CoVenture

My guest today is Ali Hamed. Ali was first on Invest Like the Best six years ago. He was 26 at the time and four years into building his investing firm, CoVenture. Both then and now, Ali is an example of what’s possible when you think creatively. Six years later, CoVenture now manages two-and-a-half billion dollars, and Ali continues to find alpha in esoteric places. We talk about YouTube catalogs, creative opportunities in real estate, and how venture investing helps them get better at credit. We also talk about his lessons from building an investment firm and what it’s been like to work with Michael Ovitz. Please enjoy this great conversation with Ali Hamed. Listen to Ali host a Business Breakdowns on Spotter Listen to Founders Podcast For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here. ----- This episode is brought to you by Tegus, the only investment research platform built for fundamental investors. Whether you’re trying to get up to speed on a new market or keep tabs on a portfolio company, Tegus is the end-to-end investment research platform you need. With Tegus, you can quickly understand a company's business model, drivers, benchmarks, and management quality. To monitor an entire market, download our pre-built financial models — or update your own with the latest data using Tegus’ new Excel Add-In. Tegus gives you all of this and more, all bundled into a single software license. Find out why 95% of the top 20 global private equity firms are Tegus customers. Learn more and get your free trial at tegus.com/patrick. ----- Invest Like the Best is a property of Colossus, LLC. For more episodes of Invest Like the Best, visit joincolossus.com/episodes.  Past guests include Tobi Lutke, Kevin Systrom, Mike Krieger, John Collison, Kat Cole, Marc Andreessen, Matthew Ball, Bill Gurley, Anu Hariharan, Ben Thompson, and many more. 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 Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (https://thepodcastconsultant.com). Show Notes: (00:00:00) Welcome to Invest Like the Best (00:03:11) First Question - The Journey of Building an Investment Firm (00:15:08) The Influence of Time and Scale on Asset Classes (00:22:39) The Power and Potential of YouTube's Asset Class (00:27:33) The Future of Real Estate and Housing Supply (00:30:15) The Challenges of Investing in Platform Economies (00:36:44) The Pitfalls of Capital Formation in Asset Management (00:45:17) The Evolution of Venture Portfolio (00:51:14) The Approach to AI and Other Emerging Technologies (00:54:42) The Mispricing in Private Credit (00:58:46) Building the People Side of the Business (01:04:21) The Challenges and Opportunities in Valuation (01:19:40) The Impact of Michael Ovitz on CoVenture (01:23:11) The Kindest Thing Anyone Has Ever Done For Him

Ali Hamed

General Partner

CoVenture

I’m Jesse Pujji and this is Business Breakdowns. Today we are doing a different kind of breakdown. We are covering an entire category, Amazon Aggregators. These are the companies that are buying up hundreds of Amazon’s third-party sellers. The concept of Amazon Aggregators is relatively new, tracing back to 2018 with the founding of Thrasio, but the ecosystem is already huge and growing. Most recent numbers peg it at around $300bn dollars in revenue and growing faster than Amazon itself. These aggregators have unique moats and high-quality entrepreneurs.   To help break down the marketplace and business of acquiring Amazon storefronts, I’m joined by Ali Hamed, a partner of CoVenture, who is also a popular guest on Invest Like the Best. In our conversation, we discuss the three superpowers Amazon sellers have, why there’s only $8bn in funding for a market doing $50bn in EBITDA, and we go into detail on how Amazon Aggregators are structured and operate. Please enjoy this unique breakdown on Amazon Aggregators.   For the full show notes, transcript, and links to the best content to learn more, check out the episode page here.   -----   Business Breakdowns is a property of Colossus, LLC. For more episodes of Business Breakdowns, 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: @JoinColossus | @patrick_oshag | @jspujji | @zbfuss   Show Notes [00:03:23] - [First question] - What is an Amazon aggregator, and who sells through Amazon? [00:05:26] - The scale and size of the aggregator market in general [00:06:43] - The history of third-party sellers and the utility they offer Amazon [00:08:20] - When they started inviting third parties to join their network and their market share [00:09:47] - Amazon’s 40% take-rate and overview of the economic structure [00:10:24] - How many individual storefronts exist and what they look like  [00:13:19] - Who is starting Amazon stores and an overview of a seller writ large [00:14:43] - The initial insight that led to incorporating third-party aggregators [00:21:17] - How many aggregators exist in the space today [00:24:41] - Why vertical integration isn’t such a primary focus for aggregators [00:26:53] - Ways aggregators find businesses and how they tend to acquire them [00:31:29] - What the top 10 aggregators look like and their acquisition frequency [00:32:25] - The common value add aggregators deliver post-acquisition [00:36:47] - Deal pipelines and other sales and marketing functions [00:40:22] - Interesting things in the space given how unique of a marketplace it is [00:43:57] - New innovations and secondary ecosystems emerging as a result of aggregators [00:45:13] - How an aggregator should think about Amazon and risks to their business [00:48:29] - Why Amazon won’t use their data and customer ownership to own the market [00:50:10] - Macro and system risks that would threaten the success of this business model [00:52:35] - What keeps Amazon up at night and potential worries about aggregators [00:53:54] - Reasons why they would pass on an acquisition opportunity [00:55:32] - Contributing factors to explosive growth that exceeded expectations [00:58:10] - Biggest takeaways for builders and investors from 3rd party aggregators [01:01:04] - Where to learn more about Amazon’s third-party aggregators

