Outliers with Daniel Scrivner: Explore the Greatest Innovators, Founders, and Investors

In Episode #132, we deconstruct Ben Blumenrose's peak performance playbook—from his favorite book to the tiny habit that's had the biggest impact on his life. Ben Blumenrose is the Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Designer Fund. We cover how AI might affect designers, the business value of design, and learning from science fiction.

“I think one of the things that's lacking in human-centered design is humanity-centered design, because when you're optimizing for the individuals, well, then what happens to the ecosystem at large?” – Ben Blumenrose

EPISODE GUIDE (LINKS, QUOTES, NOTES, AND BOOKS MENTIONED)

https://www.danielscrivner.com/notes/ben-blumenrose-playbook/ 

FULL TEXT TRANSCRIPT

https://www.danielscrivner.com/notes/ben-blumenrose-playbook-transcript/ 

CHAPTERS

In this episode, we deconstruct Ben Blumenrose’s peak performance playbook—from his favorite book to the tiny habit that's had the biggest impact on his life. In it we cover:

(00:00:00) – Introduction

(00:02:48) – How AI might affect designers and artists

(00:08:48) – Why should you care about design?

(00:15:58) – Inspiration from passionate designers

(00:22:36) – The business value of design

(00:26:38) – Knowing a good product and standardizing processes

(00:31:04) – Learning from science fiction

(00:36:16) – Design in the everyday world

(00:40:22) – Learnings from 10 years of investing

(00:46:34) – Focusing on the craft of design

ABOUT BEN BLUMENROSE

Ben Blumenrose is the Co-Founder, Co-Director, and Managing Partner of Designer Fund, which is an early stage venture capital firm that backs founders who both recognize the power of design, and are committed to getting design right in their company from day one.

Before co-founding Designer Fund with Enrique Allen in 2012, Ben was a design lead at Facebook for nearly six years after joining when the team was just around 100 people in size. In this episode, you'll learn why Ben is fascinated with AI like Dall-E 2 that can create original artwork, why design is utility centric, what Ben has learned from studying natural ecosystems, and why they make it clear that our growth at all cost mentality is flawed.

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ABOUT OUTLIER ACADEMY

Learn timeless lessons on work and life from iconic founders, world-renown investors, and bestselling authors. Outlier Academy is the forever school for those chasing greatness. Past guests include Gokul Rajaram of DoorDash, Scott Belsky of Benchmark and Adobe, Joey Krug of Pantera Capital, Mark Sisson of Primal Kitchen, Luke Gromen of The Forest for the Trees, and Brian Scudamore of 1-800-GOT-JUNK.

Website: https://www.outlieracademy.com

Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/outlieracademy

ABOUT DANIEL SCRIVNER

Outlier Academy is hosted by Daniel Scrivner. Over the last 15 years, Daniel has led design teams at Square and Apple, turned around a $3M+ ARR SaaS business, and invested in more than 100 companies. He launched Outlier Academy in 2020 to learn from the world’s best founders, investors, authors, and peak performance experts.

Website: https://www.danielscrivner.com

Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/danielscrivner

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Listen to one of our favorite moments from tomorrow’s 20 Minute Playbook episode featuring Ben Blumenrose. In it, Ben shares his favorite books, tools, habits, and more.

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In Episode #131, we explore building the world’s first design centric venture capital firm. We’re joined by Ben Blumenrose, Designer Fund’s Co-Founder and Managing Partner. We cover the Designer Fund algorithm, the core qualities of great startups, and how designers can add value as investors.

“What are you spending your nights and weekends on and is there a way for you to make that your job? Because that's the stuff that you're really into.” – Ben Blumenrose

EPISODE GUIDE (LINKS, QUOTES, NOTES, AND BOOKS MENTIONED)

https://www.danielscrivner.com/notes/designer-fund-ben-blumenrose 

FULL TEXT TRANSCRIPT

https://www.danielscrivner.com/notes/designer-fund-ben-blumenrose-transcript 

CHAPTERS

This episode is our definitive guide to building the world’s first design centric venture capital firm. In it we cover:

