Speaker 1: This is Masters in Business with Barry Ridholts on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: This week on the podcast, I have an extra special guest,
Speaker 1: and what can I tell you? Kevin Landis has been
Speaker 1: investing in technology companies I don't know, thirty years, thirty years,
Speaker 1: both public and private. He runs Firsthand Funds. They have
Speaker 1: a number of different mutual funds that specialize in technology companies,
Speaker 1: including one that is one of the rare publicly traded
Speaker 1: venture capital funds. Imagine an individual VC that itself is
Speaker 1: publicly traded. Kevin not only survived the dot com implosion
Speaker 1: but thrived. The funds have put up really outstanding numbers
Speaker 1: over the past fill in the blank, five, ten, fifteen years. Uh.
Speaker 1: He really is super knowledgeable about startups and technology companies,
Speaker 1: both both new and old. And one of the things
Speaker 1: that makes them so interesting is they're located right out
Speaker 1: there in the heart of Silicon Valley. It's it's hard
Speaker 1: to imagine that before first Hand Funds opened up in
Speaker 1: ninety four, there were no mutual funds located right there
Speaker 1: in the midst of tech Land. Really quite interesting. He
Speaker 1: grew up out there, he went to Berkeley, that's his backyard.
Speaker 1: Really a fascinating guy in a fascinating conversation about all
Speaker 1: things technology related. I think you'll find this to be
Speaker 1: an interesting conversation. I really enjoyed it. So with no
Speaker 1: further ado, my interview of first Hand Funds Kevin Landis
Speaker 1: vias is Masters in Business with Barry Ridholtz on Boomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: My special guest this week is Kevin Landis. He is
Speaker 1: the c i O of first Hand Capital Management and
Speaker 1: president and chairman of first Hand Funds. Founded in four
Speaker 1: with five hundred million dollars in assets under management, Kevin
Speaker 1: has specialized in technology. The first Hand Technology Opportunities Funds
Speaker 1: has been up a hundred and two percent over the
Speaker 1: past twelve months. Kevin Landis, Welcome to Bloomberg. Thank you
Speaker 1: very much for having me. So you spent your life
Speaker 1: in Silicon Valley and are known as one of the
Speaker 1: longest tenured technology investors. How did you find your way
Speaker 1: into tech investing? Well, there's a there's a long, boring
Speaker 1: story of how I, you know, touched every stone along
Speaker 1: the path, or there's more of the moment in time
Speaker 1: terable answer, And I'll give you the moment in time answer,
Speaker 1: and that is when I was in the fifth grade,
Speaker 1: I told my parents that I wanted to be a
Speaker 1: historian when I grew up. Now, my parents were both
Speaker 1: children of the Great Suppression, and so they were immediately
Speaker 1: horrified that I was um unwittingly, I was pointing to
Speaker 1: a profession that wouldn't make me very financially successful or secure.
Speaker 1: And they really tried hard to talk me out of it,
Speaker 1: and finally one of them said, you know, Kevin, if
Speaker 1: you can figure out the history that hasn't happened yet,
Speaker 1: then you're gonna be all right son, and the other
Speaker 1: quickly agreed. And I thought about that on and off
Speaker 1: ever since, that if you configure out the history that
Speaker 1: hasn't happened, that's a really good thing. And I think
Speaker 1: that's that's a pretty good encapsulation of what I do.
Speaker 1: That's the definition of investing history that has yet to happen.
Speaker 1: So I'm kind of intrigued by your background. You have
Speaker 1: a BS degree. It looks like this is a double
Speaker 1: degree in electrical engineering and computer science from UC Berkeley
Speaker 1: before you got your m b A. The first question
Speaker 1: is why not go directly to a tech startup? Was
Speaker 1: there any ever any lure to that? There was, and
Speaker 1: I considered that, but this was one of those moments
Speaker 1: where fate sort of intervened. And my dad's business was
Speaker 1: as a manufacturer's rep in Silicon Valley, meaning he was
Speaker 1: the customer facing office. He and his partner with the
Speaker 1: customer facing office for tech companies based outside of Silicon
Speaker 1: Valley dealing with Silicon Valley customers. And his partner had
Speaker 1: a heart attack and had to go in for cornery
Speaker 1: bypass surgery during my senior year in college, and my
Speaker 1: dad needed needed me to come and join the business
Speaker 1: because he would have looked like a one man band otherwise.
Speaker 1: So I spent the first four years of my professional career,
Speaker 1: instead of learning more things about engineering, learning a lot
Speaker 1: about business and human nature and how to deal with people. So, Kevin,
Speaker 1: your first experience in the field was not anything that
Speaker 1: encouraged you to want to become a an insider at
Speaker 1: some tech startup. Well, that's right, but it I mean
Speaker 1: it taught me a great deal about human nature and
Speaker 1: about business and business strategy, and like you know that,
Speaker 1: it led to the second job that I got out
Speaker 1: after business school as an analyst at a high technology
Speaker 1: market research firm which also began teaching me a lot
Speaker 1: of the things that that I had thought that I
Speaker 1: had learned in school that actually weren't true. Give us
Speaker 1: an example of things you learned in school that turned
Speaker 1: out to be not true. Well. One of the one
Speaker 1: of the explanations for um efficient markets is that there's
Speaker 1: a lot of just incredibly brilliant, gifted people doing perfect research,
Speaker 1: and that everything that can be known about a company
Speaker 1: is already in the stock price. But when you're an
Speaker 1: analyst at again, at a high tech market research firm,
Speaker 1: and somebody from a big name financial firm calls and
Speaker 1: starts asking you a bunch of very naive questions, it
Speaker 1: doesn't take you long to realize that the emperor has
Speaker 1: no clothes, and that maybe you need to modify your
Speaker 1: thought to realize that the world is not this perfectly
Speaker 1: ordered place where everything's all worked out. There's actually a
Speaker 1: lot of confusion out there, uh, and that information is
Speaker 1: not really evenly distributed. And all of the forces that
Speaker 1: finance professors will teach you about why markets tend towards efficiency,
Speaker 1: they're all valid arguments, but things are usually changing fast
Speaker 1: enough and people are imperfect enough that markets don't really
Speaker 1: always have it, have it just right. I couldn't agree
Speaker 1: with you more. I find markets are kind of sort
Speaker 1: of eventually efficient, but that's the still leaves a lot
Speaker 1: of riddle room and and hence the opportunity for some
Speaker 1: investors to outperform right. Right, So you're an analyst for
Speaker 1: a number of years. What else did you do before
Speaker 1: launching firsthand funds? In so after being you know, starting
Speaker 1: out as an applications engineer customer facing with my dad's firm,
Speaker 1: and then being a junior analyst in a market research firm,
Speaker 1: then I spent a couple of years as a product
Speaker 1: manager at a little chip company in Silicon Valley, And
Speaker 1: again it was it was a great just an example
Speaker 1: for myself, uh, to realize some of the nitty gritty
Speaker 1: stuff that I thought I understood as an analyst, but
Speaker 1: even though I was close to the industry, it wasn't
Speaker 1: in the industry. And that again, I just kept learning
Speaker 1: more stuff that I thought I knew that I hadn't known,
Speaker 1: and uh and that was where uh frankly though, I
Speaker 1: I kind of realized one day that I was making
Speaker 1: more money trading stocks than I was on my day job.
Speaker 1: And maybe that was the wrong day job to have
Speaker 1: h Maybe my crew calling was just to be a
Speaker 1: detect investor. So you launched first Hand Funds in ninety four.
Speaker 1: What was the process like of getting that off the ground. Well,
Speaker 1: that was really daunting because you know a lot of
Speaker 1: times when your pick, when you're you're young, starting out,
Speaker 1: you have this feeling like you know the existing businesses,
Speaker 1: there's some sort of a club and you need to
Speaker 1: get an invite uh to get in, or somebody needs
Speaker 1: to give you a chance, and you have to make
Speaker 1: that leap that says you kind of have to make
Speaker 1: your own looks and no one's going to hand it
Speaker 1: to you. And so my partner and I UH basically
Speaker 1: figured out how to form a mutual funds. At that time,
Speaker 1: I couldn't believe there was no high tech neutral fund
Speaker 1: based in Silicon Valley, and I couldn't believe that that
Speaker 1: I couldn't find any examples of tech funds that were
Speaker 1: run by engineers, and it seemed like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: this is If I don't do this, I'm going to
Speaker 1: regret it for a really long time. So we need
Speaker 1: to figure out how to do this, and then we
Speaker 1: basically just if we pulled a couple of million dollars
Speaker 1: out of our address books, UH and and got in
Speaker 1: touch with people that we had gotten to know who
Speaker 1: believed in us, and said, here's this vehicle we're investing in,
Speaker 1: and let's let's see if we can make you some money.
