Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Patrick O'Shaughnessy started a couple great podcasts that are well worth listening if you are interested in investing. One of his podcasts is called Invest Like The Best where he interviews many of the industry's leading investors, another is called Founder's Field Guide and my favorite one is called Business Breakdowns where he brings on a guest or two who breaks down a business by explaining what it does.
It's a very informative podcast and I highly suggest giving it a listen or a read since there are transcripts available as well. Especially if you're interested in one of the following companies that were featured on Business Breakdowns as of 9/14/21: Datadog, Wyndham Hotels, Dexcom, SmileDirectClub, ZoomInfo, Blackstone, Petco, Cardlytics, Exxon Mobil, Facebook, Formula One, Moderna, Pinduoduo, Invisalign, Wix, Ehererum, Calm, Visa, Twilio, Cinnabon, Costco, Alibaba, Chipotle and Shopify.
Here is the link: https://www.joincolossus.com/episodes?prod-episode-release-desc%5BrefinementList%5D%5BpodcastName%5D%5B0%5D=Business%20Breakdowns
Chamath Palihapitiya
Another good podcast with Chamath Palihapitiya. In this conversation with Ted Seides of the Capital Allocators podcast, Chamath discusses his journey from starting out as a derivates trader for an investment bank then transitioning to building AOL instant messenger to Facebook to his venture capital firm to where he is now at Social Capital 2.0.
He also talks about his self-discovery that helped him get to where he is now, how he manages his mental health so well by talking to people, how he setup an emerging managers program at Social Capital to help identify emerging managers that will be seeded by Social Capital to manage capital and many other interesting topics and ideas.
It's a great discussion which has a lot to learn from so I highly recommend listening to it.
https://capitalallocatorspodcast.com/2020/12/06/palihapitiya/
Jon Bathgate and Brinton Johns
This conversation between Shane Parrish, Jon Bathgate and Brinton Johns was incredibly interesting and informative. I've been very interested in how semiconductors work and what there role in the future will be but it's been very hard to find the answer in a simple and concise way.
Jon and Brinton do an amazing job answering all of the questions that you can think of on semiconductors including how they work, how they are built, where they're built, why they aren't built in the U.S., their role today and in the future, the geopolitics involved and many others.
"These are some of the most complex machines humans have ever built. They’re virtually impossible to reverse engineer. And in the case of something like photolithography which allows Moore’s law to go ahead, there’s only one company that builds the next generation machine that is keeping Moore’s law track. It’s ASML in the Netherlands."
"To try to replicate all of the manufacturing technology in terms of equipment, which is also I think probably a 20 year project in terms of replicating the various kind of parts of the manufacturing value chain and Brinton mentioned ASML, which literally has a monopoly on photolithography, which is probably one of the most kind of complex processes that humankind has ever engineered. I mean, it literally is more difficult than putting a man on the moon or building a 747 or you kind of pick what."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6NUO_bymuA
Chamath Palihapitiya
In this podcast, Chamath talks with Shane Parrish on the Knowledge project about mental health, investing, business, CEOs, the future and many other interesting topics. I think Chamath is one of the best thinkers in business and investing today, and Shane always does a great job preparing good questions for his guests to answer.
Here are some quotes from the podcast:
“That’s been a real theme of my life is just realizing that a lot of the things that I went through are normal. Feeling part of a pack is really helpful, actually. It’These are some of the most complex machines humans have ever built. They’re virtually impossible to reverse engineer. And in the case of something like photolithography which allows Moore’s law to go ahead, there’s only one company that builds the next generation machine that is keeping Moore’s law track. It’s ASML in the Netherlands.’s just resulted in better outcomes.”
“Being happy personally is the pathway to help everything else make sense and that is around mental health. I think the key unlock for mental health is just finding a resource to talk to.”
“I think that when push comes to shove, what you’re always going to be fighting is yourself. Panicking, overreacting, underreacting, refusing to observe the present, living too much in the past, wanting too much to believe in the future.”
And here is the link to their conversation: https://fs.blog/knowledge-project/chamath-palihapitiya/
All In Podcast with Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis,
David Sacks And David Friedberg
This is my favorite podcast right now. These four give their views on many of the biggest topics going on in the world right now. They all have have had lots of success in venture capital so they are some of the best resources for their opinion in the tech industry. Being able to get their views on the economy, tech, the stock market, politics, the coronavirus and several other topics remind me of how valuable podcasts have become.
