The Business Brew
Bill Brewster
Welcome to The Business Brew
This podcast’s mission is to dig deep into the thought patterns and analysis of investors and business people. The podcast stemmed from Bill Brewster consistently feeling like he was listening to prepackaged material while listening to podcasts. Instead, he wanted long form, in depth, discussions about finance, capital allocation, and the psychology of investing/business.
Bill is a private investor. He cohosts the podcast Value: After Hours with Tobias Carlisle and Jake Taylor. Tobias, Jake and Bill met at a Berkshire Hathaway meeting and formed a lasting friendship. And, as it turns out, people really like the podcast.
While Bill tries to replicate Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger’s thought processes, he is heavily influenced by Bill Miller III, Stan Druckenmiller, and others. This podcast is his attempt to dig deeper into other investing/business philosophies and share the knowledge with the world.
We are interested in interviewing portfolio managers, Wall Street sell side analysts, buy side analysts, private investors, owner operators, and anyone that is willing to go in depth about running a company/division. So, if you are interested in participating please email us with the subject “Guest Appearance.”
Disclaimer: Bill manages a portfolio under the name of Sullimar Capital Group. This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only. Nothing in this podcast or on SullimarCapital.Group is investment advice. All information in this is opinion based, potentially biased, and requires verification.
Bill and his guests make no representation, warranty or undertaking, express or implied, as to the accuracy, reliability, completeness or reasonableness of the information contained in these podcasts. Any assumptions, opinions and estimates expressed constitute the participant’s judgment as of the date thereof and are subject to change without notice. Any projections contained in the information are based on a number of assumptions as to market conditions and there can be no guarantee that any projected outcomes will be achieved. This podcast does not accept any liability for any direct, consequential or other loss arising from reliance on the contents of this presentation.
This podcast series DOES NOT CONSTITUTE AN OFFER TO SELL OR THE SOLICIATION OF AN OFFER TO BUY ANY SECURITIES MENTIONED OR DISCUSSED. Seek the your financial, tax, legal, accounting, or other advisor’s advice before making any investment decisions. We are not your fiduciary or advisor.
This podcast’s mission is to dig deep into the thought patterns and analysis of investors and business people. The podcast stemmed from Bill Brewster consistently feeling like he was listening to prepackaged material while listening to podcasts. Instead, he wanted long form, in depth, discussions about finance, capital allocation, and the psychology of investing/business.
Bill is a private investor. He cohosts the podcast Value: After Hours with Tobias Carlisle and Jake Taylor. Tobias, Jake and Bill met at a Berkshire Hathaway meeting and formed a lasting friendship. And, as it turns out, people really like the podcast.
While Bill tries to replicate Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger’s thought processes, he is heavily influenced by Bill Miller III, Stan Druckenmiller, and others. This podcast is his attempt to dig deeper into other investing/business philosophies and share the knowledge with the world.
We are interested in interviewing portfolio managers, Wall Street sell side analysts, buy side analysts, private investors, owner operators, and anyone that is willing to go in depth about running a company/division. So, if you are interested in participating please email us with the subject “Guest Appearance.”
Disclaimer: Bill manages a portfolio under the name of Sullimar Capital Group. This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only. Nothing in this podcast or on SullimarCapital.Group is investment advice. All information in this is opinion based, potentially biased, and requires verification.
Bill and his guests make no representation, warranty or undertaking, express or implied, as to the accuracy, reliability, completeness or reasonableness of the information contained in these podcasts. Any assumptions, opinions and estimates expressed constitute the participant’s judgment as of the date thereof and are subject to change without notice. Any projections contained in the information are based on a number of assumptions as to market conditions and there can be no guarantee that any projected outcomes will be achieved. This podcast does not accept any liability for any direct, consequential or other loss arising from reliance on the contents of this presentation.
This podcast series DOES NOT CONSTITUTE AN OFFER TO SELL OR THE SOLICIATION OF AN OFFER TO BUY ANY SECURITIES MENTIONED OR DISCUSSED. Seek the your financial, tax, legal, accounting, or other advisor’s advice before making any investment decisions. We are not your fiduciary or advisor.
