Joys of Compounding

Our teacher today is Nilam Ganenthiran, founder and CEO of Beacon, a centrally managed technology holding company that acquires the vertical software businesses serving the real economy. Nilam shares the immigrant story that shaped him and why trust becomes the scarce resource as AI turns competence into a commodity. He revisits the hard lessons of his eight years building Instacart, from leading...

Our teachers today are Annalise Dragic and Zoe Zhao, co-founders of Azlin Software, a next-generation serial acquirer of B2B vertical software companies focused on the providers of essential services and care for families. Annalise and Zoe share how their friendship evolved into a co-founding partnership, the 150 conversations with founders and investors that shaped Azlin from a blank page, and th...

Our teacher today is Justin Yoshimura, founder and CEO of CSC Generation, a profitable commerce platform doing over a billion dollars in annual revenue across brands including Sur La Table, Backcountry, and One Kings Lane. As we explore what it takes to build an enduring company in a sector most investors have written off, we turn to Justin's unconventional path, one that challenges familiar assum...

Our teacher today is Brent Beshore, founder and CEO of Permanent Equity, a firm that backs family-owned businesses across North America with no intention of ever selling. As we explore what it means to build enduring companies and live a meaningful life, we turn to Brent’s unconventional path – one that challenges the core assumptions of modern private equity and the incentives that shape it. Bren...

Our teacher today is Julian Flannery, co-founder and CEO of Summus, a company democratizing access to the world's leading doctors to drive better health outcomes and cost savings for employers and health plans. As we explore the future of human health, we turn to specialty care, where U.S. healthcare's spiraling costs, inadequate speed, and care disparities are most acute. Yet our system's greates...

Our teacher today is Matteo Franceschetti, co-founder and CEO of Eight Sleep, whose Pod technology ranks among the top five products that have meaningfully improved my quality of life. This conversation launches our series on founders and investors revolutionizing human health, covering everything from diagnostics to longevity science to biotechnology. Matteo's story is fascinating—he's an unlikel...

Our teacher today is Jan Mohr, CEO of Chapters Group, a publicly traded serial acquisition holding company with ambitions of becoming one of Europe's technology champions. Chapters' origins date back to a small software startup founded near Frankfurt in 1998. Twenty years later, the core business was sold to a strategic buyer, consolidating the market with the proceeds of the sale in 2018. With Ja...

Today's teacher is ⁠David Senra⁠. David is an absolute force of nature who is taking the world by storm with his podcast "Founders." In class today, we enjoy access to the full spectrum of learnings from his decade-long study of history's greatest entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, and leaders. The library David built reflects a range of study that is boundless. From Alexander the Great to Catherin...

Our teacher today is Steve Mandel, founder of Lone Pine Capital, one of the defining investment firms of our time. For starters, Steve is, without question, among the most important leaders in the investment management industry. Consider that Seth Klarman once called him, “the best industry analyst I've ever met, who became the best long short hedge fund manager of his generation.” In our opinion,...

 We've got just the class to help you get back into that learning machine mode. We're stoked to be joined by our good friend Chris Begg, founder of East Coast Asset Management and adjunct Associate Professor at the Helibrunn Center for Graham and Dodd investing at Columbia Business School. He teaches security analysis, perhaps the most legendary investing course in higher education. In today's cla...

 Our teacher today is Will Thorndike, co-founder of Compounding Labs and author of the acclaimed book, “The Outsiders.” In our opinion, Will has emerged as one of the most influential and innovative investor minds of the past few decades. And if you care about long-term value creation and the art of capital allocation, chances are you've also benefited from some of his ideas.  In 1994, he founded...

Our teacher today is Katie Koch. Katie is the President and CEO of the TCW Group, a storied firm with over 200 billion in assets under management and a fascinating 50-year legacy as a pioneer in the investment industry. Katie just took the TCW reins in 2023 after more than 20 years at Goldman Sachs. She joined Goldman right after college as the self-proclaimed least capable person in the firm and...

