Coburn Ventures Podcast

Today we’re talking about getting back to the office, a topic that many of you have been bringing to us fervently over the last six months. Beyond the obvious reasons, I think you are all asking about it precisely because it is up for discussion and review, and that itself is meaningful!  Additionally, I think you are sensing that the role of the traditional office for knowledge workers and m...

We’re here with Gavin Ivester, a product and brand executive with a background in industrial design. He has global experience in both tech and lifestyle products at Apple, Nike, Puma, and Bang & Olufsen. Our topic today is care. More specifically, what is it that modern companies can do to incorporate care, at scale, into their product or service experience? Let’s jump in.

Today we’re talking about play and play science, inspired by the work of our friend Dr. Stuart Brown. So, why this topic, on this podcast? Well, play, may not be exactly what you think. We know how to describe play and its benefits for children but we think we leave many types of play behind when we grow up. Spoiler alert: may we don't, we just don't fully realize what play is. Play is much broade...

Two weeks ago, we all learned about the Colonial Oil pipeline ransomware attack on the East Coast of the United States. It was a high profile hit, but was then followed by an odd comment from the ransomware group saying in effect, “Sorry, we didn’t mean to actually disrupt the pipeline!” in other words, we’re here to be quiet and not make too much of a problem but we are still going to steal your...

Today we compliment a piece Pip is writing on formulating a valuable arbitrage in investing. For Coburn Ventures, we use change as the lens of our arbitrage, so we talk about pattern recognition as it relates to change, and how it can develop into high conviction positions. Of course, investment philosophy --such as change investing-- and process are intertwined. A potentially valuable question to...

What can we do to assess where companies are positioned among the fast-moving currents of Digital Transformation? What do we mean when we say "Digital Transformation" anyway? In this conversation, Pip will give some background on why this is so important right now and then we jump in with Michael Stich, now of Court Avenue, where he helps marketers understand how to use innovation to create value...

We are hearing the term "resilience" or "resiliency" so much this year. Biologist Maria Souza continually reminds us that, “Without disruption, there can be no resilience.” So we thought it worthwhile to go under the surface on this topic. Pip starts us with seven factors or attributes of resilience. It's an attempt to get more specific and granular as to what we mean by "being resilient", so that...

This week the Super League of Premier League Football was announced: a collection of the best and brightest franchises to come into their own, potentially even more profitable league.  Just as quickly, the league was extinguished completely. From fan outrage to JP Morgan finding itself in the spotlight for underwriting the concept, this week has been a dramatic one for the league and football...

About 10 years ago, we started talking about “The Future and History of Asking Questions”. It was an acknowledgment of the exponential growth of our ability to ask questions *and receive answers about them*. We are seeing so many derivatives off of this phenomenon. One of those derivatives that we’ll talk about today is that as the expectation increased that we can ask just about any question and...

Today we have Zak Dychtwald, Founder of Young China Group , joining us to help us understand the global young consumer and specifically, all the ways we may be misunderstanding the global consumer with regard to "Young China".  Zak wanted to know what the future held, he found himself living in China. With that experience and his lens on demographics, he has become a bridge for decision-maker...

Joseph Tainter said, “Complexity is the cumulative effect of reactionary decision making”. Well, we can do better than that, can't we? The investment process is the specific domain we use to reduce complexity and improve decision-making, and through our deep work over the years, we created the pre-determined game plan as our tool to get centered and focused on what we believe are the most relevant...

In this conversation, JP Rangaswami is going to help us slow down our thinking, breaking apart our tendency to literally jump to conclusions. He’s going to talk about the four stages of data development. So that you have a bit of background before we start, here they are:  Observation: What just happened?  Diagnosis: Why did it happen? Prediction: What’s going to happen next?  Presc...

The thesis statement, in the context of investing, is our best effort to create a testable hypothesis. Of course, it is not a scientific process, but we can surely borrow from the discipline of science to create a richer process! If you find sometimes that your work is voluminous but unfocused, or the communication on your team or with outside parties is muddy and you can’t figure out why, then th...

Today we are discussing Profit and Purpose with Omar Shaikh, co-founder of the Global Ethical Finance Initiative. We asked David Kim, who many of you know, to join as well, because this topic can’t be torn apart from philosophical underpinnings of commerce, business, history, and law, and David has such a strong ability to put big concepts into context. This is such an interesting discussion that...

Today we are examining business strategy, and especially, strategies that are weak, becoming "Tactics Masquerading as Strategy".  And then, we tie that to a key philosophical underpinning of many business strategies that we may be adapting away from: Porter's Five Forces. This is a philosophy that fits very well with the last four decades. It would be a largely successful framework to start s...

Polly Labarre is an author, thinker, collaborator, and journalist. I first met her through Pip as she was working on her book Mavericks at Work, which is a fascinating look into the most original minds in business. You may know her as a co-Founder of Fast Company. Any of you who enjoyed our very first Sundance Gathering know her as the first to utter "you are the program", an ethos of creativity a...

We are often asked to help teams in some way refine their communications, especially so that they can get better idea flow between the analysts and the portfolio manager. So Pip stepped back to see if he could better define each role required in investing. You could probably break this down further, or differently, but here are the four jobs of stock picking. Business Analysis Security Analysis Ma...

We promised to pick up where we left off from last week's Episode #1 on the Reinvention of Real Estate. If you remember we have three guests for this conversation, from different but highly related disciplines in real estate: we have real estate investor Glenn Lowenstein, Matthias Hollwich, co-founder and principal of architecture firm HWKN, and Jennifer Salopek, advisor to major retailers on navi...

We are bringing you a big topic today, so big that it matters to every corner of our lives and our economy: real estate. We’re interested in what is changing, at what pace, and why. To think through such a vast topic, we are bringing in three friends with three very different but complementary vantage points. We have Glenn Lowenstein, a real estate investor who has a very holistic approach to look...

What do we do when valuations of stocks and markets become so high as to defy our most careful assessment of the value of the business and its future cash flows? Today we are going to present some options for layering in a process or method to use during these times. Our purpose here is to provide a few ways to help you think about  addressing the question directly, especially since valuation is o...

Today we are happy to spend time with John Dillon, longtime CEO of private and public companies, currently at data company Aerospike. We often turn to John for reality checks: what’s it really like running a company from hiring the right head of sales to meeting with investors? Today we zoom in on the shareholder-executive relationship, and ask John what questions he would ask a CEO if he were in...

Part of our job as investors is to find or design uncommon inputs that will lead to uncommon investable insights. One of the important inputs is how we spend our conversations with management teams. At Coburn Ventures we focus so much on designing questions for management because it can meaningfully alter the probability that we will walk away with something insightful to act on. Now you'll hear a...

ESG, or Environment, Social and Governance regarding sustainability, was thought of as an add-on to an investment thesis 5 or 10 years ago. But the world is arriving at the doorstep of ESG investors. Its more than an add on, it is a base layer, a foundational component of investment philosophy. And its rare that we get to take part in forming such a crucial component of investment philosophy. For...

Today we’re talking about community and business, and we have with us two business leaders who know loads about this topic: Peter Espersen and Darren Herman. Their experience on the topic runs deep, and both have extensive entrepreneurial experience, but they each have past roles that will help you connect to them - perhaps putting together that you have met them previously at one of our gathering...

Today, we present just a few of the ideas related to process that we know have helped our team find leverage in what we thought were unmovable parts of the investment process. Some of these changes will sound rudimentary at the onset. I challenge you to listen to these ideas with a "students mind", reviewing your process, how your team works and maybe, just maybe you will find one or two ideas in...