Today’s episode is a little different. Rather than share a new conversation, I have put together a few of my favourites from the past six and a half years of doing this show. I often listen back to these for inspiration, energy, and their timeless ideas on life and investing. Each of these is a significantly shortened version of the original episode. The first conversation you’ll hear is with Sam Hinkie, the second discussion is with Boyd Varty, and the last conversation you’ll hear is with Charlie Songhurst. Sam, Boyd, and Charlie are all exceptional in their own way and I hope you enjoy these condensed versions of our conversations.Sam Hinkie - Find Your PeopleBoyd Varty - The Art of TrackingCharlie Songhurst - Lessons from Investing in 483 CompaniesFor the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here.-----This episode is brought to you by Tegus. Tegus is the modern research platform for leading investors. I’m a longtime user and advocate of Tegus, a company that I’ve been so consistently impressed with that last fall my firm, Positive Sum, invested $20M to support Tegus’ mission to expand its product ecosystem. Whether it’s quantitative analysis, company disclosures, management presentations, earnings calls - Tegus has tools for every step of your investment research. They even have over 4000 fully driveable financial models. Tegus’ maniacal focus on quality, as well as its depth, breadth and recency of content makes it the one-stop, end-to-end research platform for investors. Move faster, gather deep research to build conviction and surface high-quality, alpha-driving insights to find your differentiated edge with Tegus. As a listener, you can take the Tegus platform for a free test drive by visiting tegus.co/patrick.-----Invest Like the Best is a property of Colossus, LLC. For more episodes of Invest Like the Best, visit joincolossus.com/episodes. Stay up to date on all our podcasts by signing up to Colossus Weekly, our quick dive every Sunday highlighting the top business and investing concepts from our podcasts and the best of what we read that week. Sign up here.Follow us on Twitter: @patrick_oshag | @JoinColossusShow Notes(00:04:40) - (Sam Hinkie) (00:05:55) - The most amazing thing he’s seen from someone he has worked with(00:09:51) - His interest in finding “digital breadcrumbs” on his pursuit of knowing a person(00:13:18) - The impactful story of meeting the assistant GM of the Houston Rockets(00:17:22) - Strategies he has developed to avoid transactional people(00:19:22) - How he shapes his career and optimizes from an investment perspective(00:24:06) - The strangest things he has come across in early-stage investing(00:29:47) - (Boyd Varty) (00:33:04) - His early experiences with tracking wildlife and how it applies to investing(00:44:46) - What can be learned about life goals and paths from the experience of tracking(00:47:59) - The influence of culture on decision-making and goal-setting(00:50:39) - His concept of “the ordering of chaos on behalf of others”(00:54:41) - The importance of moving towards the unknown to start approaching goals(00:57:15) - His most memorable tracking experience(01:12:40) - (Charlie Songhurst) (01:15:10) - His diverse career highlights(01:16:29) - His analysis of why startups succeed or fail(01:21:21) - What founders can learn to enable and maintain productivity in their company(01:25:21) - Nature versus nurture as it applies to adept founders, and the controversial “alien founder” concept(01:30:10) - The importance of good recruiting from an early stage(01:33:32) - How founders can make their companies attractive to prospective talent(01:35:53) - Why he is interested in investing in highly boring and highly complex ideas

My guest this week is Charlie Songhurst, the former head of strategy at Microsoft and a prolific investor, having personally invested in nearly 500 companies throughout his career. I met Charlie at an event hosted in New York and you can tell within one minute of meeting him that his mind is sparkling with ideas and curiosity. Its no wonder he’s been among the most commonly requested guests when I asked several top investors and CEOs who I should have on the show. We discuss the lessons he’s learned about business, investing, and people from such a large sample size of companies. I won’t reveal any more here, I highly recommend you just listen to Charlie and learn. Let’s dive in. For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast. Sign up for the book club and new email newsletter called “Inside the Episode” at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub. Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_oshag   Show Notes (1:25) – (First question) –  Stack ranking the vices of power, money and fame (2:41) – Memorable response to the stack ranking question (3:13) – Best scenario to explore this stack ranking concept (3:55) – Other ways to rank founders (4:44) – Quick look at this career (5:16) – Time at Microsoft (6:03) – Features he looks for in startups (10:55) – Managing the declining curve of productivity (14:55) – Why founders are often unique people             (14:57) – Jeff Gramm Podcast Episode             (15:04) – Aliens, Jedi & Cults (19;43) – How early entrepreneurs need to make recruitment a serious part of their work (23:06) – How successful founders win the best candidates (25:27) – The East Coast vs. West Coast investment strategies (30:40) – When it’s time to bring in quantitative factors into early stage investing (34:36) – The markers that pop up in companies that hit (37:22) – Boring but successful investments (39:28) – Investor aesthetics (41:29) – Characteristics of investors that he believes are important to success (42:57) – Impacts of Covid and some of the permanent changes that have happened as a result (47:49) – Investing opportunities in the local community (49:13) – His take on cryptocurrencies (53:47) – Most mis valued asset in the world (55:16) – Investing opportunities in Europe (57:34) – Make up of his 483 investments             (57:58) – Matt Clifford Podcast Episode (59:17) – Curation as a skill (1:01:54) – Timing and startup success (1:05:11) – Kindest thing anyone has done for him   Learn More For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast. Sign up for the book club and new email newsletter called “Inside the Episode” at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub. Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_oshag