Speaker 1: And that was That was basically our little startup states there.
Speaker 1: I think the joke was that um our management see
Speaker 1: was enough that uh we could each buy a sandwich
Speaker 1: each day, and that was it. So what are the
Speaker 1: advantages of running a tech mutual funds from right in
Speaker 1: the heart of Silicon Valley? You know, you can't bump
Speaker 1: into people and chit chat without picking up UH industry
Speaker 1: scuttle butt. I mean, I did the best. I had
Speaker 1: an example just the other day. We my wife and
Speaker 1: I were working with this uh a dog rescue organization,
Speaker 1: and and we took a rescue dog for a weekend
Speaker 1: while the fosters were out of town. And you know,
Speaker 1: the guy came back to pick up the dog and
Speaker 1: we were chit chatting, and all of a sudden, before
Speaker 1: you know, we're talking about what's going on at vm
Speaker 1: ware and what's the matter with this company? In that company?
Speaker 1: Where do you think about the CEO leaving there to
Speaker 1: go to Intel, and all of a sudden, I'm in
Speaker 1: the middle of a research meeting and I'm just handed.
Speaker 1: This guy is dog so uh and you know the
Speaker 1: same thing, you bump into somebody you know they haven't
Speaker 1: seen in a few months at the grocery store. You
Speaker 1: you're always swimming in it, and uh so people aspect
Speaker 1: what's your you know, what's your process for going out
Speaker 1: and and uh, you know, getting ideas and getting skulled button.
Speaker 1: That's like saying, what's your process for getting wet when
Speaker 1: it's raining? Just go out sitting and shopping, right, yeah, right,
Speaker 1: that's pretty funny. You're also the CEO of the first
Speaker 1: Hand Technology Value Funds, which is really interesting. It's a
Speaker 1: publicly traded venture capital funds, obviously focusing on emerging technologies.
Speaker 1: You were pre i p O investors in Facebook, Twitter,
Speaker 1: Solar City, Yelp, Roku, leading to the obvious question, why
Speaker 1: a publicly traded venture capital firm? Well, that's so that
Speaker 1: was a great That was a great moment in uh
Speaker 1: in time here. I mean, you're probably well acquainted with
Speaker 1: how easy it was for companies to go public in
Speaker 1: the late ninety nineties, and then the and then the
Speaker 1: just the dramatic backlash against that. The pendulum swung really
Speaker 1: hard the other direction. And it wasn't just people being
Speaker 1: skeptical of of startups uh and and of IPOs, but
Speaker 1: it was also Starbanes Oxley and a bunch of other
Speaker 1: really draconian regulations that just made it really, really difficult.
Speaker 1: That the I p O went from being uh, sort
Speaker 1: of this rite of passage that people were striving for
Speaker 1: to being just awful ordeal that people were avoiding at
Speaker 1: all costs. And that's we just realized as we got
Speaker 1: into you know, uh, you know, oh seven oh eight
Speaker 1: or nine, that companies, by the time they went public, uh,
Speaker 1: they were so well known and so expensive that a
Speaker 1: lot of those early returns had already been and you
Speaker 1: just couldn't get them in the public market. So, you know,
Speaker 1: I had by this time already made a career out
Speaker 1: of mocking and ridiculing companies that failed to adapt um.
Speaker 1: And you know, when we started out in the nineties,
Speaker 1: I made fun of Deck in data general, you know,
Speaker 1: and then uh, you know, by two thousands ten, we
Speaker 1: were all making fun of Yahoo and UH and and
Speaker 1: plenty of others believe me. Uh. And I kind of
Speaker 1: looked at that, and I said, well, I'm running a
Speaker 1: what's a mutual fund, but in the industry is referred
Speaker 1: to as a forty Act fund because that's the the
Speaker 1: Investment Company Act of nineteen forty. And so one day
Speaker 1: I just sort of looked in the mirrors, said, right,
Speaker 1: I'm here in Silicon Valley making fun of people who
Speaker 1: failed to revolve, and I'm running a nineteen forty Acts fund.
Speaker 1: Uh And and I thought about that a little bit, said,
Speaker 1: you know, I think we need to adapt. So um,
Speaker 1: we realized that there was an obscure branch of the
Speaker 1: forty Act that talked about business development companies b dcs,
Speaker 1: and that had kind of evolved into this odd kind
Speaker 1: of a credit granting model. But we went back to
Speaker 1: the original version of that, which is, no always a
Speaker 1: business development company. We can make this adventure capital portfolio.
Speaker 1: And that was right around the time that companies like
Speaker 1: SHA's Posts and Second Market, We're making it easier to
Speaker 1: get shares in startup companies. So that was, uh, that
Speaker 1: just sort of fell into place, and and we looked
Speaker 1: around and said, Okay, we're just gonna buy Uh, we're
Speaker 1: gonna look at We're not changing how we look at companies.
Speaker 1: We're still looking for the same things right place, right
Speaker 1: time markets that we like, this looks like the winner.
Speaker 1: And uh, that allowed us to really kind of go
Speaker 1: back to doing what we've always done. I always pull people.
Speaker 1: You know, you don't need to pay me to go
Speaker 1: buy Microsoft for you. You know you kind of already
Speaker 1: discovered that one. Uh just today, you know, nobody needs
Speaker 1: to pay me to go buy Apple. Uh, you can
Speaker 1: buy it on your own. So but what you're looking
Speaker 1: for those companies you haven't heard of yet. And so
Speaker 1: that's why we made that shift. So why do that
Speaker 1: in a vehicle that's publicly traded instead of just setting
Speaker 1: up a separate venture capital fund that doesn't have to
Speaker 1: go through all of the usual public listening things. Well,
Speaker 1: I think that we've always had a bit of a
Speaker 1: egalitarian dance here where it should be available for everybody,
Speaker 1: and it shouldn't just see this, uh you know kind
Speaker 1: of I don't want to say elitist, but you shouldn't
Speaker 1: just be an investment vehicle that's only available for the few.
Speaker 1: Should be available for everybody. And so I like the
Speaker 1: idea of publicly listed vehicles. I mean, that's kind of
Speaker 1: the reason that we didn't start out with a hedge
Speaker 1: fund to begin with. We wanted the doors open to everybody.
Speaker 1: And of course, you know, we're unconventional enough that, um,
Speaker 1: I don't think we do very well on the on
Speaker 1: the standard public road show that you'd have to go
Speaker 1: through to do institution fundraising, So we're not really adapted
Speaker 1: at at that game. So last question on the public
Speaker 1: private issue, what do you think of the line being
Speaker 1: blurred between these pre public companies and publicly traded companies
Speaker 1: and all of the SPACs that have come out as
Speaker 1: a sort of back doorway two I p O companies
Speaker 1: that don't go through that road show you were describing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's first of all, I think it's a
Speaker 1: good thing that people get in the habit of looking
Speaker 1: at companies through the same lens. You know, a late
Speaker 1: stage public company, you ought to look at it the
Speaker 1: same way you look at a public company. Uh. And
Speaker 1: and I think that would uh that that level of scrutiny.
