Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

My guest today is Jared Kushner. Jared has lived more lives than just about anyone I know his age. He ran Kushner companies for years, investing in real estate in and around New York City. He owned the New York Observer. He was a senior advisor to President Trump in his first term. He now runs Affinity Partners, which we discuss in detail, a private equity firm built to find and execute unique investments around the world that stem from Jared's unique set of experiences in business and government. This is one of our longest episodes ever because there was so much to discuss. We cover real estate, negotiation, geopolitics, his work in prison reform, Operation Warp Speed, and the Abraham Accords in the Middle East, business, investing, his family, and everything in between. Jared told me I could ask him about anything--and I really enjoyed doing so. Please enjoy my conversation with Jared Kushner.

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

-----

This episode is brought to you by Alphasense. AlphaSense has completely transformed the research process with cutting-edge AI technology and a vast collection of top-tier, reliable business content. Imagine completing your research five to ten times faster with search that delivers the most relevant results, helping you make high-conviction decisions with confidence. AlphaSense provides access to over 300 million premium documents, including company filings, earnings reports, press releases, and more from public and private companies. Invest Like the Best listeners can get a free trial now at Alpha-Sense.com/Invest and experience firsthand how AlphaSense and Tegus help you make smarter decisions faster.

–-

This episode is brought to you by Ridgeline. 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. I think this platform will become the standard for investment managers, and if you run an investing firm, I highly recommend you find time to speak with them. Head to ridgelineapps.com to learn more about the platform.

–-

This episode is brought to you by Ramp. 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. Ramp is the fastest growing FinTech company in history and it’s backed by more of my favorite past guests (at least 16 of them!) than probably any other company I’m aware of. Go to Ramp.com/invest to sign up for free and get a $250 welcome bonus.

-----

Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (https://thepodcastconsultant.com).

Show Notes:

(00:00:00) Welcome to Invest Like the Best

(00:08:45) Jared's Philosophy on Challenges and Success

(00:13:38) Real Estate Ventures: The 666 Fifth Avenue Story

(00:20:31) Lessons from New York Real Estate

(00:30:04) Diplomacy and the Middle East

(00:37:03) Leadership and Change

(00:41:14) Geopolitical Landscape and Future Prospects

(00:47:53) Affinity Partners: Vision and Strategy

(00:52:42) Navigating Market Shifts

(00:54:39) Case Study: Mexico Investment

(00:58:34) Global Investment Strategies

(01:02:42) Investment Philosophy and Principles

(01:07:04) Challenges and Problem-Solving

(01:23:14) Government Efficiency and Bureaucracy

(01:34:57) Stepping into the Spotlight

(01:37:19) Manifesting Success with Partners

(01:38:05) Learning from Brad Jacobs

(01:42:09) Middle East Economic Development

(01:46:08) The Qatar-Saudi Reconciliation

(01:52:25) Perceptions of Key Middle Eastern Countries

(02:07:34...

My guest today is Will Marshall, the co-founder and CEO of Planet. Will founded Planet in 2010 with a small team of NASA scientists to build a constellation of satellites that would image the entire Earth every day. Since then, Planet has successfully built and deployed 450 satellites into space, which the company is using to create a time series of images for every place on Earth.

Our conversation covers the untold space story. How space is going through an internet moment where cost reductions and performance enhancements have led to a seismic shift in what’s possible above our atmosphere, and how that can drastically improve life on Earth through unique datasets like the one Planet is piecing together.

Once you listen to Will speak about Planet’s progress and mission, it’s hard to think of a more underappreciated company in business today.

Please enjoy this great conversation with Will Marshall.

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, 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

[00:02:57] - [First question] - His thoughts on the renaissance of the space industry

[00:05:09] - The earliest days of Planet and why he started the business

[00:09:22] - Unique data units captured by their satellites

[00:13:35] - The real estate of space and interesting angles to consider

[00:15:59] - How customers interface with Planet and their early use cases

[00:20:57] - Thoughts on the sovereignty of space and the laws that exist currently

[00:23:43] - Figuring out the dynamics and pricing of Planet’s business model

[00:27:34] - Examples of stress and tensions when working in space

[00:29:08] - The future of privacy and concerns we should have there collectively

[00:30:29] - Five different types of satellites and their functions

[00:31:39] - The most sci-fi potential futures that Planet may unlock someday

[00:32:54] - Indexing the Earth and using data to train machine learning algorithms

[00:34:02] - What he’s learned about Earth that is most surprising

[00:37:12] - Contributing factors to a 70% decline in life on the planet in 40 years

[00:38:35] - Ways that going public might impact Planet’s long term goals

[00:40:23] - The hardware story of building various prototypes of satellites

[00:42:18] - How much is built in house versus outsourced to fabricate their satellites

[00:43:48] - Complimentary space trends that are compounding beyond imagery

[00:45:32] - Whether or not they plan on making their data open-source

[00:47:15] - Democratizing their data and allowing other companies to build on top of it

[00:48:30] - The kindest thing anyone has ever done for him

Today, my guests are Sam Englebardt and Richard Kim, general partners at venture fund, Galaxy Interactive. Having come from the media and finance sectors, respectively, Sam and Richard joined forces in 2018 to invest in their shared thesis that immersive digital experiences would become the dominant way people engage with each other in the future.

