Howard Linson is the founder and general partner at Social leverage. All opinions expressed by Howard and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of social leverage or stock twits. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for decisions. Guess May maintain positions and securities discussed in this podcast.
Ka not that is me. How you doing? Mr. Howie bonjour bonjour server miss you who's on licorice, or I'm not sure what that means. But I'm sure it's something where are the pigs like or show SoDo LaRue today at Lee I speak a little French you grew up in Toronto at alert Yiddish French Hebrew English. Oh my God.
Yeah, didn't learn any of them. No. No, I little different which kids to learn foreign languages. Guess what they are terrible of all for exactly show spoken French because Brett Bivens it's like three in the morning. I think in Paris according to my Apple watch now it's probably about midnight. So he's been waiting up for us to have Mom Panic with friends Brett is one of my favorite reads. It sounds good and he invests in
In human health happiness opportunity and productivity through techniques as soon as going to talk a little bit about that move to Paris. That seems cool very cool. And there's many reasons he did that and he's got some I'm seeing some great angles from seeing the world of the Venture level from Le Gros islet, great Perry and he writes Adventure desktop and I follow him on Twitter. I think everybody after they listen to me. We'll be following them as well.
As start with Community knows this I like thinking about big trends in the best way to think about big trends is not by looking just at the daily prices, but by seeing how the venture capitalist and people around the world who love investing are thinking about incumbents and public stocks. Brett does a little bit of both and I kind of try and synthesize people like Brett into my thinking so we've only chatted we do not have faith. Luckily. He probably wouldn't agree to this appeared met me so we're gonna get him
We're going to get around the phone. If you've been to Paris, I haven't been to Paris many times the love that City. Okay, so let's get Brett on the phone. All right, sounds good.
Hello. Brat Howard. How are you?
I'm doing good. How late is it? There?
It is quarter after 10:00. So not too late. It's lunchtime more or less. Yeah, most nothing. Most people are just starting dinner. Although it was
Will do chief would like and we're well past. Oh and some french fries, please and some duck something duck, please immediately. Someone somewhere is ordering duck in an expresso right now in Paris and that's kind of like and lighting a cigarette
undoubted undoubtedly. Yeah. Do you smoke I do not I do not smoke have not picked up the habit since I moved over here.
Does your new baby smoke?
Not yet. I mean, I think it's a yeah, they start them young here.
It will I mean will try to hold try to hold off. I think we're in good shape. He doesn't seem too interested.
And so tell I gave a quick brief background. Take your time. Tell everybody a little bit about Brett Bivens.
So yeah background on me. So I grew up mostly in Michigan my sort of life, I guess as a kid growing up centered mostly around Sports. So it was a big baseball player and played pretty much everything else Under the Sun and that's sort of what
Got me to college got me a scholarship to play college baseball at school called Valparaiso right outside of Chicago. So that was you know, I was always a good student very interested in learning all of that, but it was really always had this sort of vision and focus on on baseball on the sport and just sort of felt like I was going to I guess just play Until somebody told me I couldn't anymore and kick me off the field essentially. I guess like most people that happened relatively early so, you know,
Me out of college. I had to had to go find a job. I majored in finance and school and so it was always sort of looking at that track interested in that track really didn't have much of an idea of what I wanted to do, but had the opportunity to take a role in sort of one of those investments in corporate banking programs in Chicago with Bank of Montreal and that was I mean kind of first foray into inter professional life, but around that time so this was, you know about a decade ago around that time.
Started following people frankly like you on Twitter and really saw this world that existed outside of that sort of basic normal professional track in a large corporate thing. And so that's sort of what got me into I guess thinking maybe a little bit differently about opportunities that were out there about the startup World about investing in different ways. And so I was lucky sort of right after that after about a year and a half there had the opportunity to sort of fuse those those
In passions of mine which protects and the one that I had for such a long time in sports joined a start-up out of New York called crossover intelligence, which was focused on Sports analytics really cool opportunity with you know, video and media and sports and so that job actually took me to India over to Bangalore. So that was I guess my first personal foray into working internationally living internationally helped us set up an office and scaling office over there, too.