Episodes
Mentioned books
Mar 11, 2021 • 2h 5min
Liz Simmie - A True ESG Manager
Liz Simmie is the Co-Founder of Honeytree Investment Management, a firm that lives ESG investing. See the end of this description for Liz' official bio. In this episode Liz Simmie stops by The Business Brew to talk all things ESG. Unlike many "ESG" managers, Liz actually practices what she preaches. Said differently, Liz is the real deal and doesn't just use ESG as a marketing tool. The catalyst for this conversation was Bill thinking about morality in investing. On one hand, owning assets one is proud of seems like a reasonable goal. On the other hand, how do we draw the lines? If cigarettes are bad then why is sugar OK? If tobacco is bad why is alcohol OK? We cover a wide range of topics including: - how ESG is bastardized due to marketing - what real ESG investing looks like - why ESG is as important to Honey Tree - gender and racial diversity driving positive financial outcomes - issues preventing companies from embracing ESG policies - and much more. Bill's biggest takeaway was that ESG can provide a qualitative advantage for investment analysis. We are grateful for Liz' time and hope you enjoy the show. Thank you for listening! Bio: Liz is the co-founder of Honeytree Investment Management, an asset management firm focused on responsible growth, based in Toronto. Together with the team she manages Honeytree’s concentrated active investment strategies for institutional and private clients. Honeytree believes what is traditionally seen as ‘ESG’ data is just as important to assessing a company’s long term growth and risk as traditional fundamental data – and they integrate them both equally in our investment process. Honeytree is proud to be one of the handful of female led responsible asset management firms globally leading the conversation. Prior to founding Honeytree she worked at Bristol Gate Capital Partners a leading active management firm, and before that she worked in quantitative market research for Ipsos. Liz has BA in Economic Statistics and History.
Mar 4, 2021 • 2h 8min
Ian Cassel - Micro Machine
Ian Cassel is the CIO at Intelligent Fanatics Capital Management ("IFCM"). IFCM invests in the smallest public companies in the world. They focus on businesses that are run by management teams who are capable of growing those businesses while benefiting stakeholders. Ian also founded MicroCapClub. In this episode Ian discusses how he became a microcap investor. One of his first successes was XM Satellite Radio. He discovered the company when it was a microcap trading for $2/sh and didn't have any contracts with car manufacturers yet. Ian saw they were presenting at a conference in NY, got in a car, and met with the CEO. After that meeting Ian became obsessed with turning into a full time private investor. Ian stresses the importance of doing deep due diligence, remaining rational, and keeping personal expenses "variable." He invests in a concentrated manner (only a few stocks at a time), which is very Buffett like. Unlike Buffett, however, Ian discusses the importance of remaining open to selling winners. This is because Ian is "fishing in a pond" of smaller companies and execution risk must always be monitored. Ian is a refreshing voice in the investment community and we are happy to have him join the show! Note: We reference Connor Haley's presentation in this discussion. That presentation can be found here
Feb 25, 2021 • 1h 58min
Oren Falkowitz - No Phishing Way
Oren Falkowitz is the founder of Area 1 Security. He was Chief Executive Officer of Area 1 2013-2020 and currently serves on the Board of Directors. Mr. Falkowitz holds numerous patents and is an avid wearer of bow ties on Thursday. Previously, he was the founder of sqrrl (acquired by Amazon) and held positions at the National Security Agency (NSA) and United States Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM). He joined the Business Brew to discuss his career and the cyber security landscape. We hope you enjoy.
Feb 18, 2021 • 1h 54min
Derek Walin - Entrepreneur and Music Maven
The Business Brew is pleased to feature Derek Walin, @walin on Twitter, this week. Derek is Bill's cousin. They grew up together and Bill has known Derek since he was born. As Derek grew, Bill watched him become the consummate entrepreneur. Derek began landing "gigs" as a magician. He would do magic for kids, elderly people, and anyone that would book him (by calling his parents). After that, Derek took a liking to DJing (before it was cool). He earned money throughout his high school years by DJing dances, birthday parties, and Bar and Bat Mitzvahs. Despite Derek's father having a corporate background, Derek knew college wasn't for him. Instead, he wanted to attend Full Sail and pursue his dreams of chasing a career in entertainment/music. Fast forward to today and Derek and his partners manage ~11 artists. Check out https://www.supermusicgroup.com/ and check out the artists on your favorite music app! As always, thank you for listening.
Feb 11, 2021 • 1h 25min
Moses Kagan - Permanent Real Estate Investing
Moses Kagan is a co-founder of Adaptive Realty, the Los Angeles-based real estate private equity firm. Since 2008, through Adaptive and predecessor entities, he has overseen the acquisition and rehabilitation of nearly 100 properties. Adaptive is laser focused on sub institutional scale multifamily. So these are deals between three and 10 million dollars of total capitalization. The firm is unusual in the real estate private equity world because they buy and hold real estate rather than buying buildings, fixing them up, and flipping them as is done in a more IRR driven model. In this episode Moses discusses his journey from running a smaller fund that had a single LP to what he does now. One of the most interesting parts of the conversation he discussed is when he had to sell the real estate in his first fund. To the outside world, it may have appeared to be a success. To Moses, however, it was a lesson in how much taxes hurt returns. That lesson formed the philosophy behind Adaptive. We are happy to have Moses as this week's guest. As always, we hope you enjoy the episode!