Speaker 1: That's a good thing. But I'm also I'm a really
Speaker 1: big fan of competition. I think it really brings out
Speaker 1: the best in US, so I view direct listings and
Speaker 1: fact as basic the other ideas coming in uh and
Speaker 1: competing with the UH sort of this historical model of
Speaker 1: I pos the standard S one and you know, I
Speaker 1: would I don't know if I would say the the
Speaker 1: old style S one process is broken, but it's certainly
Speaker 1: bend out of shape and and doesn't work that well
Speaker 1: because it is it is just it is really onerous, uh,
Speaker 1: and it is really tough on the company. Uh. So
Speaker 1: you really need to be um big with a lot
Speaker 1: of resources before you do it. And um, that's unfair
Speaker 1: to a lot of people. Uh. You should be able
Speaker 1: to go public a little bit earlier, a little bit sooner,
Speaker 1: and frankly, you know today there's that spack process allows
Speaker 1: you to talk a lot more about where you're going
Speaker 1: instead of just being uh restricted and only being able
Speaker 1: to stay where you've been and where you're going is
Speaker 1: kind of what matters for stuff. Huh. That's interesting. I
Speaker 1: know quite a few other people out in your part
Speaker 1: of the woods. Venture capitalists like Bill Gurley have been
Speaker 1: big champions of the direct listening exactly because the I
Speaker 1: P O process has become increasingly difficult over the past
Speaker 1: I don't know twenty thirty years is that is most
Speaker 1: of this a post dot com implosion effect. Was it
Speaker 1: easier in the nineties, Yes, absolutely absolutely going public Going
Speaker 1: public in two thousand's was still really really easy. But
Speaker 1: you know, if you look at the scandals, if you
Speaker 1: look at all all of the busted I pos, the
Speaker 1: whole pet dot com generation. Uh, and then you combine
Speaker 1: that with some of the corporate scandals i e. World Calm, Tycho,
Speaker 1: and Ron, those are kind of my big three. Um,
Speaker 1: you could say frauds. We're not afraid of the word
Speaker 1: fraud here, right, those the reaction to those kind of
Speaker 1: got conslated. Uh So corporate fraud and busted I. He
Speaker 1: has kind of got conflated. And and everyone said, despite
Speaker 1: the fact that those management teams thought went to jail
Speaker 1: under existing law, uh and Justice Serve people still said
Speaker 1: there ought to be a law, and so they made
Speaker 1: Sarbanes Oxley. Um. And I think that's the equivalent of
Speaker 1: you know, going home and kicking the dog because you're
Speaker 1: because your boss is mean to you. Um. So the
Speaker 1: dog they kicked there was you know, the next twenty
Speaker 1: years of tech companies wanted to go public. Um. But
Speaker 1: The other thing I'll say there is that you know,
Speaker 1: the direct listing and and the Spack merger are actually
Speaker 1: kind of converging on a on a similar UH path. Today.
Speaker 1: UH there's usually a big pipe of public investment and
Speaker 1: a private or private investment in public equity, and that
Speaker 1: pipe investment UH is highly supportive as back transactions, and
Speaker 1: it's almost becoming a standard part of it, like a
Speaker 1: required part of it. That's kind of like building your
Speaker 1: book on the I P O figuring out who is
Speaker 1: going to own that stock afterwards. And it has a
Speaker 1: lot of the lower costs associated with a direct listing.
Speaker 1: So people are talking about the blended cost with your
Speaker 1: pipe plus back transaction. So the market is trying to
Speaker 1: find the right the right mix of that makes a
Speaker 1: lot of sense in tech stocks. Right through the nineties
Speaker 1: really a unique period in history. I always kind of
Speaker 1: chuckle when I see some of the young guns compare
Speaker 1: the current market to the era or the dot com implosion,
Speaker 1: although I'm chuckling a little less these days than I
Speaker 1: was a year or two ago. What's your taken on
Speaker 1: this comparison? How did the twenties match up against the
Speaker 1: late nineties. Well, first, let's talk about how they're the same.
Speaker 1: You know. I think the feeling that one gets here
Speaker 1: uh is we're reminded that a little optimism is a
Speaker 1: great thing u uh and and too much optimism can
Speaker 1: you can drive right off the road, and that can
Speaker 1: be a really bad thing. So uh, it's good to
Speaker 1: have people looking for looking towards the future, looking to see, well,
Speaker 1: what could we do? What could this company do? Um?
Speaker 1: What how do we change things for the better? Uh?
Speaker 1: And it should be about that. I think somewhere along
Speaker 1: the line, though, there's a segment that simply is saying, uh,
Speaker 1: how do we just get rich? And uh? There's nothing
Speaker 1: wrong with the profit motives. It's great, I'm a capitalist,
Speaker 1: but um, you know it should be what how are you?
Speaker 1: How are you making the world better? And what are you?
Speaker 1: What are you really uh driving towards I'm actually kind
Speaker 1: of encouraged that a lot of the sort of the
Speaker 1: the striving and and the looking forward what can we do?
Speaker 1: Has to do with solving really big problems. How do
Speaker 1: we go to space again? How do we? Uh? You
Speaker 1: know Elon Musk wants to go to Mars. That's good
Speaker 1: for him, you know, how do we send lots of
Speaker 1: other people there, how do we bring people back and uh,
Speaker 1: and how do we sell climate change? There's there's some
Speaker 1: really big things there were there's are no quote a
Speaker 1: few years ago somebody said we were promised flying cars
Speaker 1: and instead we got a hundred and forty characters. Uh.
Speaker 1: To me, that was that was that was this great
Speaker 1: encapsulation again of just how you can kind of get
Speaker 1: off track if you're when you've got a bunch of
Speaker 1: smart people working on something. You know. Uh, it's sort
Speaker 1: of if you're working on on making crops grow on
Speaker 1: some stupid online game, Uh, that has limited value. On
Speaker 1: the other hand, if you're actually working on making crops grow,
Speaker 1: maybe that's better. So I like that, uh. And I
Speaker 1: like that people are are looking at companies and not saying, well,
Speaker 1: what did you do over the last five years, but
Speaker 1: what are you gonna do in the next five years.
Speaker 1: That's the right way to look at It's the better
Speaker 1: way to look at it. Um. I just I guess
Speaker 1: I would cautume folks. A lot of these companies aren't
Speaker 1: gonna make it. A lot of these companies are gonna
Speaker 1: fall short their lofty goals. That's probably okay. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's okay that pets dot Com blew up because
Speaker 1: now you've got Amazon. So for better or for worse,
Speaker 1: you've got Amazon. Somebody made it. Somebody made it work. Uh,
Speaker 1: and somebody was actually right in all all the hype
Speaker 1: that they were generating. And I think it'll be this
Speaker 1: way again. Uh. And in the meantime, markets will do
Speaker 1: their damned this to give us lots of opportunities to
Speaker 1: hurt ourselves financially. So two thoughts about that. One is
Speaker 1: pets dot Com might have been a disaster, but today
Speaker 1: we have Chewy, which is doing really well. I'm intrigued
Speaker 1: by the concept of genomic agriculture as the better bet
Speaker 1: than Farmville. Discuss some of the things you see that
Speaker 1: are really more along the flying cars progression than the
Speaker 1: hundred forty character progression right right, In other words, the
Speaker 1: sort of the John F. Kennedy called action momentum. It's
Speaker 1: focused on duty instead of call of duty. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess, uh, you know, UM, electrification of transport is
Speaker 1: a big deal. Yes, you're still using power, but I
Speaker 1: think that the part that UM people are kind of
Speaker 1: learning from direct experience on their on their personal vehicles
Speaker 1: is that the great thing about having an electric drive
Speaker 1: train is that you can harvest all the energy uh
Speaker 1: that's built up in your vehicle speed. And I always
Speaker 1: you know, tell people, go stand out in front of
Speaker 1: your house on trash day and watch this big heavy
Speaker 1: truck going from zero to ten miles and back down
Speaker 1: to zero, all the way up and down your block,
Speaker 1: and think about all that wasted energy. And if if
Speaker 1: that truck had an electric drive train, uh they wouldn't
Speaker 1: have to hit the brakes, they they just ease off
Speaker 1: the accelerator pedal and you would regenerate and store all
Speaker 1: that energy each time they they come to a stop.
