Coburn Ventures Podcast

Last week we introduced our series on digital transformation. Now that we have some context on its importance for investors, let's get some inputs from our friends who are practitioners and decision-makers with regard to technology inside organizations. Today we are happy to have Tim Mattison, an active practitioner of all things digital transformation at AWS, the company that first showed many of us what digital transformation is going to look like. (You will see he is representing his own, general ideas here, including a few on parenting, and not those of his company.) He will offer up his reflections including five levels or phases of digital transformation. I think it will help us identify and categorize digital transformation and how it shows up in companies that are either building competitive advantage from digital transformation or just falling further behind.  Let’s jump in.

Welcome to our series on digital transformation. We are in a period in which every product or service we touch has already been defined in some digital way: each grain of wheat, each picture on our phone, each manicure, each life insurance policy has a digital marker, trail, story, or a digital facilitator. "Digital transformation" can become a statement of the obvious, of the time and space we live in....except we don't see or experience many of these digital markers. We don't feel them so much, we don't sense them, all the way, really. Digital doesn't always "live" in our physical world as something easy to point to for concrete changes happening all around us. Instead, we have abstract ideas like the "cloud", (which is really one of the best uses of language we have thus far to describe something abstract in a way we can understand for this new age), and we have trouble translating what's happening digitally to our very physical world. This sounds like an opportunity to discover blind spots. We are doing this series on digital transformation because we think it is grossly underestimated. Sometimes, we can’t always characterize the very water we are swimming in. Sometimes, we don't even know we're swimming in water. Over the next few weeks, we will put some concrete examples around this very big topic with a series of interviews. I hope you enjoy it.

Matt Wallaert, a behavioral scientist specializing in uncertainty, discusses strategies for navigating turbulent times. He explores how heightened uncertainty impacts decision-making and productivity, likening emotional struggles to drowning. Wallaert emphasizes the importance of proactive resilience, clear communication, and community support in fostering organizational health. He shares insights into how individuals can adapt to chaos and find a sense of normalcy even in conflict, offering hope for improving our roles as leaders and community members.

Today we flip the script as our friend and collaborator Jorgen Van der Sloot decides he wants to hear more about some of Coburn Ventures work on process and collaboration: what we do to help organizations go through change or make change last, and what is the difference between a community and a network that might hint at the future of work and collaboration for many businesses. By talking through the genesis of Coburn Ventures work on process and gatherings, you'll hear threads that are more universal and hint at the escalating need for investors and all types of businesses to improve and understand collaboration, community, and process in order to compete and thrive.  Thanks for listening.   

At Coburn Ventures, the investment philosophy and process grew out of change investing. But to understand change investing, we might want to understand change. One of the first steps of change investing is a simple recognition of how much we subconsciously anchor to what's going on today staying the same, whereas, in reality, change is happening all around us, all the time, in ways that we do and do not immediately recognize or want to recognize. We can really use change frameworks and pattern recognition to better understand what shifts are going on that we want to invest in, avoid, or cycle out of. In that vein, today we are going to slow down and break change investing into some component parts. When we put it back together, we will be able to talk about what change investing is and can be. I think it will illuminate some elements of change investing that you might already incorporate and maybe even some new perspectives to add to your particular process. Let's jump in. 

Today’s conversation is with Mike Cahill, a longtime friend, and investor who has been so kind to walk through his thinking on the market, especially as it relates to the very important topic of inflation.  The debate about whether inflation will be transitory or structural has been in our ear a lot lately, but it has not always been very helpful, as pundits ping pong around recent data rather than getting underneath the surface to examine the longer term forces at play.  This is where Mike comes in. His framing is clear, succinct, and understandable, and will help all of us have much more nuanced and helpful conversations on the topic.  We will cover so much in the conversation, from CPI to ESG, I hope you enjoy it.

Dive into the intriguing concept of de-professionalizing valuation in investment practices. The conversation challenges traditional methods, questioning their effectiveness in today's fast-paced market. Discover the need for innovation and emotional insight in valuation strategies, while examining the limitations of conventional metrics. Explore how market instability and company culture influence investment approaches. Finally, learn the importance of resilience and embracing uncertainty as key to navigating the unpredictable financial landscape.

Today in our series the Dark Side of the Moon, we are exploring value, and in particular, what to do with stocks that are perceived to be excessively valued. There are so many that fit this category and have fit this category for years now. As business models have changed with connectivity, networks, and the information age, there are more businesses that defy laws we thought applied to every business, laws like diminishing returns. But, professionally, we prefer to rely on concepts and measurements that we feel are certain, or at least proven, somehow. We don't want to have to reevaluate things we’ve been taught and the methods that we think help us.  So are we at a crossroads? An evolution? An inevitable correction? To explore, we talk with investor Scott Booth, who brings loads of experience in both the equity markets as well as private markets, and whose clear-mindedness has often provided really insightful conversations over the years. I hope you enjoy it.

In reviewing our investment process, it can be helpful to look for where we get trapped, where we feel on our heels in scenarios we didn’t anticipate and feel forced into making a decision on selling. Sell discipline is one of the areas ripe for costly errors, so let’s dig into it today and see if we can’t find a few incremental steps to take to possibly circumvent more of these situations.  This is part of a series we are calling The Dark Side of the Moon: the elements of the investment process we don’t always like to spend time on but have a huge cost if we avoid them. We’ll cover risk, selling disciplines, and red flagging, all along with our friends. I hope you find it a useful trip... See you on the other side.

Today we’re with Steve Salopek, small-cap and tech fund manager turned University Professor at THE Ohio State University. We’re here to explore how we can better approach thesis threats, discussions, and investigations into what can and will go wrong with a thesis or a stock position. Pip starts us off with some ideas for methods and then Steve will tell us more about building red-flagging right into their process, so that it seeped into the foundation, saving them valuable time and pain. Stay tuned to how Steve’s techniques in his second career as a professor can be parlayed into investment meetings. I hope you enjoy it. This is part of a series we are calling The Dark Side of the Moon: the elements of process we don’t always like to spend time on but have a huge cost if we avoid them. We’ll cover risk, selling disciplines, and red flagging, all along with our friends. I hope you find it a useful trip... See you on the other side.