Ali Hamed

General Partner

CoVenture

My guest today is popular past guest Ali Hamed, who joins us for an update on private credit. We discuss what has happened so far, what parts of the market are frozen, and where opportunities may lie. We also talk about how the world has shifted digitally since the beginning of the COVID pandemic. Please enjoy my conversation with my friend Ali Hamed. This episode is brought to by Koyfin. For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast. Sign up for the book club, where you’ll get a full investor curriculum and then 3-4 suggestions every month at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub. Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_oshag   Show Notes (1:41) – (First question) – World of private credit in the pandemic age (4:50) – Bag of uncertainty (6:27) – Important levers in private credit (9:15) – Scary scenarios and systemic risks in this world (13:21) – General trends in the credit data (15:30) – Are investors factoring government response properly (17:02) – Defining advanced rates (20:18) – Focus on quality vs rate of return now (22:26) – Pockets of opportunity as uncertainty declines (26:06) – Online ecommerce platforms, like the YouTube economy (29:40) – Non advertising driven ecommerce platforms (31:54) – How venture capital is responding (38:19) – How junior debt could be am opportunity (40:17) – Trends he’s thinking about; redefining small businesses (43:07) – Ali Hamed Podcast Episode   Learn More For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast.  Sign up for the book club, where you’ll get a full investor curriculum and then 3-4 suggestions every month at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_oshag

Ali Hamed

General Partner

CoVenture

My guests this week are Ali Hamed, Brian Harwitt and Marc Porzecanski who work together at CoVenture Credit. When I first had Ali on as a podcast guest, we discussed the many aspects of what his firm does, ranging from venture, to crypto, to credit. We glossed over the lending side of the business, but having since learned a lot from them on the topic, I was excited to get the chance to talk with members of their credit team for today’s longer exploration of esoteric high yield lending. I am always proselytizing the value of investor education, s this week we have a podcast first. The CoVenture team has prepared a long series of posts that correspond to our conversation and go even deeper into the topic of credit investing. You can find them in the shownotes at investorfieldguide.com/credit This is entirely differently from any conversation I’ve shared before, so I hope you learn as much as I did. Please enjoy my discussion with team CoVenture Credit. For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast. Sign up for the book club, where you’ll get a full investor curriculum and then 3-4 suggestions every month at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub. Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_oshag Show Notes 1:42 - (First Question) – The formation of their unique credit business 7:09 – Their advantage in seeing both the equity and credit side of their investments 10:23 – Looking at the Returnly deal as an example 14:07 – How they view these deals and are able to sustain them as long-term investments 18:09 – Their interest in payroll deduction lending 20:08 – Finding unique types of default risk 21:31 – What stands out in a platform that makes CoVenture want to take a deeper look 26:43 – Most interesting types of problem they have come across that they have yet to do a deal in 31:35 – What is going to change to make for more thoughtful underwriting of subprime lending 35:51 – Major structures of asset backed lending 39:49 – Whether the home serves as an interesting playground for credit opportunities and whether people will own anything again 42:44 – Mark’s experience working at a huge firm vs his experience at CoVenture 44:31 – How does the current credit cycle impact their view 47:04 – Lending against bitcoin 50:06 – Who is interested in these loans against bitcoin 50:57 – How to set interest rates against a weird asset like this 53:00 – What are the key determents of success in this business 1:02:27 – Kindest thing anyone has team for the team 1:03:52 – How to treat people that you pass on   Learn More For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast.  Sign up for the book club, where you’ll get a full investor curriculum and then 3-4 suggestions every month at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub Follow Patrick on twitter at @patrick_oshag