(00:00:00) – Introduction

(00:02:39) – The genesis of Designer Fund

(00:22:31) – Demystifying design

(00:28:28) – Traits of designer founders

(00:35:02) – Sweat the details that matter

(00:39:23) – The Designer Fund algorithm

(00:44:23 – Balancing skepticism and optimism in investing

(00:48:47) – Core qualities of great startups

(00:50:32) – How designers can add value as investors

ABOUT DESIGNER FUND

Ben Blumenrose is Co-director and Managing Partner of Designer Fund, which is an early stage venture capital firm that backs founders that both recognize the power of design and are committed to getting design right from day one. Designer Fund was founded by Ben Blumenrose and Enrique Allen in 2012 after the two met at a program put on by Stanford's D school, where students use design to develop their own creative potential. When Ben and Enrique founded Designer Fund, there were few companies in Silicon Valley outside of Apple that understood the power of design to build incredible products, create a category defining brand, and ultimately forge an enduring company.

There were also no other venture capitalists with a pure design background. And yet, over the last decade Designer Fund has built an incredible venture firm. They've produced top quartile returns for their investors, beating out almost all of their peers in the market, and we're early investors in a wave of design-centric companies that have defined the last 10 years, including Stripe and Gusto. 

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ABOUT OUTLIER ACADEMY

Learn timeless lessons on work and life from iconic founders, world-renown investors, and bestselling authors. Outlier Academy is the forever school for those chasing greatness. Past guests include Gokul Rajaram of DoorDash, Scott Belsky of Benchmark and Adobe, Joey Krug of Pantera Capital, Mark Sisson of Primal Kitchen, Luke Gromen of The Forest for the Trees, and Brian Scudamore of 1-800-GOT-JUNK.

Website: https://www.outlieracademy.com

Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/outlieracademy

ABOUT DANIEL SCRIVNER

Outlier Academy is hosted by Daniel Scrivner. Over the last 15 years, Daniel has led design teams at Square and Apple, turned around a $3M+ ARR SaaS business, and invested in more than 100 companies. He launched Outlier Academy in 2020 to learn from the world’s best founders, investors, authors, and peak performance experts.

Website: https://www.danielscrivner.com

Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/danielscrivner

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Listen to one of our favorite moments from tomorrow’s Spotlight episode featuring Designer Fund with Ben Blumenrose.

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In Episode #130, we deconstruct Robert Cantwell's peak performance playbook—from their favorite book to the tiny habit that's had the biggest impact on their life. Robert is the Portfolio Manager at Compound Kings. We cover longevity in investing, source documents, and learning from fintwit.

“I wish someone told me that who you work with peer-wise is the number one driver of whether or not you enjoy working or not.” – Robert Cantwell

EPISODE GUIDE (LINKS, QUOTES, NOTES, AND BOOKS MENTIONED)

https://www.danielscrivner.com/notes/robert-cantwell-playbook 

FULL TEXT TRANSCRIPT

https://www.danielscrivner.com/notes/robert-cantwell-playbook-transcript 

CHAPTERS

In this episode, we deconstruct Robert Cantwell’s peak performance playbook—from his favorite book to the tiny habit that's had the biggest impact on his life. In it we cover:

(00:00:00) – Introduction

(00:02:13) – Longevity in investing

(00:03:37) – Investment philosophy at Compound Kings

(00:09:05) – Source documents can level up investment knowledge

(00:11:23) – Consuming info vs. processing info

(00:14:02) – Key tools and learnings from fintwit

(00:16:30) – Who you spend your time with is paramount

ABOUT ROBERT CANTWELL

Robert Cantwell is Founder of Upholdings and Portfolio Manager of Compound Kings, which is an exchange traded fund focused on investing in compounders. I had Robert Cantwell on last year in episode 23, where he joined me shortly after launching Compound Kings in late 2020. Before founding Upholdings and launching Compound Kings, Robert had an incredible career, both as an operator and an investor. Robert started his career as an analyst at Elevation Partners, which was co-founded by U2's lead singer Bono. He then worked at the long short hedge fund Meru Capital before serving as Everlane CFO for five years. Robert founded Upholdings in 2019 and officially launched Compound Kings in late 2020.