Speaker 1: Uh So, in other words, one of the biggest untapped
Speaker 1: sources of energy out there is the momentum uh in
Speaker 1: these vehicles. And uh so, the mania you electrify you
Speaker 1: you start to harvest that. Basic ideas like that are
Speaker 1: really a big thing. And um so, I think, yes,
Speaker 1: taking a lot of the waste out of the system
Speaker 1: and a lot of the wasted energy that's going to
Speaker 1: get us a long ways towards climate change. And there
Speaker 1: are gonna be a lot of other great examples. I
Speaker 1: think we go we go to space again, We're gonna
Speaker 1: find better ways, uh and better materials for insulation. You know,
Speaker 1: heat shields are serious business in uh in space, and
Speaker 1: you know, I think ten years from now we'll have
Speaker 1: much better insulators. That means we're going to be much
Speaker 1: more energy efficient and again that's going to help with
Speaker 1: with global warming. So there there's a lot that we
Speaker 1: can do. We have really, really some daunting challenges, but
Speaker 1: we think it to work on them. Let me jump
Speaker 1: in here and ask you this question because I started
Speaker 1: out trying to do a twenty twenties comparisons in the
Speaker 1: nine nineties, and what I'm reading between the lines is
Speaker 1: the technology that you're looking at today seems to be
Speaker 1: much bigger, broader impact, more significant both politically, socially and
Speaker 1: economically than some of the let's call them more frivolous
Speaker 1: dot com technologies that were Investor Darling's in the nineties.
Speaker 1: Is that a fair compare and contrast. I think so.
Speaker 1: You know, UM, if you look back at the one
Speaker 1: of my favorite examples is uh, you know, sort of
Speaker 1: creative destruction, was we disintermediated travel agents. If there were
Speaker 1: a lot of people who worked in the as travel agents.
Speaker 1: There are still a few, but they're really kind of
Speaker 1: high end concierge folks. Everybody can go online and book
Speaker 1: their own travel right. Uh. And in fact, you know,
Speaker 1: when I fly on Southwest Airlines, I just intermediate Travelocity
Speaker 1: and just go straight to state to the southwest side.
Speaker 1: So um, that's a great efficiency. But yeah, and it's
Speaker 1: not just the late ninety nineties with everyone wanted a website,
Speaker 1: having a website for certain things, that was really really good.
Speaker 1: But even since then, you know, look at what the
Speaker 1: tech industry did with transportation. The right hailing services lift
Speaker 1: in uber Um fix a really really daunting problem, which
Speaker 1: was that there's nothing wrong with the cab. It's just
Speaker 1: that it's not here. Uh, that the cab dispatch function
Speaker 1: just never never evolved to wear it all to be.
Speaker 1: So now that we have GPS in our phones, we
Speaker 1: can we can we can hail a cab no matter
Speaker 1: where we are. That's great, it solved some problems. But
Speaker 1: you know, I I think a lot of us are
Speaker 1: just uncomfortable with the idea that a lot of this
Speaker 1: amazing technology is really useful in keeping current on our
Speaker 1: Instagrams and posting selfies all over the place. That's not
Speaker 1: a good look. I mean, even if you look good
Speaker 1: on your Instagram, that's not a good look. Just being
Speaker 1: all about that makes a lot of sense. So let
Speaker 1: me finished by circling back. Do you think the current
Speaker 1: environment is a late nineties bubble like market? And if not,
Speaker 1: do you see pockets of bubbles in any areas in particular?
Speaker 1: You know, somebody asked me the other day about do
Speaker 1: you see bubbles? And I, I well said, of course
Speaker 1: I do, And I realized, Uh, there's there's the Haley
Speaker 1: Joe Osman character in the movie The sixth Ens where
Speaker 1: he finally contesses to uh. He says, I see dead people, right,
Speaker 1: and he's he's very scared as he says that I
Speaker 1: kind of feel like I see bubbles everywhere I look,
Speaker 1: and that that's what I'm realizing is that's just the
Speaker 1: normal natural part of the environment. There are bubbles all
Speaker 1: the time everywhere, and um, you're just uh, you're you're
Speaker 1: not noticing them because when they pop there, each one
Speaker 1: isn't necessarily big enough to take down the whole system. Um,
Speaker 1: but you know, most companies fail, Most companies don't get there. Uh,
Speaker 1: the actual survival rate is a lot lower, uh than
Speaker 1: then you think it is when you do the real
Speaker 1: accounting of it, and working with startups teaches you that
Speaker 1: pretty quickly. That's okay. Lots of stocks are overpriced, That's okay,
Speaker 1: because the benefit to getting a few companies to be
Speaker 1: really successful in solving it, getting it right. Um, those
Speaker 1: benefits are worth it. Quite fascinating. So let's talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about We'll start with the technology funds. Doubling
Speaker 1: your benchmark is quite an achievement. But what I'm more
Speaker 1: fascinated by is you're up that much without owning Amazon, Alphabet,
Speaker 1: Apple or Facebook. How did you? How do you accomplish that?
Speaker 1: I thought you had to be in the giant big
Speaker 1: cap tech stocks to put up triple digit returns like that. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, it turns out that a twenty billion dollar
Speaker 1: market cap you can go to forty billion just as
Speaker 1: easily as a one trillion market caps can go to
Speaker 1: two trillions. Uh, and in fact, in some cases even
Speaker 1: a little bit easier. Um. You know, it is true
Speaker 1: that there are moments, and you know, we saw these again,
Speaker 1: you know, in the nineties and at other times when
Speaker 1: people just want to pile into tech and they pile
Speaker 1: into the names that they already know, and because they
Speaker 1: get comfort in those names, they feel like they understand
Speaker 1: them because they're familiar with them. Um, turns up, those
Speaker 1: aren't actually the same thing. But okay, fine, there are
Speaker 1: moments when when when people do that. But taking a
Speaker 1: longer view, uh, there is a better moment when people
Speaker 1: are craving growth and they're seeing that to go get
Speaker 1: a company that has a robust growth for years to come. Um,
Speaker 1: you can't take the people who are already worth a
Speaker 1: trillion dollars or more and populate your portfolio just with
Speaker 1: those names. Um, you need to find companies that you know.
Speaker 1: Maybe they're maybe they're only only twenty billion in market cap,
Speaker 1: but they're on their way to a hundred billion. That's
Speaker 1: a better way to return. But you've got to be
Speaker 1: comfortable that you've done your homework and it's not a
Speaker 1: household name. And people might look at your funny if
Speaker 1: you tell them that you own this crazy stock named
Speaker 1: cheg or roku h. And that's okay. What about Tesla?
Speaker 1: I know you owned it briefly, but it really was
Speaker 1: never a significant part of this portfolio. Why not own
Speaker 1: a Tesla? Is it you mentioned earlier? Hey, you don't
Speaker 1: need me to tell you to go buy Microsoft. Is
Speaker 1: Tesla in the in category? You know, test was a
Speaker 1: great example of when you're right, even if you forget
Speaker 1: why you're right. If if the stock is working, um,
Speaker 1: maybe the best thing for you to do is just
Speaker 1: turn off your computer and go to the beach uh
Speaker 1: and let it be working for you. Uh. And and
Speaker 1: so you know, shame on me for thinking that I was,
Speaker 1: you know, overly clever when the market the market was
Speaker 1: really really frothy, and so I thought I'd get cute
Speaker 1: and on a really really down day, I would uh
Speaker 1: buy some beaten up Tesla shares and then write some
Speaker 1: covered calls against it. And the worst I could do is,
Speaker 1: you know, makes x percent. And and of course then
Speaker 1: it rallied right past that, and I got taken out
Speaker 1: of the stuck. Um. And that was just me trying
Speaker 1: to prove to myself once again that I'm not a
Speaker 1: very good trader. Uh. And I should stick with investing. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, when you see a company like this that
Speaker 1: becomes just absolutely unsupportable on the valuation side, that the
Speaker 1: numbers just don't seem to work. Um, you can you know,
Speaker 1: you can pull your hair out. Uh. You can shake
Speaker 1: your head, or you can just say, all right, well,
Speaker 1: that's the power of optimists. That's the power of when
Speaker 1: people really believe in something, they will really support the
Speaker 1: hell out of it. And UM, find other examples of that,
Speaker 1: uh that you could put in your portfolio that haven't
Speaker 1: been discovered yet and that haven't gotten all of that
Speaker 1: psychology behind them just yet. Huh. I love this quote
Speaker 1: of yours quote. I like to remind people that the
Speaker 1: time to invest in Netflix was when you never heard
Speaker 1: of Netflix. Explain the thinking behind that. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: the the argument is that pick any great um investment
Speaker 1: in technology, and what you're going to see is that
Speaker 1: those stocks performed best when people were just figuring it
Speaker 1: out and adding it to their portfolio. There's a there
Speaker 1: was a moment where somebody would stay in a ABC corporation,
Speaker 1: never heard of him, and then I think I figured
Speaker 1: them out. Oh yeah, I'm I'm in on that idea.
