Invest Like the Best

Scott Nolan spent 12 years at Founders Fund looking for the most important problems that no one else was funding. Then he found a problem so critical, and so ignored, that he couldn't find a company to back. So he started one. General Matter is rebuilding US uranium enrichment.

My guest today is Alan Waxman, co-founder and CEO of Sixth Street, a $130B global investment firm. Private credit is one of the most discussed topics in markets right now, and there is a lot to make sense of. The current discourse is almost entirely focused on symptoms.

My guest today is Sergey Levine, a professor at UC Berkeley and co-founder of Physical Intelligence. The company is building robotic foundation models designed to control any embodied system to do any task in any environment.

My guest today is Mitchell Green. Mitchell Green is the co-founder and managing partner of Lead Edge Capital, a growth equity firm that has spent 15 years building one of the most disciplined investment machines in the business.

William Hockey is the co-founder of Plaid and the founder and CEO of Column, a software company that owns a bank and powers Ramp, Wise, Bilt, Mercury, and others. He funded Column by borrowing against his Plaid shares and has never raised outside capital.

My guest today is Shyam Sankar, the CTO of Palantir Technologies. In this conversation, we explore the ideas that shape how Shyam thinks about technology, talent, and national power.

My guest today is John Arnold. John is probably the most famous energy trader of all time and certainly the most successful. One of the things John talks about is cultivating the best seat in your industry – the seat with the best perspective, the most information, the best systems..

My guest today is Dan Sundheim. Dan is the founder and CIO of D1 Capital Partners. He thinks about markets and businesses constantly, and has built a career entirely around that obsession.

This is my second conversation with Josh Kushner, founder and managing partner of Thrive Capital. I recorded this conversation in October after publishing the Colossus cover story about him and Thrive. Given the overwhelming response, we created some breathing room before releasing it.

My guests today are Alex Behring and Daniel Schwartz, Co-Managing Partners of 3G Capital. 3G has built one of the most distinctive firms in investing around a simple idea: there are only a handful of truly great businesses and even fewer great CEOs.

My guest today is Ben Horowitz, the co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz. Since its founding in 2009, a16z has grown into one of the most influential firms in venture capital, reshaping how technology companies are funded and how power and ideas move through Silicon Valley and around the world.

My guest today is ⁠Gokul Rajaram⁠, Founding Partner at Marathon Management. Gokul is one of the most prolific product builders and investors of the last twenty years.

This week is a special episode. Only David Senra could get me to be on the other side of the mic. Because I don’t plan on being interviewed often, I wanted to share this conversation, which I so enjoyed, with our audience. It went in a very different direction than I expected.

My guests today are Tom Digan and Greg Stewart. Tom is the co-founder of Ladder, and Greg is its CEO. Ladder was my first angel investment. What followed over the next seven years is one of the most unlikely and dramatic business stories I’ve been a part of.

My guest today is Reed Hastings, the co-founder and former longtime CEO of Netflix. Netflix is an example of two ideas that everyone talks about, but are extremely hard to do in practice. The first is finding a simple idea and taking it extraordinarily seriously.

Today, I am replaying my conversation with Nick Kokonas, one of my favorites from the show. Nick is the co-founder of 3 of the best restaurants and bars in America - Alinea, Next, and The Aviary as well as the co-founder and CEO of Tock, a comprehensive booking system for restaurants.

Ric Elias - The Art of Living Well - [Invest Like The Best, CLASSICS] Welcome to this classic episode. Classics are my favorite episodes from the past 10 years, published once a month. These are N of 1 conversations with N of 1 people.

My guest today is Henry Ellenbogen, founder and Managing Partner of Durable Capital Partners. Henry built his reputation at T. Rowe Price, where he led the New Horizons Fund and turned it into one of the best-performing small-cap growth portfolios in the country. In 2019, he left to start Durable.

My guest this week is Gavin Baker. Gavin is the managing partner and CIO of Atreides Management, and he has been on the show many times before. I will never forget when I first met Gavin in 2017.

My guest today is David George. David is a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, where he leads the firm’s growth investing business.

Welcome to this classic episode. Classics are my favorite episodes from the past 10 years, published once a month. These are N of 1 conversations with N of 1 people. Palmer Luckey is a relentless builder and original thinker.