Couple hundred people before moving back to the US was in San Francisco for for a little while. I was in Chicago for a little while in both cases working at early stage companies helping to build launch products and sell products and get those to Market and across a bunch of different areas. So across e-commerce and Enterprise SASS and a little bit in kind of the fintech and Equity crowdfunding space as well. So had exposure to a bunch of those areas and sort of at that point.
Realizing that I loved all of those areas. I love going deep in all of those areas. I enjoyed studying them talking to people on the ground doing interesting work there, but wanted to continue to have I guess exposure across all these different categories and all of these different companies types and the sort of natural next step for me was to move a bit into the investing side was really lucky to meet the the founding team at Tech Nexus about four years ago, which was when I made the leap from working in those operating rules.
To working in Morgan investing
and what was the reason for Paris move
mix of mix of personal and professional. So my wife is from here, we were you know in the process of having our second kid, and we wanted to sort of see what it was like to live here raise kids here sort of compare and contrast with life in the United States. So that was the first piece of it. I think in the in the time that I had gotten to know her and had spent a lot of time over here.
and I'll click on another European Venture ecosystem really well and built up a lot of connections with people started to build relationships and was just really excited about what was happening here from a talent perspective from a capital perspective and also saw an opportunity for us to invest over here and then be a you know, a path a conduit to help companies expand into the u.s. And sort of arrived at that landing spot for them as a firm and so we were able to kind of build a strategy around that and I'm over here about two years ago to
Pursue that in addition to the personal stuff
and what's been the biggest I mean listen, we live in 2020, right? So covid covid everywhere outside of the virus what has been the biggest adjustment for doing your job.
You know, I think it's it has really been a challenge and an interesting challenge to try to plug into all of the different Venture ecosystems here in Europe. I think that's been a big piece.
Of our strategy is trying to figure out how to fit in and all these different places London Berlin Stockholm, obviously Paris and what the right way to do that is and so that's been that's certainly been an interesting challenge to try to figure out especially now when you can't travel as much but as one person over here on our team, there's really only so much travel I could do in the first place. So I think that's been that's certainly been one piece of it and then you know, timezone stuff is is always a bit of a challenge but I think our team is pretty good at that and
Yeah have it adjusted just find that so it's largely been about trying to really harsh what's going on on the ground and all these different markets and trying to figure out ways to actually know what's going on there at the you know, and we're typically investing seed stage late seed stage for the most part and so a lot of the more interesting thing that's happened things that are happening on the ground or not going to necessarily be you know in the Press publicized Etc. So I think that's been you know, the most interesting challenge to try to tackle.
And how big is the firm
now?
So we are a team of about 15 and that's spread across and investing team. We've got people on our team that are really focused on driving sort of post investment collaboration with this big corporate Network that we have. So that's sort of the model that we largely pursue is these vertical focused funds in different categories. So industrial categories health and wellness Public Safety and smart cities another one and then audio and media is another area that we focus among a few other places, so
Big group of people on the investing team a team of people that are really focused on that post investment work and then additionally some some other folks that are, you know, playing a bunch of different roles. So that's kind of the the size there and then in terms of you know investing in portfolio, I think we'll probably deploy somewhere on the order of 20 million or so this year and current portfolio is around 75 80 companies
and what are the things to do? Like, what's your so folks? I know you love me.
Music or audio? So is that like top of your list?
That's a yeah, that's that's one of the bigger Focus areas. It's been an area that we have invested quite a bit in over the last three or four years. So one of our sort of corporate Partners in that space is a company called sure which is a microphone and headphone company and that provides us with a really interesting sort of aperture into the ecosystem at sort of the the corporates and incumbent level. And yeah, we've done a lot of investing in that area as well.
That's that's definitely one big area that we've invested in audio and then media more broadly and then another kind of segments that we've been pretty active in is digital health and wellness. And so that's been you know, I think in both cases have been categories that have been interesting to see you know, the the emerging Trends the acceleration of trends that has happened in the midst of all of this but but yeah, those are those are two of the big areas that we've been probably most focused on and again with 80 companies in the portfolio and all these different
Vertical focuses. It really is almost generalist, it breaks out too. But but yeah, each of us have different areas that we focus on pursue more aggressively.
