Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
· David Senra, Patrick O'Shaughnessy
[00:00:00] S1: I don't remember the first time you brought up this idea to me. Now, it seems obvious in hindsight, right? Because people have been reading profiles- [00:00:00] S0: Yeah, now everyone's launching a magazine and it's going to be like podcasts. [00:00:00] S1: But not only that, like, specifically profiles. Where like, people have been reading, like you just mentioned it. I bought that book too that you told me about, about the New Yorker called... like, people have been... they're always interested in people. I remember reading, Larry Ellison loves to pick fights, and he thought it was, like, really good. And he didn't like the fact that Oracle... he had no media strategy for Oracle and he's like, "Oracle is just compared to other database companies and I don't like that. I want to be compared to the best companies in the world." [00:00:00] S0: Yeah. [00:00:00] S1: It's almost like this idea me and you bond over that we both learned from Jared Kushner, constant refinement of association. So he's like, "I don't want to be compared to Siebel or however you say it." Like these other... [00:00:00] S0: Sea Bass? From Dumb and Dumber, that's from Dumb and Dumber. [00:00:00] S1: Well, I don't know what it's called. [00:00:00] S0: Siebel? That's probably what you're thinking of. David, not an investor. A podcaster.
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy, David Senra
[00:00:00] S0: Siebel? That's probably what you're thinking of. David, not an investor. A podcaster. [00:00:00] S1: There you go. Forever. All my vocab comes from the written word. So, you know, everybody makes fun of me because all my DMs are like "You mispronounced this word. It's very obvious, buddy." But his whole point is like, "I don't want to be associated with these people. I want Oracle be in the same vein as IBM or Microsoft." And so he's like, "The way I'm going to do that is I'm going to pick a fight with Bill Gates and Microsoft," and he does this huge fight. And originally, he thought that it was going to be, you know, Microsoft versus Oracle. And he's like, "But people are interested in personalities more than they're interested in companies or technologies." [00:00:00] S0: Of course. [00:00:00] S1: So it became billionaire A versus billionaire B. And it greatly elevated his profile, and then he said that Oracle and Oracle's products were risen, like, came along with the increase. [00:00:00] S0: Right. [00:00:00] S1: So, the reason I bring that up is because people are fascinated with profiles of other people. We are fundamentally more interested in other people and what they can teach us about ourselves than anything else. What were you thinking? Because that was something that existed forever. And who writes great profiles now? I don't even see any of them.
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy
[00:00:00] S0: That's the other part that's exciting, is because I like things that are really hard. Okay, so originally... hardship, we didn't talk as much about hardship. I think you've been talking a lot about doing something that's different just because it's different. I would add on – which I think is interesting and correct – but I would add onto that, like, it should be different and really hard. Like, really hard to do. And I'm sampling all the profiles we've written in my head. Some of them are ridiculously hard to write. Not only because of all the hours and work that has to go into it and the talent as a writer that has to go into it, but sometimes, it's sensitive parts of the person's life that's never been written about and they've never talked about, and maybe they don't want to talk about it or they don't want you to talk about. And it's the coaxing it out of them, and that takes time and trust. And so the thing I can't wait for is the profile that we write 10 years from now that we start working on today. We have this idea, which we've started to do, where we just ask people, "Can I just have lunch with you once a year? And I'm not going to do anything with it, I just want to start collecting the line." And maybe we'll write something in 10 years, you know? So, things that are really hard to make are really interesting to me. And I think people stopped doing profiles because they're really hard to make. They take time, the business model kind of sucks. Like, the pay is terrible. You know, profile writers are not paid well. The world went a different direction. It's much cheaper and faster to make a stupid fucking TikTok than write a 50-page profile about someone that's careful and intricate and well-written. And I believe, you and I certainly talk about this all the time, the world is desperate for some stuff like that. The world is so sick of this crap, just all day, every day. It's just crap. And everyone makes the junk food comparison because it's a perfect comparison. Like, junk food got to where it was because it's been optimized for us to want the most of it possible, whether or not it's good for us. It's obviously horrible for us. It's the same thing with most content, and everyone knows this in their gut, and we all want something more carefully created. And I think profile might be perhaps the ultimate expression of that.
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy, David Senra
If a documentary is the ultimate profile, maybe that's even harder than writing a profile. But, yeah, I'm interested in stuff that's very hard to make and that's singular, that can't be easily copied. And, I mean, the literal answer to your question, it's kind of funny, was somebody – I'm actually seeing him Monday, gave me the idea to potentially buy this existing magazine. And we didn't buy it because I like to create our own things primarily. But it was notable to me that this magazine, which had been around for a long time, had all these incredible... I'd never heard of the magazine, and it had all these incredible people on the cover and I thought, "This is strange. Why are these people doing this magazine that no one's ever heard of?" Big names. And it dawned on me, I was like, "Oh, it's the cover." People can't say no to a cover. And so I tested that theory out and it was true, and I think what that means is it's, like, the ultimate form of spotlight and attention that you can give to somebody, and so that's what got me actually literally spinning on, like, "Oh, maybe we should... I would love to have a cover that I could dole out." [00:00:00] S1: Did that idea come before or after you read Jeremy Stern's piece on Palmer Luckey?
· David Senra, Patrick O'Shaughnessy
[00:00:00] S1: Did that idea come before or after you read Jeremy Stern's piece on Palmer Luckey? [00:00:00] S0: Before. So I was then on the hunt. And this is another idea that you and I talk about often, which is, if you want to hire someone for a thing, just go consume as much of the thing made by a million people as possible. Whoever made the best one, go for them. There was this funny conversation during COVID, an investor friend of mine, one of the great investors ever who's now retired. It was part of the Zoom conversation, and the topic of the conversation was attributes of great founders, and at some point someone goes, "Well, maybe it'd be easier to think about them not as founders, but as inventors," and everyone thought, "Oh, that's a cool idea. Okay, let's talk about them as inventors, not as founders." And then someone said, "Well, what are the attributes of a great inventor?" And people started, you know, "They're this, they're this, they're this," and this one investor's face started contorting and you could just see that he was frustrated by all these answers, and it got to him, and he was like, "Morons, who cares? Did they make a good invention?" Like, if the invention is good, the inventor is probably good. [00:00:00] S1: Yeah.
· David Senra, Patrick O'Shaughnessy
[00:00:00] S1: Yeah. [00:00:00] S0: And so I think you and I have taken that approach to... I certainly have, to finding people. Like, just look at what they did. Jeremy wrote the best profile that I read. Turns out he's a great profile writer. Like, he's written 10 more and will write 100 more. I was then on the hunt after I and we had this idea to go now, "Okay, now let's go find the best people to do this thing." [00:00:00] S1: People vastly underestimate the importance of volume. [00:00:00] S0: Yeah.