In this episode, we cover why Robert is obsessed with how we think, process information and make decisions. The single biggest lessons that Robert has taken away from launching and scaling Compound Kings over the last two years, how being a compounding focused investor is different than being solely growth or value focused, why he skips to the back of investment books and goes straight to the source material to form his own opinions about the contents of the book, the investing tools that he and his team use daily at Compound Kings to beat the S&P 500, and his three-step process for consuming thinking through and ultimately coming to conclusions about everything that he reads.

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ABOUT OUTLIER ACADEMY

Learn timeless lessons on work and life from iconic founders, world-renown investors, and bestselling authors. Outlier Academy is the forever school for those chasing greatness. Past guests include Gokul Rajaram of DoorDash, Scott Belsky of Benchmark and Adobe, Joey Krug of Pantera Capital, Mark Sisson of Primal Kitchen, Luke Gromen of The Forest for the Trees, and Brian Scudamore of 1-800-GOT-JUNK.

Website: https://www.outlieracademy.com

Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/outlieracademy

ABOUT DANIEL SCRIVNER

Outlier Academy is hosted by Daniel Scrivner. Over the last 15 years, Daniel has led design teams at Square and Apple, turned around a $3M+ ARR SaaS business, and invested in more than 100 companies. He launched Outlier Academy in 2020 to learn from the world’s best founders, investors, authors, and peak performance experts.

Website: https://www.danielscrivner.com

Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/danielscrivner

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Listen to one of our favorite moments from tomorrow’s 20 Minute Playbook episode featuring Robert Cantwell. In it, Robert shares his favorite books, tools, habits, and more.

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In Episode #129, Robert Cantwell, Founder & Portfolio Manager of Compound Kings joins us as part of our Outlier Investors series. We discuss the biggest lessons that Robert has learned as an investor and portfolio manager, the top positions in the fund today, and the future of active management.

“The investment management business actually looks a lot more like every other business, where there's products, there's marketing, and there's distribution, and you have to be outstanding at all three of those things in order to succeed in this business.” – Robert Cantwell 

EPISODE GUIDE (LINKS, QUOTES, NOTES, AND BOOKS MENTIONED)

https://www.danielscrivner.com/notes/compound-kings-robert-cantwell  

FULL TEXT TRANSCRIPT

https://www.danielscrivner.com/notes/compound-kings-robert-cantwell-transcript  

CHAPTERS

This episode is our definitive guide to building an ETF business. In it we cover:

(00:02:23) – Introduction

(00:04:53) – Defining a compounder (growth, profitability, high ROIC)

(00:06:22) – Investing in challenging markets

(00:14:26) – Robert’s thoughts on the rise of active management

(00:17:28) – Why so much money is still in mutual funds

(00:19:33) – Thematic ETFs and where they can go wrong

(00:39:05) – Why investing in public markets is so challenging

(00:46:09) – Top three positions in Compound Kings today: Meta, ServiceNow, and Adyen

(01:05:35) – What it’s like to build an ETF business

ABOUT COMPOUND KINGS

Robert Cantwell is the Founder of Upholdings and Portfolio Manager of Compound Kings, which is an exchange-traded fund focused on investing in companies often called compounders. Compounders are typically profitable, growing, and generate very high returns on invest capital (ROIC).

This is an incredible interview with a true pioneer in the actively managed ETF space. In it, we look back at the top three positions in Compound Kings when Robert and I sat down in early 2021, which feels like a world away, to review the performance of Alibaba, Meta, then Facebook and Berkshire Hathaway.

Robert shares the three biggest learnings from the last 18 months including: why you always have to be learning new industries; why you should add a quant to your investment team; and why knowing the people running public companies matters a lot.

Robert also walks through his team's thesis on the three largest positions in the fund today, which include Meta, ServiceNow and Adyen. This section of the interview is fantastic so skip ahead and don't miss it if you're short on time.

And finally, Robert shares what it's like to build an ETF business scale assets under management and why running an investment business is very similar to an enterprise software business. 

