Niko Canner is the founder of Incandescent where he and his team help the leaders of large companies in the areas of strategy and innovation. He was also the founder of Katzenbach Partners, and a member of Bridgewater’s management committee. Niko is a fantastic writer, and I highly recommend you check out his blog “On…
Chetan Puttagunta – Go Slow to Go Fast: Software Building and Investing - [Invest Like the Best, EP.156]
My guest this week is a good friend and a business mentor of mine. Chetan Puttagunta is a general partner at Benchmark Capital and has a remarkable track record of investing in early stage software businesses, including several like Mulesoft, MongoDB, and Elastic that went on to be public companies. Chetan has been my key…
Matt Clifford – Investing Pre-Company - [Invest Like the Best, EP.154]
My guest today is Matt Clifford. He’s the cofounder of entrepreneur first, the world’s leading talent investor. They invest “pre-company” by helping the best people in cities around the world find a cofounder, develop an idea, and start a company. So far, they’ve helped 1000 people start 200 companies worth a combined $1.5B. This conversation…
Peter Buffet – Finding Your Note - [Invest Like the Best, EP.153]
My guest today is Peter Buffett. Peter is a musician, composer, author and philanthropist. Peter is an Emmy Award winner, New York Times best-selling author and co-chair of the NoVo Foundation. We discuss music, community, philanthropy, and finding ones note in life. This is a very different episode much more about life in general, with no…
Ben Savage – All Things Fintech Investing - [Invest Like the Best, EP.152]
My guest today is Ben Savage, a partner at Clocktower ventures. Ben is focused on financial technology, fintech, investing which is the topic of our conversation. I’ve been making the fintech is rounds of late, and plan on making a few of these conversations public. Ben is the first in what may be a mini-series…
Jeff Ma – Making Decisions with Data - [Invest Like the Best, EP.151]
My guest this week is Jeff Ma. Jeff was on the famous MIT Blackjack team from the book Bringing Down the House but has spent his career in an around fields of analytics and data science. He’s studied sports betting and analytics, built companies for analyzing human capital, and ran the data science and analytics…
Vaughn Tan – Quality and Innovation - [Invest Like the Best, EP.150]
My guest today is Vaughn Tan, who studies quality, innovation, and organizational behavior. His resume is bonkers. He’s a PhD from Harvard, Was an infantry signals logistician in the Republic of Singapore Army, then worked at Google on advertising, Earth, Maps, spaceflight, and Fusion Tables. He’s also been a wood sculptor. But the topic of our conversation is how to foster quality…
Gavin Baker – Tech and Consumer Growth Investing - [Invest Like the Best, EP. 149]
My guest this week is Gavin Baker, the founder and manager of Atreides Management. I met Gavin in the same way I meet many of the most interesting people, on twitter. His focus is on consumer and technology growth investing, which is the topic of our conversation. We discuss many of the largest trends in…
Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger – How to Build a Great Product - [Invest Like the Best, EP. 148
My guests this week are Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, the co-founders of Instagram. I met Kevin and Mike a few months ago over a shared interest in business and investing. I have found them both to be extremely good people who have a rare talent for finding and solving interesting problems. Indeed, problem solving and jobs-to-be…
Daniel Ek – The Future of Audio - [Invest Like the Best, EP.147]
My guest this week is Daniel Ek, the founder and CEO of Spotify. In my conversations with Daniel, I’ve found him to be one of the most interesting and thoughtful business leaders in the world. You’ll see what I mean as you listen to our conversation. We talk about Spotify plenty, but what I so…