Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
00:00:01 · Patrick O'Shaughnessy
[00:00:01] S0: Ramp is the only platform built to make your finance team leaner, faster, and better, saving businesses 5% annually on average so you can stay focused on growth. Ramp just opened for business in The United Kingdom. So if you're running running a business in The UK, you can now use Ramp's AI powered finance platform to manage cards, expenses, bills, approvals, and accounting all in one place. I run my business on Ramp and so should you. Learn more at ramp.com/invest. Rogo is the AI platform purpose built for financial institutions serving tens of thousands of bankers and investors at hundreds of leading firms worldwide. Rogo's AI agents autonomously execute large chunk of your firm's workflows. They can screen deals, draft SIEMs, run buyer outreach, and due diligence on data rooms, all with full security and compliance handled. Every action feeds Rogo intelligence, the firm's context layer, turning years of deal experience into a secure, governed institutional memory that makes each new transaction stronger than the last. To learn more, visit rogo.com/invest. OpenAI, Cursor, Antti, and Vercel all have something in common. They all use WorkOS. To achieve enterprise adoption at scale, you have to deliver on core capabilities like SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and audit logs. Instead of spending months building these mission critical capabilities yourself, you can just use WorkOS APIs to gain all of them on day zero. Visit workos.com to get started. Hello and welcome everyone. I'm Patrick O'Shaughnessy, and this is Invest Like The Best. This show is an open ended exploration of markets, ideas, stories, and strategies that will help you better invest both your time and your money. If you enjoy these conversations and wanna go deeper, check out Colossus, our quarterly publication with in-depth profiles of the people shaping business and investing. You can find Colossus along with all of our podcasts at colossus.com.
00:01:54 · S1, Patrick O'Shaughnessy
[00:01:54] S1: Patrick O'Shaughnessy is the CEO of PositiveSum. All opinions expressed by Patrick and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of PositiveSum. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. Clients of PositiveSum may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. To learn more, visit psum.vc. [00:02:22] S0: When I was reading your book, one of the lines or the ideas that has really stuck with me ever since is where does one person end and the next person begin? And this deep dive that you took into the impact of one's history, family history, heritage on who a person is. I'm interested in this from so many angles as a parent, as a person interested in history, as a person interested in genetics, nature versus nurture. If I were to sum up the book in that question, what is your answer to that? What did you come away thinking after this deep study of your own family's history?
00:02:22 · Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Michael Moritz
[00:02:22] S0: When I was reading your book, one of the lines or the ideas that has really stuck with me ever since is where does one person end and the next person begin? And this deep dive that you took into the impact of one's history, family history, heritage on who a person is. I'm interested in this from so many angles as a parent, as a person interested in history, as a person interested in genetics, nature versus nurture. If I were to sum up the book in that question, what is your answer to that? What did you come away thinking after this deep study of your own family's history? [00:02:58] S2: One of the things that came out of the book, which I didn't really expect, was discovering who I am and why I became whatever it is that I've become. And that was an unexpected gift of the writing. And it came from this exploration of my family's past, in particular, my parents. Going back and excavating the deep memories of childhood, the sort of atmosphere in our home and in the general media in which I grew up, helped me understand a lot about why I am who I am and react to certain things in the fashion that I do. Because unwittingly, obviously, every parent leaves an imprint on a child. That's obviously especially true during the formative years, whatever the formative years are. I'm no sort of child specialist or scientist. But before you turn 12, 13, 14 years old, those imprints that you've absorbed in some manner, consciously or unconsciously, those remain with you. And both the angels and demons, I think, that you deal with for the rest of your life.
00:02:58 · Michael Moritz, Patrick O'Shaughnessy
[00:02:58] S2: One of the things that came out of the book, which I didn't really expect, was discovering who I am and why I became whatever it is that I've become. And that was an unexpected gift of the writing. And it came from this exploration of my family's past, in particular, my parents. Going back and excavating the deep memories of childhood, the sort of atmosphere in our home and in the general media in which I grew up, helped me understand a lot about why I am who I am and react to certain things in the fashion that I do. Because unwittingly, obviously, every parent leaves an imprint on a child. That's obviously especially true during the formative years, whatever the formative years are. I'm no sort of child specialist or scientist. But before you turn 12, 13, 14 years old, those imprints that you've absorbed in some manner, consciously or unconsciously, those remain with you. And both the angels and demons, I think, that you deal with for the rest of your life. [00:04:19] S0: What were yours? I'm so curious that you're performing on yourself the exercise that you're famous for doing with others that you invested in or hired, focusing on these first fourteen years. What new understanding of yourself came out of this exercise? I grew up
00:04:19 · Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Michael Moritz
[00:04:19] S0: What were yours? I'm so curious that you're performing on yourself the exercise that you're famous for doing with others that you invested in or hired, focusing on these first fourteen years. What new understanding of yourself came out of this exercise? I grew up [00:04:35] S2: in this family of refugees from Nazi Germany and Wales. Refugees by definition are a minority. Jewish refugees in Wales during the 1960s and 1970s were a further minority. People look at me today and they think, here's this old white man, he's not a minority. And I can understand that, but it's how an individual feels rather than how other people might look at you. It touched me in a variety of ways. My parents, they were never in the camps. They got out of Germany in the 1930s. And they were loath to use the word survivor because they always felt the word survivor denoted somebody who actually had survived the camps, but they were refugees and in their own way had survived. That motive to survive no matter what the odds were, even though the odds that I faced growing up weren't like my parents, I think the need to survive. When you think about surviving, you're thinking about to some extent living by your wits, being very suspicious of the motives of others, wondering where and how bad things will occur and happen and guard against them. I think it gave me in retrospect, I didn't understand it at the time, a sort of drive and grit that I wouldn't have had without that particular atmospheric backdrop.
00:04:35 · Michael Moritz, Patrick O'Shaughnessy
[00:04:35] S2: in this family of refugees from Nazi Germany and Wales. Refugees by definition are a minority. Jewish refugees in Wales during the 1960s and 1970s were a further minority. People look at me today and they think, here's this old white man, he's not a minority. And I can understand that, but it's how an individual feels rather than how other people might look at you. It touched me in a variety of ways. My parents, they were never in the camps. They got out of Germany in the 1930s. And they were loath to use the word survivor because they always felt the word survivor denoted somebody who actually had survived the camps, but they were refugees and in their own way had survived. That motive to survive no matter what the odds were, even though the odds that I faced growing up weren't like my parents, I think the need to survive. When you think about surviving, you're thinking about to some extent living by your wits, being very suspicious of the motives of others, wondering where and how bad things will occur and happen and guard against them. I think it gave me in retrospect, I didn't understand it at the time, a sort of drive and grit that I wouldn't have had without that particular atmospheric backdrop. [00:06:09] S0: When you study it and you think about your own childhood, how did that transfer from your parents to you? Was it the stories they told?