Ali Hamed

General Partner

CoVenture

Brian Harwitt

Partner

CoVenture

Marc Porzecanski

Partner

CoVenture

We’ve always found that even in public equities, you learn more once you have a live portfolio. One of the best ways to learn is to put some capital at risk. For this episode, I asked two VCs to sit down with me and Brett and treat the conversation as they would a normal pitch meeting, so that we, the audience, can get a peek into their world and the types of questions they ask. The venture capitalists in question are Thatcher Bell, of CoVenture, and Taylor Greene, of Collaborative Fund. The first voice that you’ll hear is Thatcher, and the next person asking questions is Taylor. I began by asking Thatcher to give us a bit of background on how he approaches young companies before diving in with questions of his own.   Show Notes 3:12 – (First Question) – getting a flywheel business going 4:49 – Brett’s background and how that led to the formation of Ladder 7:58 – Breakdown of the product 9:29 – The sign-up process 10:29 – Key problem for each party of the ladder transaction 12:34 – Diving deeper into the problem of being a health coach 14:29 – How does Ladder differentiate itself from other apps that help people locate a trainer 17:01 – A deeper dive into the consumer using this product 20:28 – The accountability factor being the moat for Ladder 24:12 - How successful is the product right now in terms of recruiting new customers and trainers 28:38 – Their pre-launch interview and research process 31:49 – Going from hypothesis to product development 35:25 – What should founders think about when doing customer discovery, even after they have a product in the market 39:22 – Optimizing in the early stage of a business 43:24 – The defensive moat of a startup 46:20 – Their take on their ability to corner the coaches in this market 49:57 – Is there a side of the producer/consumer side of the equation that is more important. 55:42 – Getting and giving value to your supply, in this case the coaches 58:22 – How to view different phases of a business 1:00:43 – Growing the supply and demand so that neither side gets aggravated 1:02:28 – Market opportunity for Ladder 1:10:55 – Top 2 or 3 goals that Ladder has over the next 12-18 months 1:13:00 – Looking at Ladder, what are the strengths and weaknesses as a potential investment 1:20:40 – Pros and cons of a startup seeking institutional VC money 1:25:11 – Reviewing the pitch

Thatcher Bell

Partner

CoVenture

Taylor Greene

Partner

Collaborative Fund

My guest this week helps me complete the first trilogy of guests on the podcast. His name is Nikhil Kalghatgi. Along with past guests Ali Hamed and Savneet Singh, Nikhil is a partner at the asset management firm CoVenture. If you liked those two conversations, you will love this one—it is somehow even more wide-ranging than the first two. Nikhil is the CEO of CoVenture Crypto, but he ended up there because of an overarching investing style that he calls moonshot investing, which we explore right from the start and in great detail. He is obsessed with productivity and happiness, and we spend a long time on those topics. One of the most interesting experiments I’ve heard about on the podcast is his Happiness project, for which he interviewed more than 100 of the wealthiest people in the world. The lessons he gleaned from those conversations are very helpful, and I won’t soon forget the lesson related to sacrifice. We also discuss asteroid mining, networking, shared experience, and philosophy. Oh and crypto currencies. Nikhil’s take on crypto has always been refreshing to me. In fact the first time I met him he was throwing cold water on a room full of enthusiastic crypto investors. Within crypto we discuss business opportunities, mining, and how new retail and institutional capital will affect the asset class.  Hash Power is presented by Fidelity Investments. Please enjoy this sparkling conversation with Nikhil Kalghatgi.   For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast. Sign up for the book club, where you’ll get a full investor curriculum and then 3-4 suggestions every month at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub. Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_oshag   Show Notes 2:42 – (First Question) –  What moonshot investing is 4:41 – Creating sustainable differential investment advantage 9:30 – Assessing the market for moonshots 12:15 – Types of people suited for moonshots  13:42 – The Happiness Project 17:45 – Commonalities among successful people 25:15 – The importance of humor in life 17:16 – Recipe for a good joke 28:00 – The night Patrick and Nikhil met 29:17 – His perspective on the world of venture capital 33:26 – What did Nikhil learn from his time at SoftBank 34:52 – Craziest thing Nikhil has done 40:27 – What he took away from his time in military intelligence 46:10 – The idea of manufactured serendipity 47:13 – Nikhil’s approach to investing in cryptocurrency and what he finds interesting about it 53:23 – How Nikhil reconciles the excitement of crypto with the lack of tangible asset 58:10– The timeline of retail and institutional investors becoming more involved in crypto 1:02:43– Exploring their liquidity strategy 1:04:10 – What happens if regulators shut down the cryptomarkets 1:09:48– The role of miners in crypto and how that might change moving forward 1:10:43 – What is the frontier of crypto mining 1:12:31 – What’s the most compelling rabbit hole in crypto 1:16:23 – How would the original creators of crypto currency feel about the current state of the market 1:20:01 – What Nikhil sees as the value proposition for the whole ecosystem. 1:21:00 – Kindest thing anyone has done for Nikhil   Learn More For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast.  Sign up for the book club, where you’ll get a full investor curriculum and then 3-4 suggestions every month at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub Follow Patrick on twitter at @patrick_oshag