So like me you seem to like the public markets and and it kind of our Paws past really Krauss when I think about how you think about audio and Spotify and social networks. What got you interested in public markets. Does that play a factor at all? What you do or you just like you just like talking about them?
I think it does. I mean I think for one it provides an easier.
And more I guess other people that are out there that you want to maybe talk to or have conversations with about these markets have more context around public companies. And so it's maybe easier and more accessible for everybody to have those types of conversations in more of a public setting. So it lends itself to Twitter conversations and blog posts and whatnot. So that's one piece of it. I think there's but there's absolutely, you know, a company like Spotify has its hands in so many different parts of the audio and media ecosystem. And so I think it's an early stage investor in that category. It makes sense, too.
To follow them closely understand what they're doing what they're seeing how user behaviors coalescing around the products that they're bringing to the market. That's that's definitely a piece of it and I think the other interesting thing, you know with a company like Spotify and there's obviously a handful of these increasingly is seeming to be true with many of these companies that go public and build these big big businesses is that its founder LED so as an early stage investor, I think that's always something that you know, I'm trying to learn more and more about is what does it take for somebody like Daniel X to go from you know this
Early stage founder this young founder in a very much a secondary Market who built this company that's now a 45 50 billion dollar market cap company. And so trying to trying to piece together all of those different things I think is a pretty interesting way of looking at it and thinking about it. So yeah, that's that's definitely I guess the the interest in the public markets there
and you have a unique take on Spotify. You got long I'm long. I don't know if you're long, but you have a great thesis that is proven out.
Recently, what do you like about what what do you think the big opportunity is there and the obstacles the biggest obstacles,
you know, like I said, it's a company that I've been following for for quite some time. But I'd always been a little bit hesitant to really pull the trigger and go long on the company. I think there's there's the competitive landscape is pretty crazy. You know, you look at who they're up against and it's just pick a pick a big impressive aggressive company and they're on that list. So that's a challenge.
Sort of business model challenges are well known around the relationship with record labels and things like that. So that was always the thing that sort of pushed me off to it. Obviously like a lot of people in my ears started perking up around the time that they got a little bit more aggressive in podcasting and you know, as I was thinking about, you know, my personal relationship to Spotify is a user I started seeing myself using it more and more. I thought that was an interesting data point you start looking at the numbers and it's you know 280 million users.
Now and you see the figures around, you know, hour and a half per day or you know, whatever. It may be whatever it is. It's a pretty impressive pool of attention that they're capturing and so started saying, okay. I'm probably never going to turn from this product. These hundreds of millions of users are likely never going to turn from this product or at least it's going to take something significantly to make that happen. And so that was certainly one piece of it and I think the the podcast strategy even back in sort of Q3 of last year seems like it was starting to
Pay dividends in terms of you know, not necessarily increasing margins for the business because they do have the sort of long-term relationships with the record labels that you lock them into a certain margin structure over time, but was increasing their leverage and just the the access to talent and the access to those artists that they that they were getting and so, you know, you could sort of see that incremental leverage increasing increasing increasing and then I think the other piece of it and this kind of the phrase for that.
Turn that I always use for it is ambient media. So ambient media being this idea that you know, you've got the extension of ambient Computing essentially. You've got the iPhone in your pocket that's serving your are pods in your glasses. And so you start to get into this world where media is a little bit more contextual a little bit more Dynamic and becomes more of an eyes up sort of format. So I think that eyes up format where you've got, you know media around you all the time. It's sort of tends to audio a little bit and because of the fact that Spotify is always been so
Strong on the Discovery side of things. I thought that was another piece that sort of gave them an edge there. And so that was sort of the the impetus for for me. I guess going long getting excited about the direction that they were going and then I think really over the last you know, I think that was probably December when I started getting really excited about it over the last four or five months. They've just gotten so aggressive with new product features new releases seemingly kind of cashing in on some of that leverage that they've that they've established to really accelerate the
Business so it's been exciting to see
and is their blind spot like what other than the you know, they're always going to be apple whether Apple tries. No, I think it's too late for them to even it just doesn't move the needle for Apple. So Apple will just be a disciple. Should I question? Is there any other than their own lack of you know Focus which you know, this is what's great about Fender LED companies. There's no reason that he should relax. He knows he can't relax is there are blind spots are other than valuation.
