Host: Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Patrick O'Shaughnessy interviews guests about business, investing, technology and decision-making. Guest opinions are informational and do not provide a basis for personal investment decisions.
Read structured takeaways and actionable insights from Invest Like the Best
Invest Like the Best
Michael Moritz - former Time journalist, longtime Sequoia Capital chairman, and author of the family-history book at the center of this conversation - sits with Patrick O'Shaughnessy. FULL COVERAGE: notes span the entire episode. Sponsors read on the show: Ramp, WorkOS, Rogo, Vanta and Ridgeline. All views, historical accounts and market observations are as stated by the speakers; nothing here is investment, legal or other advice. Moritz traces how his parents' flight from Nazi Germany - a mother who predicted doom at the breakfast table and a survivor instinct absorbed, not told - made him a permanent outsider with a built-in bolt-hole reflex: he says the lesson of his family history is that you can never have enough passports. He tells the two-grandfathers story: the Bavarian civil servant who trusted the state and his pension stayed too long and perished; the blind cattle trader who had always fended for himself got out 72 hours before the war began. The conversation covers his childhood-interrogation method for reading founders (including the question that made a Sequoia candidate burst into tears), the Anna story and his resistors-silent-collaborators frame from a French village series, how the Chrysler book and Lee Iacocca revealed the immigrant outsider's engine, and the Steve Jobs Time profile - put through what he calls an editorial combine harvester - that severed their relationship and pushed him out of journalism. On Sequoia: Don Valentine hired a journalist with no technical background on the Arthur Rock precedent; Moritz says the old venture game of imperfect information and close founder relationships no longer exists, and his own mandate taking over was not to screw it up, to act as if the firm is only as good as its next investment, and to do right by nonprofit investors - including fighting one fund back to par over a decade rather than walking away. Elsewhere: Alex Ferguson's real management skill (he wanted respect, not love or fear, and met Beckham at the airport after the World Cup sending-off), why he believes the great-person theory of history and calls Elon possibly the greatest industrialist in American history, Frank Auerbach's one-day-off-a-year monomania, why he thinks AI will create more jobs than it destroys and is raising the value of extraordinary writing, stepping away from Sequoia cold turkey, building the San Francisco Standard to prove local journalism can be profitable, and his closing answer on what matters: relationships, knowing we are all insignificant, and leaving things a little better.
Invest Like the Best
John Kim, author of The Tao of Fundraising, joins Invest Like the Best to break down how billions are really raised: trust as desire minus fear, why your first close sets your re-elect ceiling, why money moves at the speed of trust, how big money hides behind committees, the drama triangle in every meeting, and why goodness - kindness plus conviction - is the real edge. Views expressed are the guest's own; this podcast is for informational purposes only and not investment advice. Sponsor reads in the publisher audio: Ramp, WorkOS, Vanta, Ridgeline and Rogo. Notes based on the publisher's full audio edition. FULL COVERAGE: these notes cover the complete episode from start to finish.
Invest Like the Best
Dylan Patel joins Patrick O'Shaughnessy to discuss financing compute ahead of revenue, token economics, talent, overbuilding and power constraints. His September 2025 analysis and forecasts are attributed views, not verified current deal terms, technical performance or investment advice.
Invest Like the Best
Patrick O'Shaughnessy interviews Michael Ovitz, co-founder of Creative Artists Agency, about storytelling, building an agency, information sharing, talent, relationships and creative business development. A long Michael Crichton and Jurassic Park story introduces the work of helping a creative idea become a finished project. Ovitz then describes scale, the shift to digital media, venture relationships, positional power, momentum, follow-up, branding, art, honest client feedback, family trade-offs and the Coca-Cola account. The close recalls professional gratitude and personal kindness. Main theme: creative entrepreneurship, agency operations, talent development and business relationships. Writer's block around minutes 6-11, an unnamed client's sleep problem around 81-84, family balance around 85-90 and brief family-health context in the closing kindness story are secondary personal and business anecdotes, not medical or mental-health instruction. The short digital-character-contract example around 74 and technology-business examples are not an AI-focused main theme. A phrase describing CAA as a religious experience is a workplace metaphor, not spiritual teaching. All business metrics, returns, contracts, account size, staffing, ownership, client relationships, dates, box-office outcomes and production credits are historical speaker claims as of January 9, 2024, not independently verified current facts. Memories of studio deals and agency packages are one participant's account, not current law, industry contract terms or proof of an exclusive origin story. Early CAA founding-year references differ between introduction and recollection; no invented reconciliation is asserted. Rain Man awards and box-office chronology are not adopted as verified facts. The Michael Mann film title changes in the ASR between adjacent chunks, so no attribution of the later wrong-title rendering is made. Broad art, color-response, founder-success and nonverbal-cue assertions are personal heuristics, not verified cognitive science or reliable judgments of individual ability. Generalized gender, age, nationality and personality stereotypes are not endorsed or used as factual hiring rules. Writer's block is not assigned a diagnosis; the unnamed sleep/medication story is not given a drug, dose or treatment protocol and requires qualified clinical judgment in real life. His child's health is not diagnosed, and private family medical details are not expanded. Rain Man is discussed as a production story, not a guide to autism or a claim that autistic people have a single appearance or trajectory. Historical radio-call monitoring and selective messaging are not recommendations to intercept communications, exploit private information, deceive clients or breach confidentiality. Publicity, mystique and competitive signaling do not justify misrepresentation, coercion or interference with others' rights. Strong internal sharing still requires appropriate privacy and client-conflict safeguards. The guest acknowledges missing talent and driving people too hard; extreme hours and reduced sleep are not endorsed as necessary, safe or universal success requirements. Art references illustrate study and taste, not legal permission to reproduce others' work commercially. People-first investing does not eliminate loss, diligence, conflicts or illiquidity. FULL COVERAGE: entire downloaded publisher RSS audio in 110 chunks; sparse final 11-second chunk checked in halves, both silent. Actual audio 109:11 versus RSS 110:25. No claim that this edition matches a YouTube cut or its timings. Ads heard: Ridgeline and Crosby. Separate 40-85-second probe confirmed Crosby and crosby.ai/invest after chunk ASR incorrectly rendered Cooley. Ramp and Rogo are customers inside the Crosby read, not separate ads. Own-network promotion: Colossus podcasts, transcripts, resources and Colossus Weekly. RSS Tegus and Founders Podcast promotion were not heard as separate reads in this edition. Dynamic inventory differs; historical commercial claims are not verified current terms. Informational only, not personalized investment, financial, legal, tax or medical advice.