 Our teacher today is Sebastian Mejia. He combines intellectual range with emotional depth and is the co-founder of Rappi, the on-demand delivery platform that has become one of Latin America's most influential tech companies.  In this episode, we discuss resilience, identity, intuition, and building companies with a sense of urgency and wonder. We will go from Sebastian’s immigrant hustle in New...

 Our teacher today is Chad Cascarilla, co founder and CEO of Paxos, the leading regulated blockchain infrastructure company that is reimagining a complete technological replatforming of our global financial markets. Paxos aims to democratize finance by enabling instant global asset movement, partnering with industry leaders like PayPal, Stripe, MasterCard, and others. For those confused by crypto...

Today’s teacher is Jacqueline Morby. She may well be the greatest investor you've probably never heard of. For anyone who invests in software or participates in the now nearly trillion dollar global growth equity industry, chances are Jackie helped to shape and give rise to the professional world you inhabit. In 1978 at the age of 40, and with her only professional experience to date being a few y...

This is Rick. Today's teacher is Rich Wells, managing director of Insight Partners, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this month. I've known Rich for 20 years since our time as section mates in business school, where he was consistently recognized as the smartest person in the room. Rich is universally regarded as one of the preeminent private market software investors of the last 20 years, he...

Before we turn the page on 2024, we wanted to shine one more light on the man behind our most popular class of the last year. And that's Mitch Rales, co-founder of Danaher, one of the most impressive businesses to have been built anywhere in the world this past century. Having co-founded Danaher 40 years ago alongside his brother and best friend Steve, the Rales boys have strung together a track r...

In honor of Notre Dame clinching a playoff spot, we're replaying our conversation from earlier this year with head coach Marcus Freeman. We discuss the power of relationships and how he talks with his players about the concepts of hard work & love. Marcus delves into what it takes to focus on inputs rather than outputs, especially as the college sports world is changing in unprecedented ways.  And...

Today’s teacher is renowned historian Patrick Griffin. Patrick is the former chair of the Department of History at the University of Notre Dame. In 2021, he was named the Harold Vivian Harmsworth Visiting Professor of American History at the University of Oxford, perhaps the highest honor an American historian can receive.  He joined us to explore “The Lessons of History” by Will and Ariel Durant,...

Today's teacher is Rich Wong, general partner at renowned venture firm Accel. Rich is a very special investor and leader, and he spent many years as an operator prior to his time in VC. What was going to be a short stint as a venture operating partner nearly 20 years ago turned into a defining pivot for Rich. He not only quickly reached the top of the venture profession but also became the go-to i...

Today's teacher is Ravi Gupta, a partner at renowned venture firm Sequoia Capital. Ravi has had a fascinating and meandering career on his way to becoming a VC, from consulting at McKinsey to private equity at KKR to operations at Instacart as both CFO and COO. All along the way, Ravi was gathering and cultivating a unique set of skills that's equipped him to now identify and support some of the m...

We are back with a summer special and to celebrate, we have a cast of teachers joining us. In this episode, you’ll hear from the Mount Rushmore of business podcasters–Patrick O’Shaughnessy, David Senra, and Acquired’s David and Ben–as well as two of our favorite entrepreneurs. We’ll also reflect on what we’ve learned from our guests, from hosting the show, and discuss what’s next for this podclass...

Today we are replaying our classroom session with Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal, founders of Acquired, the podcasting sensation telling the stories and strategies of the world's great companies. In this episode, we turn the tables on Ben and David in order to discover their own stories and the fairy dust behind acquired success. We'll cover the history of the formation of one of the most success...

Today, we are replaying our conversation with Ho Nam, co-founder of Altos Ventures. As the numbers go, Altos is one of the greatest venture capital firms of the last quarter century. We unpack Ho's origin story and the values that shaped him most as a person and investor, and then we then turn to Altos itself. Altos has emerged as one of the most elite venture investors by breaking traditional VC...

Today, we are revisiting our class with David Senra in honor of our upcoming event together. David is an absolute force of nature who is taking the world by storm with his podcast "Founders." In this class, we enjoy access to the full spectrum of learnings from his decade-long study of history's greatest entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, and leaders. The library David's built reflects a range of s...