I mean, I don't know if they're blind spots, but I think there's I mean there's two real. Yeah, real significant challenges or things that if they really started to lose their Edge would be would be concerning. I think the first one is around Discovery. So if they were to and this is kind of a squishy thing it's hard to say, you know exactly how they're better in Discovery than maybe there are other competitors, but I think what you're seeing today, is that companies like Tick Tock and maybe even snap now who has access to music rights, and it's starting to do something.
Around music if they sort of redefine the way that music and audio is discovered via, you know, very social channels. I think that's a that's a big concern. So I think you're seeing Spotify like push more aggressively into social features social elements of the product to kind of combat against that but I think that's a major risk for the company. And then I think the other one is sort of around this idea of ambient media again, and you know, it's not Sarah travel from Benchmark has a really good way of framing this.
She talks about media and attention as sort of rocks and sand and water sort of that Parable. I don't know exactly where it's from but that old Parable and you get things like, you know, Netflix that are a two hour movie and that's a that's a rock and that's you know, they exist there. Whereas something like audio is a little bit more like water and it again it's it fits into all these different cracks in your day when you're out walking your dog or cleaning the dishes doing doing all that kind of stuff and I think that you know, one of the things that becomes a pretty big risk for Spotify if they
Move aggressively in this area is around social audio experiences. So, you know, I think a lot of the hype and conversation is around things like Clubhouse, but I think what I'm more referring to is probably more around gaming so if instead of putting my ear pods in and putting a song on while I go walk my dog if I go into a Discord channel to listen to my friends play whatever game they're playing at the time even if I can't fully participate in the game just being there and in conversation, I think you know, I think that
Poses a pretty big threat. So I think it'll be interesting to see how far down that social path Spotify goes. So I guess all of that is to say like social seems to be the blind spot or at least the area that they haven't pushed far enough in yet that they probably need to to Really accelerate long-term.
What goes it comes full circle, right but grew on the backs of Facebook social and now they have to figure out how to handle it in a know that they're a planet kind of attention Planet themselves. They
Have to solve it again, which brings me to Snapchat another stock that I've long don't use it obviously because I'm 54 and don't understand it, but I see my kids using and I kind of got bullish recently. So you mentioned recently that they can do this as lovers or as enemies. Where do you see them crossing paths?
Yeah, I can't see them ever, you know merging or really coming together and in a meaningful way, you know, if it's an m&a situation, I think that's pretty unlikely. Just again going back to the founder LED thing with with the two Founders. They're being very, you know, very Visionary very product focused very very long-term focused. It's hard to see that ever happening and you so I think that it does become more of a, you know, more of a competitive Dynamic with with those two again with with
Apps trying to they recently acquired music rights to see if they can work that into the product. I think a lot of the stuff that they're doing with, you know, almost the the super a play where they're starting to Loop different different applications into what they're doing that gives them, you know access potentially to products like head space to work with and different ways to start kind of capturing attention from an audio perspective. So, you know, I think they'll probably get closer together and then on the other side Spotify doing more things around social with group sessions and
you know giving artists tools to create sort of social like experiences around their music and around their work. So I think they'll probably come closer together from a competitive standpoint. I think there's probably, you know, quite a bit of room and quite a bit of growth left in both of the areas that they're in and I think both begin like you said have that Focus that is drawn from having Founders at the helm and long-term Founders at the helm. So so yeah, I think that you know as interesting as that would be in as many sort of sub stack posts and tweets and
And whatnot that a really deep relationship between the two would would birth. I think it's probably more likely that they are a bit adversarial
that's interesting because I totally agree with you right in a world of maybe not egos. But like I built this I don't need to sell it, you know see the same thing with slack Oceano everybody expecting about who will buy them and I'm like no if you know, why would he sell same thing with a voice? Like you've been this far? Why do you need to sell unless it become bread, but there always is a case where these
two guys get in the background we go. Fuck it. We can't if we're going to be a super app in a planet for real. We're just going to have to swallow the ego and merge and kick some ass because like micro, you know, Nadella calls Trump on a weekend to get to tick tock deal done. You know, like I don't even know how the yeah, that's it. Like this is like the greater is no right. There is no even playing field anymore. It's just War
now, that's a hundred percent sure. And I think that's actually another reason that I've been sort of interested in seeing this Spotify Journey play out a little bit from my perch.
