Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
00:42:52 · Micky Malka, Patrick O'Shaughnessy
[00:42:52] S2: Oh, there's so much. It's such an exciting time to be doing this. I think there's an intersection between AI and crypto that is really exciting to us, how those worlds collide. AI will need crypto. Crypto definitely needs an eye to really build the future because AI in many ways generates so much more content and so much more tokens that you have to be able to regulate and tokenize and use and apply into smart contracts. And there's no tech better than the crypto rails to do that. That intersection is super powerful to us. We spending a lot of time trying to understand who and how and where. And funny enough, follow the young minds. A lot of the young engineers that started with crypto when they were in college are now moving to AI because it's where the attention goes. But both of them combined have the knowledge now. You're starting to see people that understand both worlds and starting to interact in those. [00:43:49] S0: What sort of thing could that unlock?
00:43:49 · Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Micky Malka
[00:43:49] S0: What sort of thing could that unlock? [00:43:51] S2: So imagine, let's say Tesla's robotaxis. The car needs to interact with third parties. The car needs to get paid, collect, define hours of work, all of those things. Now their software can do it, but if they're gonna interact with the third world, there's nothing better than a blockchain smart contract to figure this out. Because at scale, you cannot do it any other way. Can the card directly talk to the Visa rails? Not yet. Is Visa trying to do this? Yes. But what are they using? They're using crypto rails to get it done. That's why they're partnering with Solana and trying to tokenize... Tokens on Solana because it's... Those networks are better than the traditional rails to do this. Those other networks are pool networks. This is push. So all of those aspects will come into this world in ways that we just don't imagine. [00:44:38] S0: And so the way to think about it is we're going to need streaming data and money everywhere to enable these automated services. And it's the people that understand the two fields and the intersection of them that can build things to solve that problem. [00:44:50] S2: You said it better than me.
00:44:50 · Micky Malka, Patrick O'Shaughnessy
[00:44:50] S2: You said it better than me. [00:44:51] S0: It's really exciting to think about. One of the things that is amazing is this little napkin at your office. It says the eye of the tiger on it. You're holding up right now. And it's sort of this cheat sheet for what to look for in people, I think. I'm sure both people on your team, people you back, early stage, late stage, whatever. And I'd love to apply some of the ideas actually to you, you personally, and to people in Ribbit itself to gain a even deeper understanding of you and the business and what drives you. And so the five that I wanna ask about are energy, conviction, heart, dreams, and obsession. You say the energy of a scientist, the conviction of a missionary, the heart of a partner, the dreams of an athlete, and the obsession of an owner. I just love this list. At what point in Ribbit's history did you feel the need to inject that energy the most?
00:45:37 · Micky Malka
[00:45:37] S2: Every day. This is a daily, daily thing. In this world, if you believe that energy doesn't get created, it just gets transformed, and the amount of energy that exists is always the same, it just gets moved around. The best way to capture as much as you can and recharge as much as you can is to have a purpose and a mission that you are very identified with. So when you meet people who are either tiger, and you're one, Patrick, you are an Isle Of Tiger. Somebody had to say, What do you say about Patrick? There's a lot of things I would say, but you fit this bill. You have that energy. You have that conviction, the heart. You have the dream. You love to travel. You have the conviction of a missionary because you love to travel. So when you start to think like that, it's something that you don't have to give it on a particular day versus another day, you give it every day. And you don't live by these principles or you don't meet somebody that does it, it's a day that you lost. That's the way we think about it. And not only it applies to the founders that we wanna partner with, that we get the good fortune to partner with, the people in our team. It also applies to who do we take money from? A partner is a partner. And we think of all of them in the same way. If they cannot feed this napkin, they shouldn't be our partners on any capacity.
00:46:50 · Patrick O'Shaughnessy
[00:46:50] S0: I'd love to learn how that same idea has applied to you because you're the founder of Ribbit and it's a business, you treat it like a business. It has adapted like crazy. I mean, we won't say the returns, but they've been spectacular. And those returns have come across wildly different styles of investing and different portfolio concentrations across the different funds. What has been the hardest part about being able to continually grow and adapt and not get sucked into, Oh, Ribbit's a firm that's had success doing this thing and they're going to keep doing this thing. That's nice to say. I think everyone listening would agree like, Yeah, I want to do that too. I want to grow in that way. I want to be adaptable. But it's hard, obviously, otherwise more people would do it. So what have been the hardest parts about keeping that in your DNA?
00:47:34 · Micky Malka, Patrick O'Shaughnessy
[00:47:34] S2: It's being willing to kill the things that got you here. This concept about, personally, always go back to this idea. I grew up in an amazing community in Caracas, in an amazing high school. My class is, could not have been better in everything. Our teachers, our school, my classmates. It was literally... I cannot even explain to you how good it was, how good we had it. And I always think about going back to our reunions and looking at somebody and saying, oh my god, that guy peaked in high school or that guy peaked in their five year reunion. That concept in my mind does not allow me to even, I wanna peak the day I'm in the cemetery, the day I die. That day, I wanna say, this guy peaked today. So that mindset, it forces this behavior that we have here that we've worked so hard to have, which is burn the bridge that got you here. Whatever got you here will not get you to the next phase. What got me to come to The US in 2007 is not what will make me be happy 2024. Just be willing to change and change and change, and don't look back one day at what you did in the past. Just don't forget where you came from. Don't ever forget where you came from, but always be looking where you're going. [00:48:54] S0: One of the great joys of this business for me is picking sides, deciding that you're gonna throw your conviction behind somebody who's going after something. What does conviction feel like to you? Like, if you had to describe the feeling of conviction when you get it and have it, how would you describe it?