My guest today is Martín Escobari. Martín is Co-President and Head of Global Growth Equity at General Atlantic.

My guest today is Ari Emanuel. Ari runs one of the most influential portfolios in global sports, entertainment, and media.

My guest today is my friend Wolfgang Hammer. Wolfgang is a successful film producer and executive who helped create House of Cards and ran several major studios, including Lionsgate, CBS Films and Miramax. He’s now building a new kind of film studio with support from Mitch Lasky and Marc Andreessen.

My guest today is Luca Ferrari. Luca is the co-founder and CEO of Bending Spoons, which he describes as 25 percent private equity and 75 percent technology company. Founded in 2013, Bending Spoons fully acquires and operates digital companies like Evernote, Meetup, Vimeo, and most recently AOL.

Jim O'Shaughnessy joins his son Patrick to discuss the intersection of investing, creativity, and technology. They explore how AI will change investing, why creativity is the ultimate competitive advantage, and what father-son business partnerships teach about trust.

Howard Marks discusses his 'Sea Change' memo with Patrick O'Shaughnessy: the shift from 40 years of declining interest rates (which made everything go up) to a new era of higher rates that will separate skilled investors from lucky ones.

Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke discusses building a $100B+ company while maintaining a programmer's mindset. He argues that most companies are over-managed and under-engineered — and that the best CEOs should be able to do the actual work of the business, not just manage people who do.

Morgan Housel discusses the relationship between risk, luck, and narrative with Patrick O'Shaughnessy. His key insight: we attribute success to skill and failure to bad luck, but the reverse is often equally true.

Chris Mayer argues that patience is the single most undervalued edge in investing. In a world of 5.5-month holding periods, the investor willing to hold for 10-20 years has an almost unfair advantage.

Stripe co-founder John Collison discusses building internet payment infrastructure with Patrick O'Shaughnessy. He argues that Stripe's advantage isn't technology — it's the willingness to solve unsexy, complex problems (compliance, fraud, international payments) that no one else wants to touch.

Naval Ravikant discusses specific knowledge with Patrick O'Shaughnessy: the unique combination of skills, interests, and experiences that can't be taught or replicated. He argues that the highest-earning individuals are paid for specific knowledge, not general skills.

Founders podcast host David Senra joins Patrick O'Shaughnessy to discuss the patterns he's identified across 300+ founder biographies. They connect founder patterns to investing patterns, finding that the traits of great founders mirror the traits of great investors.

Hamilton Helmer, author of 7 Powers, discusses his framework for understanding competitive advantage with Patrick O'Shaughnessy. He argues that durable businesses possess at least one of seven 'powers' (scale economies, network effects, switching costs, etc.) — and businesses without power are destined for commodity competition.

Tyler Cowen discusses his book Talent with Patrick O'Shaughnessy, arguing that talent identification is the most underappreciated skill in business and investing. He shares unconventional interview questions and explains why credentials are a weak signal of ability.

Annie Duke discusses the application of her book Quit to investing with Patrick O'Shaughnessy. She argues that the sunk cost fallacy, escalation of commitment, and identity attachment keep investors in losing positions far longer than rational analysis would suggest.

Lux Capital founder Josh Wolfe discusses investing at the frontier of science with Patrick O'Shaughnessy. He argues that the biggest investment returns come from backing the inevitable — technologies that are so clearly needed that the only question is timing, not whether.

Reed Hastings reflects on building Netflix from DVD-by-mail to the global streaming giant. He discusses the culture of radical candor, the decision to invest in original content, and why most companies fail to make the leaps Netflix made.

Charlie Munger, in one of his final interviews before his death, shares decades of wisdom on business success, mental models, and the ingredients of long-term competitive advantage, in conversation with Stripe co-founder John Collison.

The Collison brothers discuss Stripe's evolution, their approach to building infrastructure, why they focus on increasing the GDP of the internet, and the importance of speed and taste in building products.

Morgan Housel discusses his book Same as Ever, which argues that the most important truths about human behavior never change. While technology and culture evolve, the psychology of greed, fear, risk, and storytelling remains constant across centuries.

Josh Kushner discusses the investment philosophy behind Thrive Capital, why concentration beats diversification in venture, and how he identifies founders with the conviction to build transformational companies.