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ABOUT OUTLIER ACADEMY

Learn timeless lessons on work and life from iconic founders, world-renown investors, and bestselling authors. Outlier Academy is the forever school for those chasing greatness. Past guests include Gokul Rajaram of DoorDash, Scott Belsky of Benchmark and Adobe, Joey Krug of Pantera Capital, Mark Sisson of Primal Kitchen, Luke Gromen of The Forest for the Trees, and Brian Scudamore of 1-800-GOT-JUNK.

Website: https://www.outlieracademy.com

Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/outlieracademy

ABOUT DANIEL SCRIVNER

Outlier Academy is hosted by Daniel Scrivner. Over the last 15 years, Daniel has led design teams at Square and Apple, turned around a $3M+ ARR SaaS business, and invested in more than 100 companies. He launched Outlier Academy in 2020 to learn from the world’s best founders, investors, authors, and peak performance experts.

Website: https://www.danielscrivner.com

Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/danielscrivner

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Listen to one of our favorite moments from tomorrow’s Spotlight episode featuring Compound Kings with Robert Cantwell.

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In Episode #128, we deconstruct Andrew Herr's peak performance playbook—from his favorite book to the tiny habit that's had the biggest impact on his life. Andrew is the Founder and CEO of Fount. We cover how the brain acts under stress, commonalities of peak performance, and simple health experiments anyone can try.

“You can do incredible things if you are truly dedicated to it and surround yourself with the right people.” — Andrew Herr

EPISODE GUIDE (LINKS, QUOTES, NOTES, AND BOOKS MENTIONED)

https://www.danielscrivner.com/notes/andrew-herr-playbook/ 

FULL TEXT TRANSCRIPT

https://www.danielscrivner.com/notes/andrew-herr-playbook-transcript/ 

CHAPTERS

In this episode, we deconstruct Andrew Herr’s peak performance playbook—from their favorite book to the tiny habit that's had the biggest impact on their life. In it we cover:

(00:00:00) – Introduction

(00:02:33) – From polyphenols to trust and mission focus

(00:05:04) – How the brain acts under stress

(00:10:15) – Simple health experiments everyone can undertake

(00:12:59) – Patriotism, giving back, and dedication

(00:14:40) – Organizing things into frameworks

(00:18:03) – Commonalities of peak performance

(00:20:36) – Listening to your circadian rhythm and optimizing breakfast

(00:22:09) – The books that changed Andrew’s life

(00:25:16) – There is no “room of adults” in life

ABOUT ANDREW HERR

Andrew Herr is the founder and CEO of Fount, which is on a mission to help everyone look, feel, and perform at their very best. Fount offers a highly customized three-month program that's born out of Andrew's work, enhancing the performance of special forces warriors in the U.S. military, including the Navy SEALs.

Before founding Fount, Andrew spent seven years running human performance and biotech strategy for the U.S. military special forces. WIRED Magazine described Andrew's work for the U.S. military as giving our soldiers mutant abilities. Andrew holds master's degrees in microbiology and immunology, health physics and security studies. He studied at Georgetown's famed School of Foreign Service in Washington, D.C., and he unsurprisingly comes from a highly decorated and long-serving military family.

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Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1523851182

ABOUT OUTLIER ACADEMY

Learn timeless lessons on work and life from iconic founders, world-renown investors, and bestselling authors. Outlier Academy is the forever school for those chasing greatness. Past guests include Gokul Rajaram of DoorDash, Scott Belsky of Benchmark and Adobe, Joey Krug of Pantera Capital, Mark Sisson of Primal Kitchen, Luke Gromen of The Forest for the Trees, and Brian Scudamore of 1-800-GOT-JUNK.

Website: https://www.outlieracademy.com

Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/outlieracademy

ABOUT DANIEL SCRIVNER

Outlier Academy is hosted by Daniel Scrivner. Over the last 15 years, Daniel has led design teams at Square and Apple, turned around a $3M+ ARR SaaS business, and invested in more than 100 companies. He launched Outlier Academy in 2020 to learn from the world’s best founders, investors, authors, and peak performance experts.

Website: https://www.danielscrivner.com

Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/danielscrivner

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Listen to one of our favorite moments from tomorrow’s 20 Minute Playbook episode featuring Andrew Herr of Fount. In it, Andrew shares his favorite books, tools, habits, and more.

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