Feb 10, 2021 • 1h 55min
Bonus: Andrew Walker - A SPACtacular Conversation
Andrew Walker, a PM at Rangeley Capital, author of Yet Another Value Blog, and host of Yet Another Value Podcast stopped by to discuss SPACs and his investment philosophy. We are releasing this episode as a bonus because there are some elements of it that require a faster release than normal. Areas discussed were SPACs, sum of the parts analysis, Getting Better as an Investor, and the current market environment. Andrew has had an interesting career. He's found "compounders," special situations, and everything in between. He won the 2017 Sohn Idea Contest (that's a big deal for those that don't know) when "La Quinta (LQ) is sold its franchise business to Wyndham and spun off its owned hotel portfolio into a new REIT (CorePoint) in a taxable spin." You can see his presentation here: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/10t7lVjWmNkkm7jwunh46nMLvfVsS4tYgAJrNcFd7DRg/edit#slide=id.p3 We hope you enjoy this bonus episode.
Feb 4, 2021 • 1h 58min
Mike aka @NonGaap - Master of the Dark Arts of Corporate Governance
Mike is an ex-activist investor who writes about tech, corporate governance, the power of friction & incentives, strategy, interpersonal board dynamics, and activist fights. In this episode Mike and The Business Brew discuss everything from corporate governance to the potential for charismatic personalities to use their brand to make a run at real companies. Mike has a unique outlook on the world. Mike describes how the clues in corporate governance actions can help investors triangulate their ideas of valuation. At times, Mike will even use corporate governance changes as signals to initiate positions. For instance, he used clues to call a bottom on GrubHub shares and was correct. Join The Business Brew as we discuss how a different analytical lens can potentially help improve analysis and returns. But more importantly, listen to a unique mind talk about how he looks at the world. It was a pleasure to chat with Mike. A big thank you to Mathew Passy and his team for saving this episode.
Jan 29, 2021 • 1h 56min
Shomik Ghosh - A SaaSy Conversation
The Business Brew is joined by Shomik Ghosh. Mr. Ghosh is a Principal at Boldstart Ventures, a day one, pre-product partner for technical founders with portfolio companies such as Snyk, Kustomer, BigID, Superhuman, Front, and Security Scorecard. His career has spanned everything from fixed income sales & trading to investment banking to venture capital. He specializes in enterprise software for his day job and long-term competitively advantaged businesses in his PA (a lot of which are also enterprise software companies 😀). Shomik has been trying to make Bill less stupid for almost two years now. He succeeded in this conversation. We are grateful for his time and appearance. Follow him on Twitter!
Jan 22, 2021 • 2h
Jen Ross - Always Questioning the Narrative
The Business Brew is joined by Jen Ross this week. Jen was a professional short seller. Consequently, she has a unique perspective. It took Bill a while to understand the role of short selling in a portfolio but Jen’s comment about the need (or lack thereof) to hedge a quality equity portfolio really helped Bill understand what risks to think about hedging via short selling. Her Bio very unique: Jennifer L. Ross has more than 20 years of engineering and financial experience. She is a principal engineer in Launch and Enterprise Operations at The Aerospace Corporation. Prior to joining Aerospace, Ross held management and executive positions in the areas of material science and manufacturing, process engineering, and financial analysis. Her focus is analyzing the space industrial base and helping space startups conduct business with the U.S. Space Force. Ross transitioned from engineering to management consulting and finance in 2007. She spent five years as vice president of a public finance management and municipal bond firm. She later joined a hedge fund as an equity short seller/research analyst, analyzing corporate financials of publicly traded companies and predicting the probability of financial failure for those businesses. Ross joined Aerospace in 2015 when she saw the opportunity to combine her passions for both engineering and financial analysis.
Jan 15, 2021 • 1h 42min
Tyrone V Ross Jr. - A Powerful Advocate
We are fortunate to be joined by Tyrone V Ross Jr. What started out as a connection over BitCoin turned into something much more important. In this episode Tyrone discusses many issues that seem to be forgotten as the stock market hits new highs. We cover a wide range of issues and potential financial solutions. We recommend listening to this one at 1x speed. As always, thank you for listening.
