Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
01:18:43 · Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Micky Malka
[01:18:43] S0: What unexpected plot twist in the story turned out to be a great blessing? [01:18:49] S2: Oh my god. So many. For example, 2022, when everything started to blow up, the attention to this space died. Two thousand and twenty to twenty two was probably five years condensed into two because of COVID and lockdowns did so much to this space that accelerated everything. If we hadn't had air to breathe then and to take time to think, we would have made a 100 mistakes. So the plot of actually the market slowing down dramatically was one of the best blessings we had because we saw that FinTech was dying. And if we hadn't stopped, we wouldn't have seen it. We would have missed it and make a lot of mistakes. So you have to bless market cycles when they give you time to think And embrace it as a moment to think versus trying to say, Oh, momentum is gone. [01:19:42] S0: I remember a conversation we had then, I think it was the first time we ever met. And you said, I'm not an investor right now, I'm a risk manager. And it's such an interesting time. That was the beginning of now of this new foundation that you're building on. So cool to think back on. What makes you emotional in all of this? In a [01:19:58] S2: good way or bad way? [01:19:59] S0: I'm curious about both.
01:19:59 · Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Micky Malka
[01:19:59] S0: I'm curious about both. [01:20:01] S2: In a bad way, it's when somebody lies. I have no room for lying of any kind. My way of being, the way we're at home with our kids, we embrace mistakes. We embrace multiple mistakes, but never lying. Lying is the one thing that really just gets me emotional. I always start by trusting everybody 100%. And all you can do is lose the trust. There's people that are the opposite. They give zero trust and as I get to know you, you get to 100% or maybe 50%. I always start at a 100. And that part emotionally drains me, takes away my energy when there's lying. What gives me energy and when do I get emotional is when I see people around me having joy. When you see that they're doing what they're meant to be doing. When you see that they wake up and they are asking and they're learning and they're interacting and they're building what they wanna build, that gives me joy. And the younger they are, the more joy I get.
01:20:01 · Micky Malka, Patrick O'Shaughnessy
[01:20:01] S2: In a bad way, it's when somebody lies. I have no room for lying of any kind. My way of being, the way we're at home with our kids, we embrace mistakes. We embrace multiple mistakes, but never lying. Lying is the one thing that really just gets me emotional. I always start by trusting everybody 100%. And all you can do is lose the trust. There's people that are the opposite. They give zero trust and as I get to know you, you get to 100% or maybe 50%. I always start at a 100. And that part emotionally drains me, takes away my energy when there's lying. What gives me energy and when do I get emotional is when I see people around me having joy. When you see that they're doing what they're meant to be doing. When you see that they wake up and they are asking and they're learning and they're interacting and they're building what they wanna build, that gives me joy. And the younger they are, the more joy I get. [01:21:04] S0: We had an interview on the platform of Steve Young, the quarterback recently, and he talked about this part of his life when he realized that he was part of the 49ers at the time, which was the first place he called it a platform he had ever been that allowed him to experiment with how good he could be and that supported him in that and taught him agency, which is basically what you're saying now. How do you do that? What are the literal things you do to create the environment for the young people here to have that experience of agency and what it might be like to find the thing they're meant to do. What are the things you do to promote that?
01:21:40 · Micky Malka
[01:21:40] S2: I incentivize all of them to try different stuff and try different experiments and go meet different people. We incentivize them to go deep in an area of any kind of area that they wanna go as long as they come back and share the knowledge. And if they can articulate it, then they're learning. The other thing you do is you put them in positions to allow them to experience that. Most people are afraid of sending somebody who's 25 or 26 to a meeting because they're afraid what they're gonna say. You cannot be afraid. You gotta do it. And if they make a mistake, own it. Use it as a teaching moment. So we've had many teaching moments. We had great stories here of all kinds. We had great outcomes, but we had teaching moments. And we always talk about the teaching moments. And we have a wall with all of the moments that are like that, where we stick these things and we leave them in prosperity so people learn from it. That's a great story, Mickey is gonna love me to say. When we started, he had this passion for this idea of this business in the early days, and we were just starting and he was so convinced and he was enamored. He put so much time. He gave him a million dollar check to this company to start and do all these things. And I was never convinced from day one. And I don't know, it's not about right or wrong. It was just... But you let them do. Your risk management is, can we afford that kind of bet? The answer is yes. That's a teaching moment. We'll see what it brings. Long story short, the company doesn't end up working, and we get a check back for 93¢. So we never cash the check, but we frame the check. And it's framing this wall as a reminder of a story that works like that. It's not dissimilar than Berkshire Hathaway, keeping the name of the two companies that he took bankrupt because that was his first business. It's just reminders of who you are like that. And so we embrace a lot of those.
01:23:35 · Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Micky Malka
[01:23:35] S0: What has you just most generally interested and excited about the world today? You see so many parts of it. You're thinking big about these changes, forced to zoom in on something. What gets you the most excited? [01:23:49] S2: I feel that there's so much still to be done and built that I get excited in so many different directions. But more importantly, I'll tell you, is when you travel the world. It's what gets you more excited. [01:24:03] S0: Amen. [01:24:04] S2: When you spend time and you meet people anywhere in the world, on any country, on any situation, on a vacation, on a work trip, on an airport, and you just meet these people, all of them trying to build. 99% of people in the world are good people. And you get to meet them and you see their energy and you get energized by that. I mean, I end up traveling a ton, not because I like to get out of here of Silicon Valley, but actually because the world is much bigger than Silicon Valley. And I get a lot more energy from outside that I bring back here when I'm home with my family, with my kids, and at work. And that is what gets me excited when I meet these young people. I was at the crypto conference in Singapore a couple weeks ago. It was my first time in a conference in ten years. I've never been to one in ten years. You know what got me excited? I heard over 35 languages being spoken in the booths. I counted them. That was so energizing. It's just a reminder that this is much bigger than one tends to... Than Gary Gensler, for example. [01:25:05] S0: Yeah.
01:25:05 · Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Micky Malka
[01:25:05] S0: Yeah. [01:25:05] S2: Yeah. It's just... Things get me really excited. [01:25:08] S0: You mentioned earlier that a call you always get is when something's breaking when there's a crisis. Why? What is your method? You get a call right after this and something's gone horribly wrong. What do you do? How do you respond? [01:25:21] S2: So I'll probably say, okay. All right. Let's go figure this one out. So we just start the conversation. Right? And it always goes by asking a few questions, clarifying questions. And then it goes to this path that says, hey, what do you thought about your options? And double click on those a little bit. And typically they know the answer. They just haven't thought through it. So where I have the most joy when I get those challenge calls is that I can really help them figure out the first decision they need to make. Not all of them, just the first and the most immediate one. And when that happens, they can unlock the rest. But sometimes they're stuck in making just the first simple decision. And it's not simple, but in many ways, it's always easier from the outside. [01:26:06] S0: I'm realizing that so much about you in this story. Almost everything is about movement and change. Obviously, growth is like good movement or something. Even the art, everything moves. Nothing stands still. Do you think that's a fair summary of you?