This podcast started because these four are all best friends who used to play poker together and talk about various topics during their poker games but coronavirus is forcing everyone to social distance so they haven't been able to play poker in a while. They decided to start this podcast and I really do feel like I'm sitting at the poker table with them while listening because their viewpoints just feel so honest and not manipulated for public airwaves. It also helps that there no ads at all and no plans to do any in the future.
All episodes are really good but since they talk about what's going on in the world at the current time of recording, their podcasts are best listened to when they first come out and not months later otherwise it could seem a little outdated. It would be helpful to hear their process of thinking though and see how their predictions turned out. I know Chamath was a hell of a lot more correct in predicting how long this virus was going to affect the US then I was. I would say so far he's been pretty accurate whereas there were a lot of people in the US (including me) in March that thought that this virus would be gone in the summer but it hasn't been.
As I'm writing this on September 12, 2020, their most recent episode is number 7 and I thought it was their best one so far.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/all-in-with-chamath-jason-sacks-friedberg/id1502871393
Bill Gurley
Bill Gurley is a very successful venture capitalist who is known for being an early investor in GrubHub, Zillow, OpenTable, Uber, and many other companies. He has his own blog at http://abovethecrowd.com/ where you can read more of his work. On this podcast with Patrick O'Shaughnessy, some of the topics Bill discusses are his history on how he started out as a student at the University of Texas and went on to become an equity research analyst covering the tech sector at Credit Suisse and then ended up being a venture capitalist, his relationship with Michael Mauboussin and how much he helped him, some of his previous investments like NextDoor, the IPO market, technology and increasing returns, and many other interesting topics.
Podcast: http://investorfieldguide.com/gurley/
Naval Ravikant
Although the name of this podcast is called How to Get Rich it isn't just about making money. Naval discusses numerous subjects from philosophy, ethics, psychology, management, government, luck and lots more. This podcast initiated from a bunch of tweets that Naval put together on Twitter and then he put all of those ideas together during this podcast. I highly recommend it. Naval's fan base has been growing a lot lately because of how articulate he is in sharing his wisdom and experience on how he lives his life.
Podcast with transcript: https://nav.al/how-to-get-rich
Daniel Kahneman
Daniel Kahneman is a professor of psychology at Princeton University and a professor of psychology and Public Affairs at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He received the 2002 Nobel Prize in Economics for his work on decision-making and is the best -selling author of Thinking Fast and Slow. This book is one of my favorites and this podcast discusses a lot of the great ideas from the book such as Systems 1 and 2, intuition, framing, moral illusions, anticipated regret, the asymmetry between threats and opportunities, worrying and the remembering self vs the experiencing self.
Podcast: https://samharris.org/podcasts/150-map-misunderstanding/
Naval Ravikant
Naval gives another great podcast session, - I previously posted one of him with Shane Parish on the Knowledge Project - this time with the very popular Joe Rogan. Naval is popular for giving a lot of great life advice whether it be through interviews, podcasts, writing or on Twitter where he is very active. During this podcast, Naval touches on a bunch of subjects ranging from science, philosophy, wealth, happiness, social media, career, life, and reading just to name a few. After the podcast was over Joe Rogan even said himself that he was going to go back and listen to it. Below are some interesting remarks from Naval during the podcast:
"What is the meaning of life? You have to find your own answer. The beauty is, if there was a single answer, we would not be free. We would be trapped because we would have to live that answer, competing to fulfill that single meaning and signaling how good we are at it."
“We are overexposed to everything. The way to survive in modern society is to be an ascetic, it is to retreat from society. There’s too much society everywhere you go. You have society in your phone, society in your pocket, society in your ears… It’s socializing you and programming everyone. The only solution is turn it off.”
“I read for understanding. So with a really good book, I’ll flip through it. I won’t actually read it in consecutive order. I might not even finish it. I’m looking for ideas and things that I don’t understand. When I find something really interesting, I’ll reflect on it, research it, and then when I’m bored of it, I’ll drop it or I’ll flip to another book.”
"We live in an age of infinite leverage, and because of that, the impacts of good decision-making are much higher than they used to be."
Podcast: http://podcasts.joerogan.net/podcasts/naval-ravikant
Susan Cain
Susan Cain is the best-selling author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts In a World That Can't Stop Talking. She worked as an attorney in NYC before becoming a best-selling author and coveted public speaker. I'm only about halfway through this podcast so far but am really enjoying it. Two parts that I really like so far are the conversation Tim and Susan have about Susan's background before she became an author and some secrets they both share that helped them become better public speakers. It's not surprising that public speaking is difficult. We all know that just from experience. But what is surprising is that two people who do it for a living and are very good at it both experience similar struggles as most others do when just starting out. They just know how to deal with the struggles a lot better because of their experience and their persistence to become really good. Another interesting part of this podcast was their discussion on how they are both very introverted and they both need to use small life hacks to overcome this when in public settings for a long period of time.
