Michael Mauboussin Master Class — Moats, Skill, Luck, Decision Making and a Whole Lot More

Acquired

Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal

Venturecapital, Ma, Investing, Acquisitions, Startups, Vc, Investment, Business, Technology

4.8 • 2.9K Ratings

🗓️ 5 October 2021

⏱️ 83 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

We sit down with the one & only Michael Mauboussin to dive deep into his incredible body of work: untangling skill and luck, measuring moats, persistence of returns in venture capital, decision making and — particularly timely — expectations investing and how to think about valuations in the current 2021 market environment. (!!) Michael's work is maybe our most frequent carve out on Acquired, so we're pumped to finally have a chance to interview the man himself. Big thank you to Patrick O'Shaughnessy and Brent Beshore for introducing us all at Capital Camp this year!

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Links:

Michael's wonderful talk at Google: https://youtu.be/1JLfqBsX5Lc
The new revised edition of Expectations Investing: https://www.amazon.com/Expectations-Investing-Reading-Returns-Heilbrunn/dp/0231203047/
The Success Equation: https://www.amazon.com/The-Success-Equation-Untangling-Investing/dp/1422184234/
Measuring the Moat: https://research-doc.credit-suisse.com/docView?language=ENG&format=PDF&sourceid=csplusresearchcp&document_id=1066439791&serialid=4uA2wHojCvFKzqWfwIyDvkSN1pkXRpb43LvyclLcJsk%3D&cspId=null
Public to Private Equity: https://www.morganstanley.com/im/publication/insights/articles/articles_publictoprivateequityintheusalongtermlook_us.pdf

‍Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Yeah, dude, we should see if any listeners want to create some cool, like, animation for the intro music for the YouTube channel.
0:09.0	Oh, are we going to open source it to the fans?
0:13.7	We got to do it.
0:31.0	Welcome to this special episode of Acquired, the podcast about great technology companies and the stories and playbooks behind them.
0:38.0	I'm Ben Gilbert, and I'm the co-founder and managing director of Seattle-based Pioneer Square Labs and our venture fund PSL Ventures.
0:45.0	And I'm David Rosenthal, and I am an angel investor based in San Francisco.
0:50.0	And we are your hosts.
0:52.0	Well, today we interview one of our heroes, Michael Mobison.
0:58.0	We've referenced his work on many episodes before.
1:01.0	He's given talks that have been my carveouts.
1:04.0	And as many of you know, Michael is the head of Consilient Research at Counterpoint Global, which is part of Morgan Stanley Investment Management.
1:14.0	At mid-year 2021, Counterpoint Global had assets under management of approximately $180 billion.
1:22.0	And for those who don't know Michael's work, boy, are you in for a treat?
1:28.0	David, I think it's fair to say he's your favorite investor's favorite investor.
1:32.0	I love that.
1:34.0	Yeah, he's done mind-expanding research on a ton of topics.
1:37.0	And today's show, of course, has a lens on how to interpret all of Michael's work over the years in the context of today's unprecedented macroeconomic environment.
1:47.0	I like that. I'm pressing.
1:48.0	Good phrasing.
1:50.0	This is a great time to tell you about one of our very favorite companies, Crusoe.
1:55.0	So, Crusoe, as listeners know by now, is a clean compute cloud provider specifically built for AI workloads.
2:03.0	Invidia is one of their major partners, and literally Crusoe's data centers are nothing but racks and racks of A100s and H100s.
	...

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