Coburn Ventures Podcast

As investors, part of our job is to “hazily see the future” as best we can, and because of this, I often find investors to be a group that is very open to taking in different perspectives and viewpoints as new data becomes available to them. When it comes to the way they do their jobs, however, some elements are stickier than may be useful to us. Today we are offering a few more ways we’ve been us...

Our goal for today’s conversation with organizational psychologist Matt Wallaert is to learn from him by getting straight to the point on what psychological safety is and isn't. This is a phrase we have all heard, but let’s see if we can get to the insight it may have for our organizations before running with it and using it offhand. This is part of a duo of podcasts aimed at approaching review se...

Comparison is rather natural, but rarely productive. Instead of falling into common pitfalls, what's the way out? We have Dr. Morris Pickens here with us. Notably we are approaching review season and we thought this might add some perspective or grounding going into that period. Let’s jump in. 

Last week we went into depth on some design principles for turning rote management meetings into an activity that can generate uncommon insights. What we left out of that meeting was a key piece that we have written about for decades now: the process of generating unlocking questions to gain conviction in your business thesis, and even working with generating questions you may not think you’ll eve...

Continuing on our assertion that we cannot do common things and expect uncommon results, today we are discussing management meetings. I’ve noticed that the best career stories, those told around the Owl Bar perhaps, usually have to do with breakthrough realizations during time with management, when an insight about the company culture was unlocked, or an understanding came to light, maybe of the t...

As investors and business leaders, even when we are able to get to a deeper level of understanding, it doesn’t mean navigating this world of rogue waves, change and instability is any clearer. Today we go into an 11 step “guide”, of sorts, aimed at navigating the impact of different types of changes and how they might affect our actions and investment theses. Let’s jump in. 

What if, when someone asked you what your operating edge was at work you said, “being really good at being busy.” Sometimes, it feels like that’s how our days go. It doesn’t suggest we are on the path to generating insight, so we’ll see if we can take a look today to see what might be going on. Let’s jump in.

We last spoke with our friend Mike Cahill on his perspective on the markets back in February. Obviously, a lot has happened since then, and we were happy to have the chance to check in with him again. Thank you Mike, for this discussion. Let’s jump in.

It’s so important for investors and business leaders to have a framework for what data and information we take in as inputs, as well as what we make sure to exclude or throw out as garbage data and now, garbage information. This is our classic signal: noise dilemma, but the ratio is careening ever more massively to noise. Today we tackle this issue head on and discuss what has been the key orienti...

Today we're continuing our theme of taking a common business practices and bridging them to something that is far more powerful, uncorrelated and uncommon. Today's topic is a big one, and the beginning of how we use our skills to start filtering, processing and organizing data into information: note taking. Let's jump in.

What if one baseline condition for uncommon collaboration was completely and utterly universally available to all humans at all times? I believe this topic we will get to today with Pip and Irwin may be a first for the investor set, but it came directly from conversations are two of our gatherings this spring, so let's jump in.

There's no course we can take to understand how to handle a position with a lot of external pressure. As we grow in seniority, more of these pressures pile on--whether more people to manage, more marketing meetings, more strategic planning. Dr. Morris Pickens has a lot of experience helping professional athletes, mostly golfers, with these layers upon layers of pressure. Today we get to ask hi...

When it comes to investment process, we are always aiming to design in getting to uncommon investable insights. To us, this phrase is loaded with meaning and potential. This conversation is aimed at getting more at what we mean by uncommon and also what some of the steps on the path to generating more uncommon investable insights might be. Let's jump in.

If you've heard us talk about student mindedness, it's not just an attitude or posture that we encourage at gatherings-- it's so much more. The whole reason we look for student mindedness and aim to practice it is because it's a skill that we think is critical to great decision making, the athletic moment of sorts for investors. So let's jump in.

In times of constant adaptation, it can help to "get back to your base", remember the value we can bring as active investors, and get in tune with your particular structural arbitrage. To help with this, we offer the Five Mantras of Active Investing, with original conversation from 2022 and our updated 2025 preview. Let's jump in!

Hi everyone. Today we're continuing on the topic of uncommon processes to yield uncommon results. And we're continuing with the specific topic of developing and advancing unlocking questions for management. Today we have Bob Gilbreth with us. And among other things, Bob has invested in, built and sold many businesses and has a long career in marketing, including working on some really fun...

We're continuing on the topic of uncommon processes to yield uncommon results, and we are doing that through the topic of developing and advancing unlocking questions. Today we're happy to have Rob Rose with us. Among other things, Rob works with CEOs and CMOs as a strategic marketing consultant, so we'll be exploring his perspective on unlocking questions for management (and he has ma...

Hi everyone. Today we're going to continue on the topic of uncommon processes to yield uncommon results. We are here with Dr. Morris Pickens this morning to pinpoint one high impact routine that we often overlook: how we wake up in the morning. Let's jump in.

In the last podcast, we discussed sell disciplines. Today, we're continuing on that thread, but amping it up a little: we're discussing sell disciplines in the context of periods of crisis. We'll break down about six portions of a sell discipline so that these might inspire a modularized, customized, just right for you sell discipline for your specific philosophy and process. Let's...

Today we're discussing the less popular twin to buying or taking a position: selling that position! When and why do we sell? Are we as disciplined with selling as much as we are with buying or taking a position? How might these disciplines be related or very, very different for us? Well, let's jump in.

We've been talking about clean time as one of the most powerful, uncommon tools we have in our investor toolkit. To help us actually achieve more clean time, today we have Irwin Kula on, who's going to help us unearth some of the very human barriers that keep us from guarding, using, and benefiting from clean time. Let's jump in.

As investors and business leaders, if we can't take in bad news and adjust, we might make ourselves vulnerable to even higher error rates and risk damage to performance. Investing is already a high failure rate activity-- what can we do about this? Today, we present implications and follow up with practical ideas for turning these threats on their head, embracing and practicing swift, clear feedba...

At Coburn Ventures we love the work required to develop and then ask advancing and unlocking questions, whether to interrogate an investment thesis, to develop a research path around burning questions, or very importantly, to guide time with management. Today, we're happy to have Lisa Baird with us. Among other things, Lisa spent a large portion of her career in constant communication with man...

Last week, we spoke about finding uncommon arbitrage in common sense aspects of investment process. Today, we'll walk through practical ideas to implement and even personalize these aspects, taking common practices and making them your own. Let's jump in.

Today, we're discussing making the common uncommon in philosophy and practices, understanding that these common investment practices that we can turn into uncommon arbitrages maybe right under our nose... if we could only see them. Let's jump in.