I guess here in Europe is you know that it is one of those marginalized companies snap snap as well who have performed extremely well been extremely Innovative around product but are still sitting there as subscale in a world of trillion dollar companies. And yeah, how do you how do you actually compete and get to the point where where you can actually fend off, you know attacks if if an apple were to actually invest in going after this space or you know again like you said if Microsoft can just make that one phone call?
All and acquire this this massive product and put snap on and seals. I think yeah, I think that's actually a really interesting point that they might just out of out of self-preservation before stint to something like that.
Well, that's not for preservation. I mean the Marcus could bidding them up whether they like it or not. The pressure of that finally will bring them to the table said listen, I'm 50 Billy. We laugh all night, you know, we could say. Oh, I really think I'm worth 50 billion. This is what the markets going to have to come to Market starting to price in the fact that people are going to have to gang up to build.
You know planets themselves. Otherwise, you know the markets bid these things up to 50 billion dollars. I'm not saying I don't think Spotify on its own in a world of zero interest rates can get to a hundred billion. I do think that but that's just based on the fantasy of zero interest rates and a product that's you know, eight to 80, you know, but, you know, mathematically in an Excel spreadsheet, it will never make sense. So I think they're just going to have to at some point or see their stocks, you know, regularly fall 30 to 50%
Said and so that's interesting and and then Twitter which you use a lot. What should they do? I know you've talked about subscription site. So what's the play if you're CEO there and you want to get the stock out of the doldrums, what are they doing wrong for so many smart people to be using it and frustrating, you know shareholders. Is there something there that you see?
Yeah. I mean, it's amazing how much sort of value they've created for for other platforms as a discovery engine. I mean, I think
you can you can point to podcasts is one area where they have powered a significant amount of value around Discovery. I think everything is happening today around these, you know, one person media companies has all really been powered by you know, Twitter discovery that interest graph is so incredibly powerful. So I think that you know, it might be early enough in the life cycle of this, you know, emerging media Market of all of these individuals breaking away from Publications or or you know, at least
Thinking the way that they address their audiences to try to do something there. You know, I don't have a ton of Faith necessarily in Twitter to be able to pull that off and to really be able to create a monetization engine around that that is you know, both both good for them and good for the users. I think they've struggled with that kind of stuff in the past. But you know, I don't know if subscription is a cure-all for that but it certainly does seem to to make sense. They're the center of the universe for all of these journalists and writers and
And a lot of you know a lot of content creators, so I think it does make sense for them to at least pursue that subscription play see if they can keep that off before it gets another before another Market gets away from them like music did like podcast and has so I think it's yeah, I mean, I think that's why
it's like medium Evan Jack. Hey ya know what the deal is but obviously have leaves starts medium Jack Lee starts where Jack back at Twitter and still at medium just writing checks substitute comes
Remote mediums medium on a business model or utility basis, right? And it just feels like Jack's going to make the move when I saw you write that I got that totally makes sense that could totally afford it. It's such a scalable simple tie into the text-based version of what Twitter is, you know, so
yeah, you're talking about sub stack. Is that what you're talking about or
me? Yeah. Yeah. We're buying subject will never buy medium and medium kind of boat in terms of how to build a subscription product.
Duct
ya know and it is so interesting. I mean you you sort of see me not to totally change the subject here. It's still on on points a little bit with what Jax done is square, but the just the depth of sort of understanding and the the internalization of how to build a really great social product there with what they've done with cash out. It's almost amazing that they haven't been able to translate. And again, these are different companies, of course, but with the same leadership at the Helms and not be able to translate some of that Mojo I guess over to to Twitter is
Kind of incredible. So I don't know I it would be kind of interesting to see if those two companies come closer together over time as squares company that I'm long. I think they're really interesting business. But yeah, that's that be another one that you know could be could be an interesting. You know, I don't know if it's a merger or anything like that but something that's you know something that's interesting is if those companies were to come closer together and
for for the audio files, what is interesting? What are you saying this so you mentioned this app called cappuccino, but what are you playing with that sin?
