Coburn Ventures Podcast

Well, we are back again with a few more thoughts on the current market environment. We thought we were done with this last week but great questions keep coming so here’s a bit more. Today we start with a delineation between the different jobs of stock picking. It can be a fantastic orienting tool that you might want to have handy in your investor backpack when you find yourself feeling lost in the woods. We revisit a very nasty pattern from the last two market downturns just in case we see it again we will all have a gentle reminder about it here, and chat a bit about market psychology readiness to evaluate any type of  “green shoots” or other catchy terms.

We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming to bring you some thinking on the current market environment and how that relates to process. This is a light spin on our conceptualization of the "Other Room" of the 2010's. Now, we look for signal in the noise about what investing looks like inside a world of increasing inflation, so we also want to know what the signs are for looking through that period to the "Other Side". We'll discuss a few ways to approach this through the investment process, so let's jump in. 

We all want to get the best out of our team and contribute deeply to our teams. We understand that 1+1 can equal three. We know we don’t know everything and have a sense that working and thinking with others makes us all better… But there is so much about what we experience about conventional collaboration that doesn’t work: group projects steeped in hierarchy and powerlessness, or a group of people around a table feeling forced to be nice and never really getting to the heart of the matter. Instead, we want to route around conventional collaboration and design for something we call Capital C Collaboration. We’ll define what that means to start. Be sure to stay for the last third which is all about things we can do individually or unilaterally to get "Capital C Collaboration" going.

Unlock the secrets to impactful investment meetings! Discover how to transform dread-filled gatherings into dynamic sessions that spark insights. Dive into mastering the nuances of meeting dynamics, emphasizing clarity and active participation. Explore the importance of collective insight, like a band creating music together, and challenge the rigidity often found in professional settings. Redefine the purpose of investment meetings with intentionality, prioritizing engagement and preparation for better decision-making.

A few years ago we were doing some active consulting work with a handful of amazing not for profits. This work was so interesting and so valuable for all the reasons you can imagine: applying skillsets honed in investing that actually help real people with real problems, getting to know a whole host of new brilliant people from other sectors, but also, because, standing in these two worlds, one foot in one, one foot in the other, revealed greatly where the thinking in their industry overpronated on intentionality and goodwill, at times, and when the thinking and m.o. in our industry overpronated on exertion and knowledge building at times.  The result of being this bridge between two worlds? A lot of great insights on how to effect change. After a lot of discussions about it, Pip figured this formula out on his whiteboard one weekend. It brings each element into its own powerful place.  We have been using it ever since. It’s called the Housefly Formula.

What better way to mark our 100th episode than to spend time with one of our friends for the last 25+ years, Angie Dalton of Signum Growth Capital. Today we get to ask Angie about what’s going on in web 3 and new media technologies: specifically, what’s going right, and what is totally off-kilter. The conversation turned out to be one for me that offers loads of new breadcrumbs to track through the forest of web 3: what might be a real focal point of monumental change, where the fraud and disingenuous activity will show up, and some critical differences in mental models between the web 2 world and web 3. This is such a gift! It is ONLY through new mental models and new lenses that we can hope to accurately assess and make predictions on how these shifts will affect business, society, and the movement of capital.  Let’s, (for the 100th time), jump in!

Selling gets a bad rap, but we’re here to talk about it today because I really feel it's an underestimated power for investors for their toolkit AND an underestimated shift in society.  For investors, this tool is a double whammy of personal efficacy and investor foresight! On the first topic: understanding selling gives you a better antenna to determine signal from noise. More on that in the conversation. On the second, how selling happens and why it is or is not effective is changing dramatically, which means revenue visibility, and retention and long term cash flow visibility would also be changing, Let's jump in.

In our conversation on digital transformation, Rudy Karsan presented us with the question: "what wrong, outdated or unhelpful lenses am I using to see the world?" Today, we are here with Zak Dychtwald, Founder of The Young China Group to help bring clarity and perspective to our own (mostly) western lenses. Our goal is to improve our ability to interpret changes in China just a little more adeptly. Let's jump in. 

“Data is never the whole story…there is always a gap between the data and reality.” -- Irwin Kula Just when we think we know what we think about data, Irwin Kula is here to help us uncover the tensions and handle the polarities data brings. There are so many tensions fundamental to the role of data in our lives, just think about how the most valuable data doesn’t actually confirm what we already know … it brings us something new, probably throws us into a more uncertain rather than more certain frame of mind, and may induce change when we weren’t looking for any type of change at all.  Still, from the outset, when data is mentioned in business it's not usually about the discovery of unintended results but about certainty. But on our quest for certainty, we are often given less of it. Let's jump in.

 We have identified two sources of Rogue Waves: the Quantum Change in Connectivity and Quantum Change in Information. These are core facets of human existence and therefore a big deal. But from these comes an interesting element we will discuss today, and that is, that with connectivity and information we have an all-out war for our attention. Any tool kit to ride the rogue waves is wise to be equipped for the media rogue wave, not only how we handle it individually in terms of our time, but how we understand how it is impacting all businesses and impacting our investment processes. Let's jump in.