastings. For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here. ----- Become a Colossus member to get our quarterly print magazine and private audio experience, including exclusive profiles and early access to select episodes. Subscribe at colossus.com/subscribe. ----- Ramp’s mission is to help companies manage their spend in a way that reduces expenses and frees up time for teams to work on more valuable projects. Go to ramp.com/invest to sign up for free and get a $250 welcome bonus. ----- Trusted by thousands of businesses, Vanta continuously monitors your security posture and streamlines audits so you can win enterprise deals and build customer trust without the traditional overhead. Invest Like the Best listeners get a special offer of $1,000 off Vanta when you go to vanta.com/invest. ----- WorkOS is the infrastructure B2B and AI-native companies use to sell to enterprise. It covers everything enterprise security requires: SSO, SCIM, RBAC, Audit Logs, AI governance, and more. Trusted by 2,000+ fast-growing companies, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Cursor, and Vercel. ----- Rogo is the AI platform for finance. They're building agents for Wall Street that are trained to understand how bankers and investors actually do work: from diligence and modeling, to turning analysis into deliverables. To learn more, visit rogo.ai/invest. ----- Ridgeline has built a complete, real-time, modern operating system for investment managers. It handles trading, portfolio management, compliance, customer reporting, and much more through an all-in-one real-time cloud platform. Visit ridgelineapps.com. ----- Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (https://thepodcastconsultant.com). Timestamps: (00:00:00) Welcome to Invest Like The Best (00:02:29) Intro to Dara Khosrowshahi (00:03:37) How Daniel Ek Convinced Dara to Take the Uber Job (00:06:54) Bringing Order to Chaos (00:09:20) Managing Stress as a Leader (00:11:22) The Chip on His Shoulder (00:12:53) Parenting Lessons (00:17:01) Mandate for AI Adoption (00:21:21) Uber's Role in Physical AI (00:22:48) Winning the AV Demand Race (00:27:41) Partnering vs. Competing with Waymo (00:32:05) AV Success Unlocks New Markets (00:35:09) Why Drones Haven't Arrived Yet (00:36:27) Regional AV Rollout Differences (00:37:35) Uber Eats International Winning Formula (00:39:44) Key to Aggregating Supply Well (00:44:34) Adding Hotels to Uber Platform (00:50:46) Lessons in Marketing at Scale (00:52:59) Apps vs. AI Agents in Seven Years (00:54:08) What Dara Learned from Barry Diller (00:56:52) What Dara Learned from Allen & Co (01:00:09) Buybacks vs. Growth Investing (01:04:17) Lessons from Reed Hastings (01:05:49) The Kindest Thing
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