Speaker 1: I like that, and I just if I look back
Speaker 1: over the years, some of our best years performance wise
Speaker 1: were when other people were following in love with this,
Speaker 1: falling in love with the stocks that we already owned.
Speaker 1: But we made those investments in years where we didn't
Speaker 1: necessarily perform that well. So you know, you you you
Speaker 1: make your best investments, you know, a year in year
Speaker 1: two and maybe you get all the return out of
Speaker 1: it in year four when people catch up to your
Speaker 1: way of thinking and start to agree with you. Quite interesting.
Speaker 1: You know, you launched the tech funds some sometime late
Speaker 1: in that cycle, and the returns despite that timing, they've
Speaker 1: been top decile for over ten years two percent a
Speaker 1: year or for fifteen years a year And I'm looking
Speaker 1: at your five year return is a year. What are
Speaker 1: you doing that is garnering these sorts of returns? Is
Speaker 1: it simply finding these currently unloved but future loved tech companies?
Speaker 1: Is that the secret? Sauce? The shortest answer that I
Speaker 1: can give you to that question is what are we
Speaker 1: doing being right? Um? And that's going to happen a
Speaker 1: fair amount of time, a fair amount of the time anyhow. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, I go back to my early days as
Speaker 1: an analyst at a market research firm, and um, when
Speaker 1: when people said, well, how big is this market going
Speaker 1: to be? And how do you just determine how big
Speaker 1: this market is going to be? Nobody knows? Nobody really
Speaker 1: knows how big upside is and the markets that you
Speaker 1: can understand really really well are already establishment. Do you
Speaker 1: want to know how big is the market for automobile tires,
Speaker 1: There's somebody who's got all that data. You want to
Speaker 1: know how big is the market for dental floss and toothpaste.
Speaker 1: Somebody's got all that data. And you know what, that's
Speaker 1: not where you want to invest. It's really boring. Uh.
Speaker 1: If you want to know the market for a new
Speaker 1: generation of small satellite, nobody really knows, uh, And that's
Speaker 1: what makes it so interesting. And so having worked on
Speaker 1: the job many many years ago as a young kid
Speaker 1: and realizing that I was supposed to come up with
Speaker 1: a number, I kind of understand now that, Uh, it's
Speaker 1: it's not all about buttoning up your spreadsheets. Sometimes it's
Speaker 1: about leaning back in your chair and staring up the
Speaker 1: ceiling and asking yourself, just how big could this market become?
Speaker 1: How big is this opportunity? And um, that's that's the
Speaker 1: key thing there. Where when you see a company that's
Speaker 1: in the right place at the right time, they're on
Speaker 1: the right track, then the question is just how much
Speaker 1: bigger could this market become? How much? How high is up.
Speaker 1: And Um, if you've got a good feel for answering
Speaker 1: that question, Um, then you're gonna be in some really
Speaker 1: promising stocks and a few of them are gonna work
Speaker 1: well for you. And that's that's what's gonna make that difference.
Speaker 1: So so last of these questions. You're a board member
Speaker 1: at several Silicon Valley startups. I have to think that
Speaker 1: helps you keep a close eye on trends that are
Speaker 1: developing in the private sector. Does this translate directly to
Speaker 1: ownership in the public sector, Yes, absolutely, because in the
Speaker 1: commercial world, Uh, it's not that you know, public companies
Speaker 1: only transact with public companies and private companies only transact
Speaker 1: with private companies. Right, it's all mixed together. And one
Speaker 1: of the things, of course that being on a on
Speaker 1: a startup board teaches you is that, well, it gives
Speaker 1: you sort of a peek behind the curtain and you
Speaker 1: see how much chaos is actually president most companies, and
Speaker 1: how you know, there how many fires they have to
Speaker 1: put out every week while still focusing on the big pictures. Um.
Speaker 1: And so you'll you'll you know, you'll learn a few
Speaker 1: a few things that are really important. Uh and uh,
Speaker 1: and then along the way. Yes, you will get valuable
Speaker 1: scuttle buds. Um. You know, one of my one of
Speaker 1: my favorite is, um, my favorite observations is you ask
Speaker 1: people their opinions on things, You'll get much more valuable
Speaker 1: information than if you're just ask them for a data point.
Speaker 1: You know, everyone thinks that insider inside is all about
Speaker 1: who's going to make their quarter, who's gonna miss their quarters?
Speaker 1: I really couldn't care less. Uh, that's that's that's the
Speaker 1: wrong game to play, and get in trouble for playing
Speaker 1: that game. Anyway. What you really should be doing when
Speaker 1: you're talking to somebody is to ask yourself, this person
Speaker 1: is an expert, is something they know a lot of
Speaker 1: things that I don't know? Um, what can I learned
Speaker 1: from this person? And usually it's not about them divolving
Speaker 1: some facts and figures, it's about them sincerely, honestly sharing
Speaker 1: their opinions. Those guys over there are a bunch of bosos.
Speaker 1: These guys over here are the right guys. By the way,
Speaker 1: the real talent is leaving company X and going to
Speaker 1: company Y. That's the kind of stuff I like to get.
Speaker 1: And so yes, working close superstartup companies gets you that
Speaker 1: quite fascinating. Let's talk specifics about some of your favorite
Speaker 1: investments today. What sectors and types of businesses have you
Speaker 1: most excited. Well, you know, there's always a collection of
Speaker 1: revolutions that are sort of underway within tech, and you know,
Speaker 1: you hear about what's getting disrupted today and what's in
Speaker 1: mid disruption and what's in early disruption. Um So, despite
Speaker 1: the fact that Netflix has been at it now for many,
Speaker 1: many years, um we're still kind of in maybe the
Speaker 1: middle innings of streaming. And the fact that cable companies
Speaker 1: are still in business and still pushing the old business
Speaker 1: model is evidence that there's more to come. You know,
Speaker 1: the the old thing is history doesn't repeat. But Ryan,
Speaker 1: what I would say is that today Roku rhymes with Netflix.
Speaker 1: Roku was that company that when I talked about it
Speaker 1: three or four years ago, I got a blank stare.
Speaker 1: And today more and more people recognize the name and
Speaker 1: kind of understand what they do, and they fit that
Speaker 1: pattern of the company that fights with no one and
Speaker 1: wants to be everybody's partner. Uh And it gets themselves
Speaker 1: in the middle of that trend. It kind of find
Speaker 1: there their niche within that ecosystem. And uh So I'm
Speaker 1: excited about the move too, sort of the on demand streaming,
Speaker 1: and I'm excited about Roku's position on what's still a
Speaker 1: really really big wave. So that's one example. Another great example,
Speaker 1: I think is when we look at e v S
Speaker 1: electric vehicles. One of the things that you have to
Speaker 1: dig a little bit to get this appreciation is the voltage.
Speaker 1: And the current requirements for electric vehicles are different, and
Speaker 1: that requires UH different different materials technology, and so a
Speaker 1: lot of the more efficient UH electronics they're not built
Speaker 1: on silicon, but they're built on silicon carbides. And it
Speaker 1: just happens that there's this company that's been struggling since
Speaker 1: I kid you not the late nine It's called Cree
Speaker 1: and based in North Carolina, and they have been struggling
Speaker 1: their way down this really difficult learning curve of how
Speaker 1: do you work with this exotic material, and they have
Speaker 1: finally found themselves in the exact right place at the
Speaker 1: exact right time. Because power electronics made with silicon carbides
Speaker 1: perform much better and give you better electric vehicles. So
Speaker 1: you don't need to decide if you want to buy
Speaker 1: Tesla or you want to buy Lucid Motors, where you
Speaker 1: want to buy Neo, you want to get exposure to
Speaker 1: this trend, uh, you can buy Cree and we have,
Speaker 1: and that's one of those stocks has performed really well
Speaker 1: but still has a fairly modest market cap and still
Speaker 1: has plenty of headroom. And we're really excited about that.
