Coburn Ventures Podcast

Today we’re talking about a nefarious gremlin of a problem in investing: type two error avoidance, in other words the fear of missing something, of being caught by surprise, of not being "up" on every single aspect of a stock that a teammate or boss could ask about. What happens when we let it run amok? More and more low impact work. Why do smart investors keep doing it? It's largely...

In this "Three Meteors Strike Earth" period for the investment management business, we want greater clarity to navigate. We want to seize the moment! We know we can't be frozen, and we can't be a series of random reactions. We bring Irwin Kula into the conversation today to discuss his three responses to the "freeze or seize" moment. Let's jump in.

We bring up the value of “Clean time” in nearly every conversation right now, but it's been a while since we've given it a little more space. I wanted to ask Pip some questions to get under the surface of what he really does in clean time, how we used to do a similar version as analysts, and why it can be so helpful right now. Let's jump in.

As we round toward the end of the year, we introduce a State of the Industry of sorts-- highlighting key elemental changes, the strongest potential responses for teams, and the unveiling of "fresh alpha". Let's jump in.

Today we sit down with a true "analysts' analyst", our friend Gareth, to learn more about how he has built his AI integrated process. He wrote us, "The advanced analyst uses AI to accelerate the workflow they already had. The Revolutionized analyst redesigns the workflow around what AI makes possible, keeping the human for the part only a human should do: judgement." There&...

Volatility can be a disruptive force in many ways, from affecting our time horizons to our day-to-day systems and behaviors. Today we want to look at some of the possibilities for making volatility, this key element of new market structures, something to get enthusiastic about. Let's jump in.

What happens when AI meets investment process? If we define the investment process as getting in a position of discernment, taking in uncommon inputs and the ability to convert knowledge into investable insights, there is plenty to work with. As one friend put it “the analyst I am today integrating AI could wipe the floor with the analyst I was 12 months ago”. I think we want to learn more. Let’s...

What are some of the primary characteristics of an AI integrated Investment process? Today we highlight three, but if you’re going to remember one thing from this conversation, let it be this: every healthy research team will alter its ratio o f research to analysis dramatically toward analysis. Let’s jump in.

This week a conversation started with a familiar worry: if everyone can drop the same data into AI and get the same answers, won't the market just level out? It's a fair question on the surface, but underneath it assumes the market's questions are the right questions, that there’s absolutely no inefficiency. So today we're using JP's four-stage model — observation, diagnosis, p...

The line of reasoning that may have attracted clients to money managers 10-20 years ago or more may be changing and causing tension as we work to adjust to new market structures, AI, passives and more. This does not mean we are at an impasse, or have to stay 100% tied to our process and stance from decades ago. Instead, we can build the connection with clients, bringing them along, communicating h...

When you hear the phrase best practices, are you excited for whatever explanation comes after it? It's a phrase that's representative of wanting to succeed and do our best, but the path doesn't always hold up especially in a fast-moving industry that has been injected with a new partner in AI. The mode of best practices presumes someone's already figured out the way, when really, w...

Today we continue our conversation on uncommon insight, this time asking why it's so hard to actually get there, even when we can agree it's the goal. We talk about the discomfort of stepping outside professional norms, the habit energy that keeps us doing our job the same way, and why AI amplifying our ability to find uncommon understanding won't make it common because most people are...

When you say "Now we are all going to implement AI into our investment process", does the energy in the room go UP? I'd guess probably not. Today we introduce a module that is simply getting us used to the idea that we can add AI into our processes in playful ways that make it less intimidating and more energizing. Let's jump in.

Today's AI module has at least two really important elements that I hope you will take away with you . The first is that this is a module that works from a slightly different vantage point. It works very, very rigorously on the pivotal question. This module is not so much about impressive massive output or information synthesis from AI. It's about staying in and working and re-working what we hope...

Today we’re continuing our work on encountering and moving through framework failures. Our instinct as investors can be to think harder, talk more, come up with our unifying theory and wait for clear evidence to show up. But Karl Weick's work points somewhere else entirely. Jorgen van der Sloot is with us today to dig into what it looks like practically to act our way into a new framework even bef...

What if the key to navigating massive change and framework failure isn't about pushing harder, but about slowing down and getting into the space between? As we continue our work on framework failure and response, we're joined by Elise Jones, who has been through a few significant reframes, which may be why we delighted in a mix up of words that gave us a new path forward in our framework f...

Sometimes I see that AI is being used to somehow get better at processing all the noise, and that’s definitely one interesting way to use it. But what if we commit to using it to get to “uncommon” insights instead of trying to get better at managing noise? How would that look different? Today’s AI Module presents a way to look through a “lens” and get a different perspective. We may even look thro...

A big topic in the news today is whether or not, or maybe by how much, investors' insight generation will be commoditized by AI. If we’re going to create a future in which we thrive as investors, we are well served to think through exactly why or why not insight would be commoditized, and that's just what we're getting into today. Let’s jump in. 

What happens when the frameworks and mental models we rely on stop working, and in some cases, we don't even notice? Today we dig into framework failure: why our deepest assumptions about intelligence, creativity, housing, education, and the future are cracking, and what's not changing at all that can be our path to advance forward wisely. Let's jump in

In episode #263 we discussed a new market structure. One idea from our friend Boris continued to come up: “What if the language of active management is spoken by fewer and fewer? ” Today we are getting very specific about language and going right to the root of much of our industry's basis: valuation. Let's jump in.

Something really interesting happened this week -- a conversation with a brilliant friend in Paris sent us into an exploration of two ridiculously useful frameworks for what investors and leaders are navigating right now. It started with a misheard name, and it ended with two thinkers who have no business being in the same conversation, except that together their work describes what framework fail...

Many of us have been investors for decades, witnessing tech adoption across the enterprise in computing, networking, mobile, internet and now AI. Today with Bob Gower, we work through what’s similar and what’s very different about deploying AI in the enterprise, generating some great threads for investors to be pulling when asking management teams about the rollout. Let’s jump in.

Today is a rather quick highlight: our goal is to share an AI fix we’ve been finding really helpful and flexible: asking for five blind spots, sometimes over and over again. This module is so applicable that in fact, during this conversation, we designed a few additional ways to use it. Let’s jump in.

If you’ve been listening to this podcast and reading our work, you know that we have been advocating for some awareness and action regarding a change in the market structure and what investors can be aware of as they work to adapt. Today we offer a few questions that our community has been wrestling with in an attempt to move from thinking about "yes we probably need to adapt" to decisively making...

You want better meetings and energy on your team, but becoming a facilitator was probably not on your to do list when you became an investor or executive, right?  You don’t have to go that far, because today we are going to offer some simple skills and practical ideas to try out. Implementing them could be more of an impactful lever than you realize! Let’s jump in.