Gaurav Kapadia on New York City, Investing, and Contemporary Art

Conversations with Tyler

Society & Culture, Education

4.8 • 2.4K Ratings

🗓️ 10 December 2025

⏱️ 60 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Help us keep the conversations going in 2026. Donate to Conversations with Tyler today.

Gaurav Kapadia has deliberately avoided publicity throughout his career in investing, which makes this conversation a rare window into how he thinks. He now runs XN, a firm built around concentrated bets on a small number of companies with long holding periods. However, his education in judgment began much earlier, in a two-family house in Flushing that his parents converted into a four-family house. It was there where a young Gaurav served as de facto landlord, collecting rent and negotiating late payments at age 10. That grounding now expresses itself across an unusual range of domains: Tyler invited him on the show not just as an investor, but as someone with a rare ability to judge quality in cities, talent, art, and more with equal fluency.

Tyler and Gaurav discuss how Queens has thrived without new infrastructure, what he'd change as "dictator" of Flushing, whether Robert Moses should rise or fall in status, who's the most underrated NYC mayor, what's needed to attract better mayoral candidates, the weirdest place in NYC, why he initially turned down opportunities in investment banking for consulting, bonding with Rishi Sunak over railroads, XN's investment philosophy, maintaining founder energy in investment firms and how he hires to prevent complacency, AI's impact on investing, the differences between New York and London finance, the most common fundraising mistake art museums make, why he collects only American artists within 20 years of his own age, what makes Kara Walker and Rashid Johnson and Salman Toor special, whether buying art makes you a better investor, his new magazine Totei celebrating craft and craftsmanship, and much more.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on the new dedicated Conversations with Tyler channel.

Recorded October 8th, 2025.

Other ways to connect

Follow us on X and Instagram
Follow Tyler on X
Follow Gaurav on X
Sign up for our newsletter
Join our Discord
Email us: [email protected]
Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts here.

Timestamps

00:00:00 - Intro

00:01:32 - Queens and NYC's geography

00:08:36 - New York City mayors and electoral politics

00:13:22 - Building a career in investing

00:18:50 - XN's investment philosophy

00:24:35 - Maintaining founder energy in investment firms

00:30:45 - The sociology of finance in NYC, London, and UAE

00:32:21 - How AI is reshaping investing

00:36:53 - Museum operations

00:42:21 - Favorite artists

00:50:39 - Tastes in art and how the canon will evolve

00:57:22 - Totei, a new venture

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hi, listeners, this is Tyler.
0:06.2	Thanks to your support, Conversations with Tyler is celebrating 10 incredible years.
0:12.3	We've brought you over 250 conversations with some of the world's sharpest minds,
0:17.8	from Margaret Atwood to Stephen Pinker to Sam Altman and countless others.
0:22.6	Together, we're making the world wiser and more appreciative one episode at a time.
0:28.0	But here's the thing. We can't do this without you. Your tax-deductible contribution
0:33.2	keeps these conversations coming. New episodes every other week, sometimes more often than that, full transcripts, live shows,
0:42.3	and listener meetups.
0:43.5	And to thank you, we've got some amazing donor benefits if you can give before January 1st,
0:49.4	2026.
0:51.0	At $50, get exclusive 10th anniversary swag and a signed message from me. At $250,
0:59.7	hear your name on our year-end episode, if you wish. At $750, sponsor a transcript.
1:07.8	$1,500 gets you into a virtual Ask Me Anything with me. $5,000 gets you dinner in the
1:15.7	D.C. area with me and other listeners, and I do promise the food will be good. Donate $25,000,
1:23.0	and you'll get a private one-on-one dinner in the D.C. area with me.
1:28.5	Every dollar matters.
1:33.4	Please head to the link in the show notes to learn more and make your contribution today.
1:37.0	Thank you for listening and for helping to make this podcast possible.
1:47.2	Conversations with Tyler is produced by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University,
1:51.4	bridging the gap between academic ideas and real-world problems.
1:54.1	Learn more at Mercadis.org. For a full transcript of every conversation enhanced with helpful links,
1:58.8	visit Conversationswithtyler.com.
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 20 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Conversations with Tyler, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Conversations with Tyler and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.