Arresting in the audio
space. Yeah, you know, I think those social products that are coming up a lot of them are audio first and I think there's there's some really really cool stuff happening there. So yeah cappuccinos a really cool one company called riff is a really cool one as well. We're not investors and neither of these companies, but just sort of love a lot of the experimentation that's happening around short form. Audio social audio different ways of because one of the things that I think is a big problem in the audio space.
That there's sort of this this residue or these these accidents that have accumulated over time in that world where it's like, this is your music app. This is your podcasting app. This is your audiobook app and that's has a lot to do with sort of these, you know monopolies like apple who didn't really do much in podcasting for years and Amazon with books and the record labels with with music holding, you know holding so much power in that space and so everything's sort of been separated and now I think there's there's really interesting things coming together at you know, kind of the intersection of
All of that stuff so making it possible for social audio experiences to emerge live audio is certainly interesting and then I still think there's a lot of interesting things to to happen in I guess like the wellness space around audio and media more generally, so that'd be a few kind of quick thoughts there.
And what are you in cappuccino? What does it do? Like, you said you liked it? So what is it? What's the use case?
Yeah. So the use case is it's pretty valuable use case. It's
It is like this very intimate very personal radio show that you might have with with your friends and it's an asynchronous sort of radio show. So you're sort of going through the day you record, you know different different cappuccinos you those all get stitched together automatically with some really nice background music and you wake up in the morning and you've got a you know, three to three to five minute video or audio recording of your friends or your family kind of talking you through what
And in their day, so like the use case that we kind of use it for which is kind of fun is mostly family. So we've got a five-year-old. He's telling jokes or teaching his cousin in the US different French words, and she's responding back with you know, different things like that. And so I think there's like an intimacy to audio that is is really interesting. And you know again that's a very early stage product with some really great Founders and who knows where it will go over the long term, but I think that there's there's some really, you know, interesting interesting work to be done around that intimacy that
Creates and how you can weave that into more parts of the day-to-day life.
And then the Riff app. What is that poor
risk is it is a way to add Nuance to you know conversations that are happening online or things that you're seeing online. So I think that's a frustration that a lot of people have with something like Twitter is you can both be you can be a conversation with somebody and there's just so so little Nuance to to have in that in that Forum or that discussion that you're always
find yourself Talking past people are often find yourself Talking past people. And so this is sort of an audio expansion a weight is almost annotate the web. So taking, you know, taking images or screenshots of or pictures of different things that that you're seeing on on Twitter or on a blog or in you're just walking around and adding audio on top of it. So it's a way to just enrich those those things that you're saying throughout your day with audio again, sort of a more intimate more nuanced way.
To provide context on on a conversation so that you can move away from the flame Wars that often occur in social media conversations to something. That's a bit more substantive.
All right, that's cool. The I want to end this one talking about, you know, investing in general like it seems like Benchmark has had a big influence on you. You covered it in the long essay that you did benchmarks been doing top of their game in the Venture business for
For a couple decades at least and you wrote a deep dot dive on how how you think about that and how it's affected you so they seem to obviously be a mentor or the way they think is kind of how you think is that is that true?
Yeah, I think that's I think that's fair. I think yeah, it's hard to look at a group like that or firm like that that is had the type of continuity and success and not be really impressed and not want to you know as a student of investing in Venture Capital to try to dig in and to analyze it a little bit more so you
I think that's a that's a very fair
assumption a fair point. So you did this thing on the merits of Bottoms Up investing. So what like walk us through that and take your time and and how you you look at the Benchmark model and clurman and Uber and the quiddity quality and kind of meld all that together for us.
Yeah. Absolutely. So, you know value investors will certainly be familiar with Seth klarman and one of his sort of seminal I guess discussion.