Podcast: https://tim.blog/2019/01/24/susan-cain/
TED Talk from Susan Cain: https://www.ted.com/talks/susan_cain_the_power_of_introverts
Howard Marks
Shane Parrish gives us another great podcast in his interview with co-founder of Oaktree Capital Howard Marks. Howard talks about a wide range of subjects and ideas from parenting, risk taking, investing, and his background in the investment industry. He has become a household name on Wall Street due to his fabulous investment memos that he’s been writing for almost 30 years. Even Warren Buffett himself has complimented Howard by saying, “When I see memos from Howard Marks in my mail, they’re the first thing I open and read.” If you are interesting in reading Howard’s memos as well I posted a link below along with a link from fs.blog to this podcast.
Investment Memos: https://www.oaktreecapital.com/insights/howard-marks-memos
Podcast: https://fs.blog/howard-marks/
Robert Cialdini
Robert Cialdini is the author of the best selling book Influence which is widely used around the world on how to understand the psychology and unconscious behaviors that are going on in our minds while we are shopping. Salesmen are reading this book to understand how they can use these strategies to increase their performance and consumers are reading so they can prevent themselves from being tricked into buying something they don't need. In this podcast, Robert discusses with Barry Ritholtz the psychology surrounding how we are influenced and how it is all occurring without us even realizing it. Robert has been recognized as being the expert on this topic and has been widely recognized for his work, including praise from Charlie Munger.
Transcript: https://ritholtz.com/2018/11/transcript-robert-cialdini/
Yuval Noah Harari
Yuval Noah Harari is the best-selling author of the books Sapiens, Lessons for the 21st Century and Homo Deus. Every time I see Yuval giving a lecture or a podcast I always listen. His book Sapiens is one of the best books I've ever read. In this Google Talk, Yuval gives his thoughts on some of the most thought provoking ideas going on in the world today including AI and the future. He also discuses some of his ideas from his book Sapiens including how the world is created by humans through the stories that we tell each other.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bw9P_ZXWDJU
Jeff Bezos
The David Rubenstein Show has quickly moved into my top list of podcasts to listen to. David Rubenstein does a great job of asking interesting questions and he has a good sense of humor to him as well. He also gets a great cast of people to interview and in this episode he certainly doesn't disappoint. He interviews the founder of Amazon and the richest man in the world, Jeff Bezos. They discuss a lot of different subjects such as The Washington Post, Amazon's 2nd Headquarters, the space race, philanthropy and his background.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3NBQcAqyu4
Elon Musk
Elon Musk makes a rare public appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast. The internet is filled with memes, articles, videos, and other content of Elon smoking weed but don’t listen to it for that. Listen to it because one of the world’s brightest minds is sharing his opinions and thoughts about some of the most innovative and exciting topics today. They range from the 1-mile long hole that Elon is digging in LA to alleviate the awful traffic congestion, his opinion on artificial intelligence, a company he is working on called Neuralink which connects the computer and the brain, living life as if all reality as we know it is nothing but a simulation, and much more.
http://podcasts.joerogan.net/podcasts/elon-musk
Robert Greene
Robert Greene is a NY Times best selling author of 5 books. One of his most popular is The 48 Laws of Power.
In this interview, Shane and Robert discuss a wide range of topics including questions Shane has regarding his book The 48 Laws of Power. The depth of research that Robert does to prepare for a book is incredible. Robert discusses his research process and how long it takes him to write a book. Guess what? It's a lot longer than you think. In addition, he talks about his new book about the laws of human nature.
Overall it was a great interview and Robert Greene is one of the smartest authors to learn from so there is a lot of wisdom in this one.