Speaker 1: I recall Cree is one of the big innovators in
Speaker 1: LED lights. I don't know twenty years ago, is this
Speaker 1: the same company came up with the chip or or
Speaker 1: something like that. Absolutely right, So this falls into the
Speaker 1: category of a solution in search of a problem. What
Speaker 1: Cree developed was the ability to work with silicon carbides,
Speaker 1: and they struggled for years to try to figure out
Speaker 1: what's the end market. We're silicon carbide really really taste,
Speaker 1: and they thought it was l e eds for a while.
Speaker 1: But then what they found was that you didn't have
Speaker 1: to make the perfect LED using silicon carbides. UH, you
Speaker 1: could make a cheaper LED using other technologies and other materials,
Speaker 1: and you could do it in China and so never
Speaker 1: mind all that. And that was a really daunting challenge
Speaker 1: for them to get through that, but they did quite interesting.
Speaker 1: So are all these changes that are coming slow iterative
Speaker 1: changes or are some of these more revolutionary than evolution.
Speaker 1: I think that it's somebody once called a successful startup company,
Speaker 1: an overnight success, ten years in the making. Uh, this, this,
Speaker 1: this often. And if you think about how long we
Speaker 1: had cell phones before one day you look around and
Speaker 1: noticed that everybody had a cell phone. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: for me, that was uh gosh. You know, in the
Speaker 1: early nineteen eighties when I was a college student, nobody
Speaker 1: had a cell phone. By the end of the eighties,
Speaker 1: anybody in sales had a cell phone, but that was
Speaker 1: about it. Um. And by the end of the nineties,
Speaker 1: it seemed like everybody had a cell phone, but all
Speaker 1: they were doing on their cell phones was talking. So
Speaker 1: you can see that the big, big, important changes they
Speaker 1: take years to unfold, but when you look back at
Speaker 1: it or you can't believe just just different things were,
Speaker 1: you know, from one decade to the next. So obviously
Speaker 1: evs are a longstanding trend that has nothing to do
Speaker 1: with the pandemic. But you've mentioned some things that seem
Speaker 1: to be a little pandemic related, obviously streaming being one
Speaker 1: of them. What about things like distance learning and remote work?
Speaker 1: Are these pandemic trends or do they have legs? Are
Speaker 1: they going to continue once things start getting back to normal.
Speaker 1: I think those those examples are both trends that were
Speaker 1: happening already, UM, but the pandemic accelerated them. One of
Speaker 1: the things that's happened here is that our daily lives
Speaker 1: have been so disrupted that almost anything is on the table.
Speaker 1: We're willing to rethink things, and we're willing to go
Speaker 1: try new things. And so that's UM. Overcoming the inertia.
Speaker 1: I mean, inertia is really that's really tough. You've got
Speaker 1: something that's not broke, Why fix it? Uh? And and uh,
Speaker 1: you know that's why you pay your cable bill every
Speaker 1: month and figure the next month, I'll work the other
Speaker 1: thing out. Um. And you know that's really true with education. UM. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: the state of education, it's such that you've got people
Speaker 1: who have, through no faults of their own, are our
Speaker 1: great advocates of supporting education and find themselves being defenders
Speaker 1: of the status quo. And so I guess one of
Speaker 1: the one great commentary I heard about a company one time,
Speaker 1: as they said, the guy said, this was a great company,
Speaker 1: they just forgot to evolve. UM. I would look at
Speaker 1: our educational system and say they kind of look like
Speaker 1: they forgot to evolve, and this pandemic now is maybe
Speaker 1: maybe going to give them the necessary kick in the
Speaker 1: pants to hurry up and evolve and and figure out
Speaker 1: how to make it better. I mean, my old alma mater,
Speaker 1: UC Berkeley, they've got students living on campus or living
Speaker 1: off campus close by, but doing distance learning from their apartment, um,
Speaker 1: rather than moving back to their parents house. But that's
Speaker 1: a little odd. It's clearly a workaround, uh, And I
Speaker 1: think that's causing a lot of people to ask some
Speaker 1: very good questions and figure out what's the better way
Speaker 1: to do this and how are we are we just
Speaker 1: getting stuck in our old ways of doing things or
Speaker 1: or not. I think with college there's the whole social,
Speaker 1: physical interaction aspect of it that gets a little lost,
Speaker 1: um with distance learning. But they're obviously room for both, right,
Speaker 1: They're not mutually exclusive. Oh, absolutely right. You could argue
Speaker 1: that the university experience a lot of it is about
Speaker 1: learning in the classroom, but a lot of it is
Speaker 1: about getting on with life and you know, leaving the nest.
Speaker 1: You can also argue that for elementary school, a lot
Speaker 1: of it is about learning, but a lot of it
Speaker 1: is simply daycare so parents can go to work. Um,
Speaker 1: you could argue that in a lot of zip codes
Speaker 1: that it's actually about making sure kids are not food
Speaker 1: insecure and and it's actually a great way to make
Speaker 1: sure that you're you're investing in more ways than one
Speaker 1: in the next generation. So one of the things that's
Speaker 1: happening is is people are stepping back and looking at
Speaker 1: as the educational system and saying, well, there's more than
Speaker 1: one function going on here. Which of these functions can
Speaker 1: be done better and differently? And are these naturally bundled together?
Speaker 1: Is a right to bundle daycare and food with learning?
Speaker 1: Your ABC probably seems to work. Uh. Is it natural
Speaker 1: to bundle together learning differential equations and organic chemistry with
Speaker 1: learning how to go out and do your own laundry
Speaker 1: and shop for your own groceries? Maybe? But you know
Speaker 1: just which part of this picture needs to be disrupted
Speaker 1: and rethought and which part of this picture is working
Speaker 1: just fine and ought to be preserved. That's a great
Speaker 1: exercise for all of us to go through. So let's
Speaker 1: stay with that idea around remote work. Obviously they're slack
Speaker 1: and zoom and all the other technologies. The enterprise companies
Speaker 1: like Google and Microsoft and even Apple for that matter,
Speaker 1: have been big winners in this space. But I personally
Speaker 1: find the groundhog day effect of seeming every day is
Speaker 1: the same. You're not what you describe as the person
Speaker 1: who you're dog sitting for or going to the supermarket.
Speaker 1: You very much miss that. And I think it's as
Speaker 1: true for work as it is for school or your
Speaker 1: local community. What do you think stays from the work
Speaker 1: from home phenomena once we get past the pandemic? What
Speaker 1: changes are taking place and and how will the world
Speaker 1: look after things get back to quote unquote normal if
Speaker 1: if we ever do, we're certainly not going to return
Speaker 1: to pre pandemic world. But what does normal look like
Speaker 1: in the future. Well, one thing that I think changes
Speaker 1: that the you know I look for I'm looking for
Speaker 1: silver linings, right, So one thing that I think the changes,
Speaker 1: it's a really good thing, is that people are focused
Speaker 1: a lot more now on deliverable. So when we're just
Speaker 1: going to have a zoom meeting and we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about X, Y and Z, we're gonna get to
Speaker 1: the end of that zoom meeting and we're just gonna say,
Speaker 1: all right, well, we're gonna come back around, you know,
Speaker 1: in three days and meet again. And this is exactly
Speaker 1: what people need to have achieved or brought back to
Speaker 1: the table here. So I guess the the co worker
Speaker 1: who just sort of hangs around and ship chats with
Speaker 1: everybody and tries to look busy and tries to be
Speaker 1: in meetings and all that doesn't actually contribute that much.
Speaker 1: But it's just trying to make sure he gets his job.