Acts in the book margin of safety is really all around top-down versus bottom-up investing. So top-down being this approach where you're trying to time the market you're trying to be smarter and outsmart all these different people you're you know, you're really facing a pretty daunting task of predicting what's going to happen, you know more accurately and faster than thousands of different people and it kind of turns into almost this greater full game, whereas, you know, bottoms up investing on the other hand is really
you know looking at all the cards on the table as Benchmark often talks about it, you know, it's not coming with a you know, a predefined narrative in mind not getting carried away with with with that narrative that might be driving the market but really seeing the president clearly is the phrase that they often use and often talked about and that sort of always resonated with me because I think as a you know, when you're first getting involved investing in probably until the day you stopped investing it is always hard to
to you know, stay elevated above the narrative to sort of understand what the narrative is but understand where the holes in it are and you know, what might be what might be false about that narrative. And so I think that approach is is something that that resonated pretty strongly that idea of staying grounded in the present staying grounded in the tactile reality of what's happening on the ground which doesn't mean, you know being ignorant of what's happened in the past that got the market to where it is and it certainly doesn't mean not having the point of view about future because that's that's
For for any investor and especially for Venture investors, but it's really again about what's happening on the ground today. I think that the way that bill girly talks about it, which is what the word that you mentioned which is this idea of liquidity quality is is really good and really profound and it's this idea of not looking too far ahead. Not necessarily, you know expanding too fast, but really focusing again, what's in front of you what's on the ground. How do we drive really really incredible, you know unit economics growth Within
in a small cohort and then think about you know, expanding and driving bigger and and really getting things spinning that way and so all of those things kind of, you know come together and I think the way that I described it in the in the post is you know, I think they've had a number of those a number of those Investments that if you look back and it's always easy to kind of make these observations looking backwards, but you see things like Stitch fix and you see things like Yelp as being very very perfect applications of this.
Are you know maybe initially the market seems smaller? They were only in one or two cities, but they had this incredible sort of Engagement and retention and the fire was sort of burning bright and when you get to that point, you know, it's then easy to go bigger poor Venture Capital dollars on it etcetera. And so I think the same thing was true with with goober where it was really, you know, if you sort of if you took a top-down view on it, which I think a lot of people did back in the day and they said what can get this from a top-down view the Global Taxi Market is x billion.
Ian dollars or x hundred million dollars even so there's no way that over can ever be, you know bigger than this. Whereas what was actually happening on the ground was that they were creating this entirely new Transportation infrastructure. They were changing consumer Behavior. They were leveraging new technologies and this new platform that was emerging in the iPhone and they were really creating something. That was the perfect kind of Bottoms Up investment. So, yeah, so that's that's kind of the I guess long-winded way of saying that it's really a you know by right
Something like that. It's really just sort of committing myself to this commitment bias of trying to hold true to that idea of not getting too carried away by narrative understanding what the narrative is, but trying to stay grounded and what's happening, you know on the ground what's being driven by by these entrepreneurs by these new business models by these new technologies versus versus trying to take it from from too much of a top-down view where you know, you're sitting in a room somewhere thinking you're you know, the smartest person in the world and make all these decisions
and the last question about
thematic and both of you know, Seth talk to Seth. Klarman talks about the Perils of it. What do you what do you see in there? Because I'm a thematic person myself. And so we're
yeah. Yeah, absolutely. No and I think the other piece of that writing it was that it was a bit contradictory to the way that I think that that I invest in our team invests and the way that a lot of investors in the market that I you know, look up to him and have a lot of respect for invest and I do think that you know, maybe the closer you get to company formation, you know as a
Seed investor seed stage investor when the market is not there yet when it hasn't been developed you do certainly have to be a little bit closer to that founder mindset a little bit closer to that very thematic approach of of why you're going after something. So I think it was interesting to explore what they do because it is it is a bit contradictory to the way that you almost have to invest at that stage. So the distinction I would sort of make there is is that bottoms up investing again isn't about not having a not
Being a perspective on the future but it is about making sure that the work that you're doing is is sort of first party on the ground you're not removed from from what's Happening and not letting narrative drive. You too much you're staying as close as you can to the actual entrepreneurs that are building this stuff the actual consumer Behavior that's driving, you know new Adoption the actual technologies that are coming to Market. So that's kind of the way that I think about it. So I agree. I mean, I think the magic investing is is is great and very very,
Ebola and again as you're closer and closer to that formation of a company, it's probably more and more necessary but there's a there's a probably a give and take so that you don't go too far in either direction that I think is important.
