Coburn Ventures Podcast

Welcome to the New Year! There’s celebration, renewal, and…. perhaps a bit of tension in the air! As we were taught by our friend Irwin Kula, “Where there is tension, there is value,” so let’s jump in.

If you’re using AI or considering using AI as a thinking or writing partner, come with us today as Pip walks through how he’s been modulating his work to achieve more insights from working with this tool. Singularity or not, let's jump in.

This is our second conversation about failure rates and mistakes. Last week, we distinguished between the two, and how important that is in our industry in which a 60% success rate, so to speak, will get you into the "Investment Hall of Fame", but that 60% means that 40% of the time you could be considering there is something wrong or off, and by distinguishing between living in that failure rate and actual wins or actual mistakes, we set ourselves up to build on the good parts for the future. We acknowledge that most of us are not living with this frame of mind. We’ll talk about what that looks like and feels like and then some methods to move into alignment and build on the real successes within this high failure rate industry. Let’s jump in. 

We’re discussing how to more surgically understand your  mistakes and your successes, but to do that, we want to first understand a crucial element that gets in the way of all the rest of our thinking: the failure rate of our industry. Let’s jump in.

The thesis statement is our #1 tool: it's the key representation of uncommon, uncorrelated investable insights that only your specific firm with your specific team and your specific investment philosophy can create. It’s also the bridge between investment philosophy and stock level work. Finally, it's how we communicate without getting dragged back to the mean and instead, communicate at the level of uncommon, uncorrelated insights. Let's jump in.

As investors, part of our job is to “hazily see the future” as best we can, and because of this, I often find investors to be a group that is very open to taking in different perspectives and viewpoints as new data becomes available to them. When it comes to the way they do their jobs, however, some elements are stickier than may be useful to us. Today we are offering a few more ways we’ve been using AI, and also reflecting on how one of the greatest investors of the last century, Benjamin Graham, may or may not have adapted through significant changes to process in his day. Let’s jump in.

Our goal for today’s conversation with organizational psychologist Matt Wallaert is to learn from him by getting straight to the point on what psychological safety is and isn't. This is a phrase we have all heard, but let’s see if we can get to the insight it may have for our organizations before running with it and using it offhand.

This is part of a duo of podcasts aimed at approaching review season with some grounding in what really makes a team function better and better as we are having year end conversations and setting goals and coaching for the upcoming year. 

Let’s jump in.

Comparison is rather natural, but rarely productive. Instead of falling into common pitfalls, what's the way out? We have Dr. Morris Pickens here with us. Notably we are approaching review season and we thought this might add some perspective or grounding going into that period. Let’s jump in. 

Last week we went into depth on some design principles for turning rote management meetings into an activity that can generate uncommon insights. What we left out of that meeting was a key piece that we have written about for decades now: the process of generating unlocking questions to gain conviction in your business thesis, and even working with generating questions you may not think you’ll ever get an answer to. We’re interested in stretching those limits as a part of the process to really find the unlocking questions. It doesn’t happen by thinking the way everyone else does. Today, we walk through some different ways we’ve been using AI to further advance on creating unlocking questions for management. Let’s jump in.

Continuing on our assertion that we cannot do common things and expect uncommon results, today we are discussing management meetings. I’ve noticed that the best career stories, those told around the Owl Bar perhaps, usually have to do with breakthrough realizations during time with management, when an insight about the company culture was unlocked, or an understanding came to light, maybe of the troubles ahead, or more likely, of the vast scale of opportunity before that company. We’d like those types of meetings to be less legendary, actually, because we’d like them to be less few and far between. We don’t have to settle for the 30 min slots at conferences as we build relationships with companies and management teams, so let’s take this opportunity to start exploring how to make common management meetings generators of uncommon insight. Let’s jump in.