Speaker 1: That guy's in trouble because in the age of zoom
Speaker 1: meetings and all of this, and and working from a distance,
Speaker 1: you can't hide the fact that you're not delivering the
Speaker 1: good um or it's much harder to hide that. So
Speaker 1: I like that, you know. I guess this kind came
Speaker 1: partly from a conversation I had with a woman who
Speaker 1: was they went from being a consultant to an employee,
Speaker 1: and she said, you know, actually consultants do really well
Speaker 1: when they get hired because every time that they have
Speaker 1: a meeting or a project, they're looking for what's the
Speaker 1: deliverable at the end that they always come through with
Speaker 1: something and they forced people to define what it is
Speaker 1: they need and what it is they want that. That's
Speaker 1: not the only thing. Um, there's a lot of other
Speaker 1: stuff that maybe the softer sides are more creative side. Um,
Speaker 1: we're just hanging around other people and thinking about things
Speaker 1: and bouncing ideas off each other. That's really great. UM.
Speaker 1: I guess that maybe the journalistic equivalent of that is
Speaker 1: where the where the good story ideas come from. Um
Speaker 1: they get you know, ideas get tossed around and people
Speaker 1: think about things and magic some time somehow happened. But
Speaker 1: that that takes place in any workspace where um, the
Speaker 1: people make each other more creative by this sort of
Speaker 1: relaxed interaction. That's the thing that I think we're going
Speaker 1: to find has been missing. And all this work at
Speaker 1: home stuff, so we need to get we need to
Speaker 1: get the right mix of that. So I think there'll
Speaker 1: be a lot of offices that'll tell you that you
Speaker 1: only need to come in a couple of days a
Speaker 1: week and you can work from home some other days.
Speaker 1: Makes a lot of sense. Last pandemic related question, So
Speaker 1: casinos are closed, sports scambling seems to have all but disappeared,
Speaker 1: and a lot of people are replacing it with trading.
Speaker 1: What do you think of the whole robin hood TikTok
Speaker 1: reddit community actively day trading for lack of a better word,
Speaker 1: Is this anything significant within the market or is this
Speaker 1: just a small niche of visible but not especially market
Speaker 1: moving participants. Well, you know, first, I'll just comment that
Speaker 1: as as an active investor. As active investors, we can't
Speaker 1: complain that the market gets gets it wrong from time
Speaker 1: to time. I mean, if markets were always right, then
Speaker 1: we would have to go find a way to make
Speaker 1: an honest living somehow. Uh So the a's for the
Speaker 1: you know, the robin hood crowds. I love those guys
Speaker 1: when they're buying stocks that I already owned. Um and
Speaker 1: uh but you know, I don't get to have it
Speaker 1: both ways. Uh. If people get over excited about something,
Speaker 1: there could be a harm and you know the and
Speaker 1: you could or you could pay in all sorts of scenarios. Right,
Speaker 1: what if you what if the robin hood crowd did
Speaker 1: your favorite stock right through the steeling up to a
Speaker 1: point where you just absolutely can't justify it, and so
Speaker 1: you do the rational thing and sell it, and then
Speaker 1: it keeps going up, so everyone thinks about like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is gonna crash, It's gonna be terrible and all that.
Speaker 1: I look at this and think how many people got
Speaker 1: forced out of test Lack because that crowd pushed that
Speaker 1: stock up so fast, and and they'd have been better
Speaker 1: off if the stock didn't look so explosive to the upside,
Speaker 1: and they just made a lot, a lot of money
Speaker 1: over time. You know. I I think we all look
Speaker 1: back with certain things with regret. And I mean I
Speaker 1: look back at Amazon. You know, that's been out of
Speaker 1: my portfolio for the last ten years. You know, I
Speaker 1: would be even even happier today if if if I
Speaker 1: hadn't let that that stock just run right out up
Speaker 1: from out of my grasp. Um. So yeah, one one
Speaker 1: scenario here is that that crowd um takes some of
Speaker 1: my best stocks out of my hands by making them
Speaker 1: too expensive. Interesting, let's talk about those downturns and those recessions.
Speaker 1: You've said those are usually seen as bad times for
Speaker 1: growth stocks, but they also reveal the best opportunities for
Speaker 1: what stocks are doing well and what's just been coasting explained. Well, look, um,
Speaker 1: somebody said once that um, you know, calling something a
Speaker 1: commodity that is not a dirty word. You know, certain
Speaker 1: commodities you know, Uh, there were times when you really
Speaker 1: wanted to own oil. There were times when you really
Speaker 1: wanted to own cotton futures. Um. If you think of
Speaker 1: growth as a commodity, then growth is most valuable. Like
Speaker 1: any commodity, it's most valuable when it's scarce. Well, in
Speaker 1: the midst of a recession, growth is really scarce. And
Speaker 1: a lot of the mainstream companies, uh that were you know,
Speaker 1: where a good year was when they grew uh four,
Speaker 1: and a bad year was when they you know, didn't
Speaker 1: grow at all. Those face might be shrinking, and a
Speaker 1: lot of the other companies that you know, uh thought
Speaker 1: that they could grow ten percent every year are struggling
Speaker 1: to grow one or two percent um. That's that's when
Speaker 1: growth really is the most valuable. And if you can
Speaker 1: identify growth and see it where other people don't get appreciated,
Speaker 1: you're going to be making some of the best investments
Speaker 1: of your career right during those times. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: you look at O eight No. Nine, that was probably
Speaker 1: a really good time to get into Netflix, probably a
Speaker 1: really good time to get into Apple. Yeah, in in
Speaker 1: boom times, everybody looks like a growth story, and that's
Speaker 1: that's wrong. And uh yeah, during a bust. It looks
Speaker 1: like no one's growing. That's also wrong. Huh. Quite interesting.
Speaker 1: So I only have you for a finite amount of time.
Speaker 1: Let me jump to some of my favorite questions that
Speaker 1: I ask all of my guests. And since we've been
Speaker 1: talking about Netflix, let's discuss what have you been streaming
Speaker 1: these days? Give us your favorite lockdown entertainment? You know, Um,
Speaker 1: I have to say that, like a lot of people
Speaker 1: who like complex business and drama and true crime stories, um,
Speaker 1: that Breaking Bad put us all on a really dark path.
Speaker 1: And for me, that path went from Breaking Bad to
Speaker 1: Narcos to Ozark too uh zero zero zero two gomra uh.
Speaker 1: And so currently I'm screaming Goma, which has got me
Speaker 1: thinking of that I can almost speak Italians and and
Speaker 1: it's just very dark. And so I need to break
Speaker 1: out of that rent because because you know, um, that's
Speaker 1: that's that's not a good place to be. So the
Speaker 1: other great thing that I saw the other day was
Speaker 1: a biography on Ulysses S. Grant, and it was a
Speaker 1: wonderful look. When most people look at that periody and
Speaker 1: you have history, they focus on Lincoln Um. Grant was
Speaker 1: a wonderful strategist, uh and um. It was a great
Speaker 1: example two of of an individual who wasn't really a
Speaker 1: big success in life until he found his role. And
Speaker 1: when he found his role, he became a U a
Speaker 1: big success and that was that was wonderful. Man. I'm
Speaker 1: a big fan of the Planet Money uh podcast over
Speaker 1: over on NPR UM. But of course I did listen
Speaker 1: to Odd Lots the other day on their their story
Speaker 1: on t SMC and I thought that was well done.
Speaker 1: And yeah and and I and I love there's one
Speaker 1: called Cautionary Tales that talks about disasters and how they happened. Um.
Speaker 1: And then finally, hardcore history is a kind of a
Speaker 1: niche uh sort of a military history uh um game,
Speaker 1: which is it's great too, you know, to to get
Speaker 1: your strategic gears turning quite interesting. Tell us about your
Speaker 1: mentors who helped to shape your career. Well, I you know,
Speaker 1: I didn't. I didn't work at uh you know, at
Speaker 1: the elbow of Da Vinci or Nicolangelo or anything like that.
Speaker 1: But I did read a lot um from uh specifically
Speaker 1: in investing from Peter Lynch and Warren Buffett. Um. You
Speaker 1: know Peter Lynch when he wrote one up on Wall
Speaker 1: Street kind of gave people permission to uh realize that
Speaker 1: they have an edge. You're an expert at something, you
Speaker 1: just need to figure out what it is. Uh. And
Speaker 1: so as an engineer who was looking at tex stocks
Speaker 1: and wondering about the efficient market hypothesis, that was a great,
Speaker 1: a great way of a framing things. That was very helpful.
Speaker 1: And I I just loved the home fund wisdom of Buffett.