Our conversation centers around the evolution of art, finance, and gaming as they proliferate in Web3. Please enjoy my conversation with Sam and Richard.

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

-----

This episode is brought to you 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.

-----

This episode is brought to you by Levels. As one of their early access members, Levels was one of the most interesting products I've ever used. Levels is attempting to make continuous glucose monitoring mainstream by using real-time biosensors to see how food affects your health. If you want early access to become a Member of their private Beta, (the waitlist is currently at 150K+ people), use this link – levels.link/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

[00:02:50] - [First question] - Their thoughts on the digital art market

[00:11:33] - What motivates traditional art collectors and what has been carried over into digital art

[00:17:27] - Is there an attractive beta opportunity in the digital art space?

[00:24:32] - Why investors should do more work understanding NFTs and ways to consider incorporating them into your portfolio

[00:27:55] - The history of Galaxy and their thesis writ large

[00:33:09] - Exciting and terrifying aspects of the financialization of everything

[00:37:27] - Places where inserting markets could be beneficial with Web3

[00:45:27] - Their perspectives on gaming as a subcategory of Web3

[00:51:38] - Tokenomics and the importance of building great game communities

[00:59:18] - What we can learn from successful gaming companies and in-game monetization

[01:04:19] - How Diablo 3’s auction house detracted from the core player experience

[01:06:36] - Where they disagree with the Web3 investing community

[01:10:37] - The kindest things anyone has ...

My guest today is Chris Dixon, a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz. Chris is a prolific investor and thinker, having been an entrepreneur, angel investor, and is now focused on investing in the crypto and blockchain space for Andreessen. Our conversation focuses on Chris's overall thesis for investing in the cryptocurrency space, the opportunities and limitations of blockchain applications, and why this is the most interesting area for investing and building over the next ten years. What's exciting to me is blockchain technology's ability to help us re-imagine old business models and catapult them into the 21st century – and we cover a lot of them. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Chris Dixon.

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

------

This episode is brought to you by Canalyst. Canalyst is the leading destination for public company data and analysis. If you've been scrambling to keep up with the deluge of IPOs and SPACs these days, Canalyst has models on Coinbase, Roblox, Qualtrics and everything in between. Learn more and try Canalyst for yourself at canalyst.com/patrick.

------

This episode is brought to you by Tegus. Tegus has built the most extensive primary information platform available for investors.

With Tegus, you can learn everything you’d want to know about a company in an on-demand digital platform. Investors share their expert calls, allowing others to instantly access more than 10,000 calls on Affirm, Teladoc, Roblox, or almost any company of interest. All you have to do is log in. Visit tegus.co/patrick to learn more.

------

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

[00:03:56] - [First question] - His overall crypto investing philosophy

[00:06:37] - New opportunities presented by blockchain technology

[00:15:31] - Permanent limitations and shortcomings of blockchains

[00:18:32] - Evolution of DeFi and crypto currencies

[00:21:11] - Whitepapers: Bitcoin, Ethereum, MakerDAO

[00:22:08] - How to take out a loan using the Maker protocol

[00:23:22] - Utility of Dai and stablecoins

[00:29:14] - How the DeFi network will reinvent the future

[00:39:53] - Uniswap, tokens, and fundamentally redefining leverage

[00:36:29] - The Company: A Short History of a Revolutionary Idea

[00:38:00] - Developer and entrepreneurial incentives for building blockchain technology

[00:39:46] - BitClout, Rally and the early days of social tokens

[00:46:38] - Demand curve and value creation efficiency in a digital creator economy

[00:47:24] - NFTs and a Thousand True Fans

[00:54:49] - Polkadot, Solana, Cosmos and programmable blockchains

[00:58:03] - The most exciting moment for him in the last year

[01:00:19] - Decentralized autonomous organizations

[01:02:46] - The single thing that has him most excited about the future of this space

[01:05:18] - The Next Big Thing Will Start Out Looking Like a Toy

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.

-----

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

[00:03:05] - [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 years

[00:21:55] - Why fewer talented people are going into public markets

[00:23:01] - What it felt like when he first started XN and being successful at a young age

[00:28:58] - Being impressed with his peers and rooting for each other

[00:30:33] - The nature of public versus private investing today writ large

[00:32:32] - How he gets to know a company when he’s never heard of them before

[00:35:20] - Reasons he won’t invest from a personal policy standpoint

[00:36:01] - Common problems he encounters that companies are dealing with

[00:37:32] - Defining the strike zone of companies to invest in where he can be best-in-class

[00:39:10] - The insane valuations of public markets in recent years especially in tech

[00:40:42] - Why there are so few great businesses and common attributes of the great ones

[00:44:12] - Biggest problems in the investment industry writ large

[00:45:48] - The most remarkable business he’s ever seen

[00:49:22] - How he would teach investors to deploy XN’s operating partner model

[00:51:32] - His perspective and thoughts on diversity in the investing industry

[00:56:58] - A business or institution he would own outright personally

[00:57:37] - What outside of investing most has his attention lately

[00:59:50] - Key touchpoints of coming from Queens and going to Hunter

[01:02:15] - What stands out looking back on his relationship with h...