Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose - [Invest Like the Best, EP.361]

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Colossus

Technology, Business, Investing

4.7 • 2.5K Ratings

🗓️ 20 February 2024

⏱️ 86 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

My guest today is Cyan Banister. Cyan’s life story is remarkable. She was homeless at a young age, dropped out of high school, and five years ago she suffered an extremely rare stroke. Yet, in spite of everything, she is one of the most optimistic and curious people you can hope to meet. Cyan is also one of the great angel investors of this era, having invested early in SpaceX, Uber, Postmates, and Deepmind to name a few winners. She became the first female investing partner at Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund and now invests at Long Journey Ventures. Our conversation is as much about investing as it is about the essence of life and how connecting with that will help us in our professional pursuits. It is also full of awesome stories about people and companies like SpaceX and Bill Murray. Please enjoy this great conversation with Cyan Banister. Listen to Founders Podcast For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here. ----- This episode is brought to you by Tegus, the only investment research platform built for the investor. With traditional research vendors, the diligence process is slow, fragmented, and expensive. That leaves investors competing on how well they can aggregate data — not on their unique ability to analyze insights and make great investment decisions. Tegus offers an end-to-end platform with all the data you need to get up to speed on a company or market: up-to-the-minute financials, customizable models, management and culture checks, and, of course, our vast and growing library of expert call transcripts. Tegus is changing the world of expert research. Learn more and get your free trial at tegus.com/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 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 (00:04:03) First question - Spirituality as an Investable Category (00:06:51) Journey to Founders Fund (00:12:13) Overcoming Adversity and Embracing Optimism (00:14:28) The Power of Authenticity and Curiosity (00:25:28) The Skill of Feeling in Business (00:30:26) Investing in Uber (00:36:18) The Changing Dynamics of Early-Stage Investment (00:39:07) The Philosophy of 'Set it and Forget It' (00:42:24) The SpaceX Story: A Leap of Faith (00:48:02) Cyan’s Spiritual Awakening (00:61:34) Her Story of the Violin Kid (01:05:36) The Art of Trusting Your Gut in Business (01:07:47) The Spirit of Founders Fund and the Future of Venture Firms (01:15:16) What She Would Do With 1 Trillion Dollars (01:24:05) The Kindest Thing Anyone Has Ever Done For Cyan

Transcript

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0:00.0	This episode is brought to you by TIGAS, the only investing research platform built for the investor.
0:04.8	With traditional research vendors, the diligence process is slow, fragmented, and expensive.
0:09.6	That leaves investors competing on how well they can aggregate data, not on their unique ability to analyze insights and make great investment decisions.
0:17.0	Tegis offers an end-to-end platform with all the data you need to get up to speed on a company or a market. Up to the minute financials,
0:24.1	customizable models, management and culture checks, and of course are vast and growing library of
0:29.4	expert call transcripts. Teagus is changing the world of expert research. Learn more and get your free trial at
0:35.4	Tegus.com. Patrick. You may have heard me reference the idea of maniacs on a mission and how much that idea excites me.
0:44.0	Well David Senra is my favorite maniac on one of my favorite missions with his
0:48.0	weekly crafting of the Founders Podcast.
0:50.0	Through studying the lives of legends, he weaves together insights across history to distill ideas that you can use in your work.
0:57.0	Founders reveals tried and true tactics, battle tested by the world's icons and has David's infectious energy to accompany them.
1:05.0	With well over 300 episodes, your heroes are surely in the lineup and his recent episode on Oprah is particularly great.
1:12.0	Founders is a movement that you don't want to miss.
1:14.3	It's part of the Colossus Network and you can find your way to David's great
1:18.0	podcast in the show notes.
1:20.0	Hello and welcome everyone. I'm Patrick O'Shaughnessy and this is Invest Like the Best.
1:27.0	This show is an open-ended exploration of markets, ideas, stories, and strategies that will help you better invest both your time and your money.
1:35.0	Invest Like the Best is part of the Colossus family of podcasts and you can access all our
1:40.0	podcasts including edited transcripts, show notes, and other resources to keep learning. podcasts, of Positive Some. All opinions expressed by Patrick and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of Positive Sum.
1:59.0	This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. for
2:04.0	investment decisions. Clients of positive sum may maintain positions in the securities
2:08.8	discussed in this podcast.
	...

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