Speaker 1: He's great at actually being a bit of a disruptive
Speaker 1: radical and disguising it as being a very conventional kind
Speaker 1: of homespun of uncular guy. Um. But both of those
Speaker 1: people gave really well reasoned explanations for why it was
Speaker 1: that the Emperor has no clothes. And that's that's one
Speaker 1: of those great lessons in life that they don't tell
Speaker 1: you when you're a kid growing up, is that the
Speaker 1: adults are kind of making a lot of this up
Speaker 1: as they go. Um. And it's not quite such an
Speaker 1: orderly place as you're led to belief, to say the
Speaker 1: very least. Let's talk about everybody's favorite question. Tell us
Speaker 1: some of your favorite books and what you might be
Speaker 1: reading right now. A couple of books that are really
Speaker 1: enjoyed early on had to do with individuals overcoming adversity.
Speaker 1: So the Count of Monte Cristo and h The Old
Speaker 1: Man in the Sea. The Old Man in the Sea
Speaker 1: is still kind of my favorite, and uh made me
Speaker 1: enough of a Hemingway fan that I later on I
Speaker 1: read several of the other books and the one that
Speaker 1: stuck with me was for Whom the Bell Tolls that
Speaker 1: in the Spanish Civil War and had a great lesson
Speaker 1: that there are times when you need to be decisive
Speaker 1: and you're going to regret doing the thing you know
Speaker 1: you need to do. I like reading strategy books, so
Speaker 1: you know, Michael Porter's Competitive Strategy is a classic. You
Speaker 1: know it. It provides a great framework for a lot
Speaker 1: of your competitive thinking. But if you've already read that,
Speaker 1: I recommend The Art of War, kind of a classic. Um.
Speaker 1: And on the economic side, I think a great book
Speaker 1: for me was UH, Free to Choose by Milton Freedman,
Speaker 1: But I guess close runner up behind that is pre Economics,
Speaker 1: which is just a wonderful way of of just being
Speaker 1: being creative and how you frame the question is really
Speaker 1: really important and I got a lot out of that. Now,
Speaker 1: the next book, I have to tell you one of
Speaker 1: those silver lining from the pandemic was, um, getting in
Speaker 1: a healthy habit of going for long walks and listening
Speaker 1: to books on tape. Um. So I've listened to The
Speaker 1: Great Gas Being Now finally, and UH enjoyed that a lot.
Speaker 1: But when I was a senior year in college, I
Speaker 1: got into an argument with a guy who was a
Speaker 1: sociology major and and you know, sciences versus humanities, and
Speaker 1: I made the case that, um, you know, really you
Speaker 1: couldn't if you're gonna learn the sciences you have to
Speaker 1: do while you're at university. And I think the way
Speaker 1: I won the won the argument, at least in my
Speaker 1: version I won the argument, uh, was that I said,
Speaker 1: I can always go read Moby Dick. Good luck five
Speaker 1: years from now getting your head around quantum physics. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so you know, I never went back and read
Speaker 1: Moby Dick. And the next book I'm reading will be
Speaker 1: a you know, going out for a walk, a long
Speaker 1: walk for a a podcast, and and Moby Dick is
Speaker 1: up next. That's interesting, to be fair to the sociologist.
Speaker 1: I recently took a course on astrophysics online. It's not
Speaker 1: the same as having those exam coming up each quarter,
Speaker 1: but you do get broad exposure to an area you
Speaker 1: you might be interested in. Not the same as the class,
Speaker 1: but but certainly uh intriguing. And I had the same
Speaker 1: experience with that you did with Old Man in the Sea.
Speaker 1: I started reading it on a on a flight to Florida,
Speaker 1: and by the time we landed, I was done and
Speaker 1: it was just an absolutely you know, you're it's one
Speaker 1: of those books you're sad when it's over and you
Speaker 1: immediately want to reread. Yeah, yeah, and you really want
Speaker 1: to meet the great DiMaggio that was that was the great.
Speaker 1: But the hero of the story has his own hero
Speaker 1: and this great DiMaggio that he hears about on radio.
Speaker 1: What sort of advice would you give to a recent
Speaker 1: college grad who was interested in a career in either
Speaker 1: technology or investment management. Well, I think I would give
Speaker 1: the same basic advice no matter what your career interest is.
Speaker 1: And that is so much of life, whether it's you
Speaker 1: know it is, you know your career and your in
Speaker 1: what business you're going to be in, it's not really
Speaker 1: about money. Money is a construct that any economics professor
Speaker 1: will tell you. It's only there to facilitate ever more
Speaker 1: complex bartering and you're well, you're always bartering what it
Speaker 1: is you can do for somebody and what it is
Speaker 1: they can do for you, and you're making all of
Speaker 1: these trades. Uh. And so before you start sitting down
Speaker 1: and figuring out how to barter, you need to understand
Speaker 1: what it is that you have to offer other people.
Speaker 1: You need to get to know yourself and figure out
Speaker 1: what it is that you can offer others. And if
Speaker 1: it's not enough, then you need to cultivate that. You
Speaker 1: need to work on what can you become? Um And
Speaker 1: once you figured that out, then you can, uh, then
Speaker 1: you can make your way in life. So I think
Speaker 1: a lot, a lot more effectively UM and I UM,
Speaker 1: But it's not about finding a job that you can
Speaker 1: get that pays. Well, that's only one component, right. I mean,
Speaker 1: the perfect job is one where or the perfect career
Speaker 1: is one where you you enjoy it um and uh
Speaker 1: So even when it's not paid, you still enjoy going
Speaker 1: to work, you're good at it, and other people valuate
Speaker 1: if you can if you can get those three things
Speaker 1: to line up for you, um, it's going to click.
Speaker 1: But you can't do that unless you really know yourself.
Speaker 1: I think that's pretty good advice, and our final question,
Speaker 1: what do you know about the world of investing in
Speaker 1: technology today that you wish you knew twenty five or
Speaker 1: so years ago when you were first getting started. Uh.
Speaker 1: I guess what I would say is that the world
Speaker 1: is a much bigger mess than you realize. Uh. It
Speaker 1: really is chaos out there, and there's a lot of
Speaker 1: things that are far from perfect. And that's actually a
Speaker 1: good thing because it means that you can go out
Speaker 1: there and you can find ways to improve it. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I think that the example that everyone can relate
Speaker 1: is that um generations of people complained that they couldn't
Speaker 1: get a cab and then somebody created a right hailing
Speaker 1: service where you could and got rich doing it. So, yes,
Speaker 1: it is. It is a big mess out there, and
Speaker 1: we can't complain about it. Our job is to say
Speaker 1: to ourselves, with the conventional wisdom is usually wrong about something,
Speaker 1: maybe more than one thing. Our job is to figure
Speaker 1: out what they're prevailing with and is wrong about and
Speaker 1: then act on that. Quite intriguing Kevin, thank you for
Speaker 1: being so generous with your time. We have been speaking
Speaker 1: with Kevin Landis of Firsthand Funds. He is the c
Speaker 1: I O. Of Firsthand Capital Management and President and chairman
Speaker 1: of Firsthand Funds. If you enjoyed this conversation, well be
Speaker 1: sure and check out any of the other four hundred
Speaker 1: or so we've done over the past seven almost eight years. God,
Speaker 1: that's pretty insane. Um. You can find that at iTunes, Spotify,
Speaker 1: wherever you find your favorite podcasts. We love your comments,
Speaker 1: feedback in suggestions right to us at m IB podcast
Speaker 1: at Bloomberg dot net. Be sure and give us a
Speaker 1: review on Apple iTunes, and you can sign up from
Speaker 1: my daily reads at Dholts dot com. Check out my
Speaker 1: weekly column at Bloomberg dot com slash Opinion. Follow me
Speaker 1: on Twitter at rid Holts. I would be remiss if
Speaker 1: I did not thank the crack staff that helps put
Speaker 1: these conversations together each and every week. Reggie Bazil is
Speaker 1: my audio engineer. Attica val Bron is our project manager.
Speaker 1: Michael Boyle is my producer. Michael bat Nick is my
Speaker 1: head of research. I'm Barry Reholts. You've been listening to
Speaker 1: Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio