Marcelo Claure is an entrepreneur and investor who has founded and led some of the world’s most iconic businesses. He is currently the Chairman & CEO of Claure Capital, a newly founded multi-billion-dollar global investment firm. Before this, Marcelo was COO @ Softbank Group, the world’s largest technology investment company. Bill Gurley is a General Partner @ Benchmark, one of the most successful funds of the last decade with a portfolio including Uber, Twitter, Dropbox, Modern Treasury, Snapchat, StitchFix, and many more. Michael Eisenberg spent 15 years as a General Partner @ Benchmark working alongside Bill and the Benchmark partnership. Following Benchmark, Michael co-founded Aleph, one of the leading Israeli venture funds of the last decade. David Tisch is the Founder and Managing Partner @ Box Group, one of the leading seed focused firms of the last decade with a portfolio including Airtable, Glossier, PillPack, Plaid and many more. Cyan Banister is one of the most successful and renowned early-stage investors in the last decade. Her portfolio includes the likes of SpaceX, Uber, Affirm, Opendoor Postmates, Niantic and Thumbtack to name a few. Zach Weinberg is a Co-Founder of Operator Partners, operators funding operators, with no outside LPs, just their own capital. Luciana Lixandru is a Partner @ Sequoia, one of the world’s most renowned and successful venture firms with Sequoia-backed companies accounting for more than 20% of NASDAQ’s total value. Jeff Lieberman is the Managing Director @ Insight Partners, one of the leading investing franchises of the last 25 years with their most recent flagship fund announced earlier this year being a staggering $20BN. Nick Shalek is a General Partner @ Ribbit Capital, specializing in fintech they are one of the most successful venture firms of the last decade with a portfolio including Robinhood, Coinbase, Revolut, Nubank and more. Frank Rotman is a founding partner of QED Investors, one of the leading fintech-focused venture firms investing today with a portfolio including the likes of Klarna, Kavak, Quinto Andar, Credit Karma and more. Geoff Lewis is the Founder and Managing Partner @ Bedrock, now with over $1BN in AUM, Bedrock invests in breakout technology companies that are incongruent with popular narratives. Justin Fishner-Wolfson is founder and the managing partner of 137 Ventures. Their portfolio includes SpaceX, Wish, Anduril, Flexport, and WorkRise (formerly Rigup) to name a few. David Sze is a General Partner @ Greylock where he has led some of the firms most notable investments including Facebook, LinkedIn and Pandora. In Today's Episode We Discuss Price Sensitivity: 1.) How do you assess your relationship to price and price sensitivity? 2.) When is the time to pay up and have less price discipline? 3.) When should we remain disciplined and not pay up for a deal and walk away because of price? 4.) Of the deals you have paid up for, did their growth rate justify the high entry price? 5.) Knowing all you know now on price, how do you advise younger investors today?

My guest today is Justin Fishner-Wolfson, founder of 137 Ventures, a venture capital fund focused on providing liquidity solutions to founders, investors, and employees of private businesses. In our conversation, we discuss what early career experiences led Justin to start 137 Ventures, the counter-intuitive information asymmetry between public and private markets, and the interesting trend of digitization in the physical world. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Justin. For the full show notes, transcript, and links to the best content to learn more, check out the episode page here.------ Invest Like the Best is a property of Colossus, Inc. 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 | @JoinColossus Show Notes[00:03:47] - [First question] - Why he started 137 Ventures and what’s unique about it[00:05:31] - Overview of secondary equity markets in the tech sector[00:07:06] - Step by step process of how a secondary market investment works[00:09:37] - Scale of secondary transactions in markets today[00:10:19] - Valuations of secondary transaction rounds versus primary ones[00:11:37] - Defining great in private market investments and the competitive landscape[00:13:13] - Why there seems to be more information available in private markets[00:16:23] - How better capital allocation may result from less asymmetry[00:19:14] - What excites him about companies when meeting them for the first time[00:20:34] - Example of applying his philosophy of investing in a defensible business[00:22:20] - Counter positioning and inversion models to gain an advantage[00:24:17] - Lessons learned from Palantir about unlikely competitive advantage [00:25:57] - Building good businesses when selling them to the government[00:26:59] - What technology means in the current era[00:28:34] - Methods for evaluating potential sources of defensibility and a lack thereof[00:30:30] - Considering focus and expansion when scaling[00:32:52] - Shared qualities of entrepreneurs who build these types of businesses[00:33:50] - The business that individually taught him the most writ large[00:35:01] - Defensabilities that might appear beyond the seven powers framework[00:36:21] - Thoughts on what seems to be craziest in the world today[00:37:15] - What’s surprising on the low end of the valuation side[00:38:11] - Interesting business models and ones he’s averse to [00:40:31] - Constructing a portfolio with companies that have a customer focus[00:41:21] - Additional companies in their portfolio that aren’t of a similar model [00:42:08] - Lessons learned from SpaceX’s growth[00:44:46] - Watching a SpaceX launch in person[00:46:03] - Advice for entrepreneurs when seeking capital and capital partners[00:48:04] - Investors he finds most impressive that he knows well[00:49:26] - Defining the cost of capital and what it means to him as a venture investor[00:50:56] - Is giving entrepreneurs too much money dangerous?[00:54:14] - What great capital allocation looks like to him[00:55:29] - Accelerating learning curves with tighter feedback loops[00:55:57] - Useful metrics for customer acquisition and retention[00:57:06] - Whether or not investing firms can and should behave defensibly[00:59:13] - What is going in the world that has his attention lately[01:02:06] - Key factors that have allowed him and his firm to succeed[01:03:47] - What he thinks about when his mind isn’t focused on investing[01:04:08] - The kindest thing anyone has ever done for him