Click on the link below to listen to the podcast:
https://fs.blog/robert-greene/
Brian Chesky
Brian is the founder of Airbnb and was the first guest on Masters of Scale. He starts by discussing how he grew Airbnb from a company with less than 10 customers who were mostly based in NYC to the company it is today. He flew all the way from San Francisco to New York City after some advice he received from Paul Graham. He then discusses the challenges he faced in scaling his company.
https://mastersofscale.com/brian-chesky-handcrafted/
Mark Zuckerberg
Mark Zuckerberg's entreprenurial talent goes back to when he was a teenager and created communication software that was similar to AIM instant messenger for his family home. The software was used by the Zuckerberg family household to communicate throughout the house. His father had a dentist practice and his office was at home so this communication software made it easy for him to communicate with Mark and his sister. Mark also created a snowball game for the computer that his sister loved. This was only the start of Mark's coding skills as we all know. Reid Hoffman of the Masters of Scale podcast delves into Mark's journey in the early years of bringing Facebook from a small website only accessible to Harvard students to multiple universities to 1 billion users and beyond.
https://mastersofscale.com/mark-zuckerberg-imperfect-is-perfect/
Ray Dalio
In this interview, Shane Parish interviews the founder of the world's largest hedge fund, Ray Dalio, of Bridgewater Associates. Ray Dalio shares with Shane some of the main reasons that led to the huge success he had with his fund. The reasons have a lot to do with dealing with pain, mistakes, and failure; an abnormal culture focused on radical transparency and an idea meritocracy; dealing with reality; and much more. Ray also discusses his transcendental meditation practice that he says is paramount to his success.
https://www.fs.blog/2017/10/ray-dalio/
Naval Ravikant
Naval is the co-founder of Angel List which is a website to connect startups, angel investors, and job seekers that are looking to work at start-ups. Naval is also an investor in start-ups as well. Some of his more known investments were Uber and Twitter. In this interview, Shane Parish does a great job letting Naval spill out a lot of his ideas and wisdom. It is one of Shane's longest interviews and the subjects range from reading, habits, decision making, mental models, psychology, math, life, and physics. Here are some interesting quotes from the interview below:
“I think the number one thing that clouds us from being able to see reality is that we have preconceived notions of the way it should be.”
“The idea that you’re going to change something in the outside world and that it is going to bring you the peace and everlasting joy and the happiness that you deserve, that is a fundamental delusion that we all suffer from.”
https://www.fs.blog/2017/02/naval-ravikant-reading-decision-making/
Bill Browder
The host of this podcast is Preet Bharara who is an American Lawyer and former US Attorney for the Southern District of NY. His host Bill Browder was the biggest investment manager in Russia with over a billion dollars of assets in the country. Bill decided to do some serious due diligence on some of the biggest companies in Russia and then publish his research with the media. This led to a turn of events for Bill and what happened next will shock you.
Bill doesn't hold back in telling his shocking story and if you are familiar with the Magnitsky Act then you may already have an idea of what happened. If you don't know what the Magnitskey Act then what it is is a bill passed in 2012 intending to punish Russian Officials responsible for the actions committed to Russian tax accountant Sergei Magnitsky in 2009.
I could be more specific in that definition and let you know what those actions were exactly but listening to the podcast without knowing will make it that much better for you as it keeps you in suspense.
https://www.cafe.com/episode-7-the-death-of-sergei-magnitsky-with-bill-browder/
Marc Andreessen
Marc Andreessen currently runs one of the most famous venture capital funds with his partner, Ben Horowitz, called Andreessen Horowitz. Andreessen Horowtiz was an early investor in some of the most well-known tech companies today which include Twitter, Airbnb, Groupon and Facebook.
Before co-founding Andreessen Horowitz, Marc was crucial in the early years of the internet for his contributions to the web browser. He was the developer of Mosaic and was the founder of Netscape which was eventually bought by AOL for about $4.2 billion.
In this thoughtful podcast, Tim Ferriss interviews Marc on his epic debate with Peter Thiel, his rules on investing, the future of bitcoin, Artificial Intelligence and much more.
Marc is a deep level contrarian thinker and the part of the interview where Marc was asked by Tim to describe an advertisement or billboard he thought about doing shows this. Marc said that his advertisement would be "raise prices" which isn't what most startups think about doing because of their fear of losing customers.
The problem that Marc elaborated on with this is that with the low prices that most startups are charging is what is preventing them from being able to hire other positions like a top level sales executive to help sell their product in more effective ways.
https://tim.blog/2016/05/29/marc-andreessen/
Sara Blakely
Sara is the founder and creator of the multi-billion dollar company Spanx. She didn't have a business degree but was still able to navigate the business world to found a billion dollar company. In this interview, she talks about a lot of her very interesting stories and approaches that led to her success. If you listen to her positive and charismatic attitude in this interview you will get a much better idea of how it all happened.
Some of the many that I remember were:
She started out selling fax machines by doing a lot of cold calling which helped her get great at selling, and more importantly face rejection.
When Sara was younger, her father had her and her brother each tell a story each week of something they failed at. Sara talks about a time she went for a tryout and failed and her father congratulated her.
She got comfortable embarrassing herself which included doing stand up comedy.