Okay great anything I was going to ask you quickly the biggest difference, you know family life. Is it is it is that quality of life for cost of living between, you know, Chicago Paris and we talked about business-wise, but like what's the biggest, you know life change
JH again, yeah over the sun.
Right? Right, you know, it's really interesting. I think that the one thing that I think I probably understood before moving here. But but that is always a bit surprising is just how similar life can be and in any big city that you live in around the world. So, you know, there's nothing that there's you know, nothing sort of day-to-day too much that that you sort of Miss from from the US. I think that one thing that is, you know, quite interesting here in Paris versus a place like Chicago pairs is a much more.
Expensive city than Chicago on the face in terms of cost of living but some of the things you know with having having two kids here things like childcare things like healthcare. Those things are just so much less expensive mean at face value from a consumer payment perspective. Obviously the tax situation plays into how that all gets paid for. But in terms of out-of-pocket stuff that's been actually pretty interesting to be able to move to a city like Paris that is a lot more expensive in terms of any kind of cost-of-living index that you look at and actually have you know, the
The quality of life the cost-of-living be, you know, pretty pretty much the same or actually less expensive than Chicago. So that's been kind of an interesting thing to see.
All right, you're the man Bret. It's just a pleasure to kind of think with you. We kind of think alike. So I always get nervous at like okay England just I'm gliding onto people that think like me but I like the way you mailed public and private and how you think about the world and obviously it got an Explorer in you moving around the world. That's a big change no matter
What Chicago Paris big change and what do you feel about the economy? They're like as it is as bad as I think it is Europe is it just just feels creaky?
Yeah, it's it's quite it's quite tricky here. I mean, I think we spent last week where my wife is from in the east of France the really beautiful kind of Tours town in the mountains with late and everything like that and you really start to you see the impacts very visibly you see
You know way fewer tourists Asian tourists American tourists. It's all it's all French people. The restaurants seem packed when you look at them, but then you realize it's because nobody's inside eating. So yeah, I think that things are things are pretty creepy here just like they are in the US and sort of all over the place. So I think a lot of people are sort of waiting for the other foot to drop I think the good thing is that you know schools are back in session daycares back kids are at sort of summer school here. So some of the challenges that have maybe prevented people from being able to
Go back to work in the US or be as productive with their work in the US has been stunted a little bit just because of the fact that people can get back to normal life a little bit faster here. But again, we'll see you there's so much uncertainty that you know in a week's time. We could be right back in quarantine mode or you know, something like that. So yeah, I think creaky is a really good way to describe it. People are walking a bit on eggshells sort of like everybody's still going on their vacation doing their trips, but they're certainly not spending as much not
Going as far away and and sort of all a little bit more
cautious. Yeah, Europe is creaky. I would say u.s. Is creepy. So we both have our worries, you know, it sucks living in a creepy area here it just like cringe everything's cringe-worthy. But Europe Europe doesn't cringe as much but it just like I said, it just feels like it was it feels like you could tip either way. So Rootin for the old continent hope to get over to Italy soon. I appreciate your
I am a more Wikipedia on the
rotation. Yeah, thank you, and I appreciate the opportunity to come on and talk and yes great to do this.
Alright, thanks, bro.
Thanks Howard.
Knut, what's up,
buddy? Not much. I kind of Wonder I was going to ask him if I had a chance to how they pronounce his name in friends Bivens. I mean, it's like evolved that there's sadist. I mean, I don't smoke in his face like every other American I go from a guy's name who's been butchered all over the world. I can sympathize labrat. Look at what the hell anyways like the way he thinks could follow for people. Mostly you are trying to discover people.
Here that have a unique Take On The World and he definitely does Chicago Paris Health Wellness audio. I'm in that camp show. I like finding people that are surfing up ideas that give me both conviction and new ideas. So easy follow on Twitter keeps things simple. So hopefully everybody enjoy that will be back soon. If you like the podcast just follow along go to search my name Howard Linton LA and tcon on Spotify.
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