Nikhil Kalghatgi

CEO

CoVenture

My guest this week is another in a recent series of people that makes me want to work harder, learn more, and do more for others. His name is Savneet Singh, and he has already accomplished a remarkable amount in the worlds of business and investing. He’s preferred to keep a bit of a low profile, but I’m hoping, for everyone’s sake, to change that a little bit. Savneet has invested in unique things like Spanish real estate, famous startups like Uber, cryptocurrencies before they were cool, and even websites. He founded and built a fintech company. And now, he both a partner at the wide-ranging investment firm CoVenture, with my previous guest Ali Hamed, and the co-founder of Tera Holdings, which is trying to become the Berkshire Hathaway of software companies. To say this conversation is wide-ranging is an understatement. What’s neat is that my favorite parts aren’t even on investing, but are instead on principles for living.                                                                                                     Savneet is one of the best people I’ve met in this journey. I’ve had several other conversations with him with shockingly low overlap with the one you are about to hear—a testament to his active and curious mind. I hope you enjoy learning from him as much as I have. For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast. Sign up for the book club, where you’ll get a full investor curriculum and then 3-4 suggestions every month at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub. Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_oshag   Links Referenced Ali Hamed podcast episolde The VERY simple bear case for bitcoin Owl Mountain Books Referenced Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist The Gorilla Game: Picking Winners in High Technology   Show Notes 2:30 – (First Question) – How Savneet started thinking about Spanish real estate. 4:29 – Why Airbnb could be the most impactful and interesting of the companies like this 5:25 – Savneet’s early entrepreneurial ventures 6:42 – His big investing influences     7:02 – Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist  7:40 – What did Savneet learn in his two years on the sell-side of Wall Street  8:50 – How the financial crisis impacted Savneet  10:11 – The entrepreneurial journey and GBI  11:40 – Savneet’s observations on the FinTech space and investing in it  16:22 – His thoughts on venture capital style investing  18:36 – Transition out of GBI into his partnership with Ali Hamed  22:13 – The impactful things that his parents did for him  23:23 – How Savneet thinks about justice in his life  26:19 – Why value investing struck a chord with Savneet   28:14 – Defining the proper long-term mindset when starting a company  31:21 – Knowing what he knows now, what does he think about Berkshire today  33:22 – The strategy behind Terra and how it came together 35:00 – His checklist for deciding to invest in a firm 41:38 – Why does Savneet think this is the space he wants to remain in for the long-term 44:39 – How they are thinking about pricing a company they invest in 47:03 – Lessons learned in sales and marketing that he can and will bring to the software world 52:05 – What Savneet has learned from Constellation 59:08 – What lessons has Savneet learned about taxes in their company structure 1:02:13 – How they think about capital sourcing 1:05:08 – His balanced view on crypto as an asset class 1:05:18 – The VERY simple bear case for bitcoin 1:09:45 – Savneet shares the Sikh philosophy with Patrick 1:13:21 – A look at Owl Mountain 1:15:59 – The Gorilla Game: Picking Winners in High Technology 1:16:42 – Any other areas that people are underestimating 1:17:22 – Kindest thing anyone has done for Savneet Learn More For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast.  Sign up for the book club, where you’ll get a full investor curriculum and then 3-4 suggestions every month at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub Follow Patrick on twitter at @patrick_oshag

Savneet Singh

Partner / Co-founder

CoVentureTHTera Holdings

I have a special request this week: share this episode with every curious person in your life.  The conversation, with a 26-year old investor named Ali Hamed, serves as an example of what’s possible when you think creatively.  Ali views the world with a fresh set of eyes, and has already become an expert at identifying new investment opportunities where others have not. As the second prodigy 26 year old in as many weeks on the podcast, these young guns are making me feel like an ancient 32 year old.  We talk a lot about “alpha” in our world, earning returns better than the market. But the key word in that last sentence isn’t alpha, it’s earning. Hopefully you, like me, will use this conversation as a reminder of what it takes to earn differentiated returns. It’s not just the hard work, but also the mindset. We explore many examples of how to create new investment opportunities, from rolling up Instagram accounts, to financing perishable fruit like watermelons, to heavy machinery software.  Please enjoy this special conversation with Ali Hamed. Follow him and his partners. And then go figure out how to earn success yourself in whatever it is you do by helping other people solve problems with empathy.  For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast. Sign up for the book club, where you’ll get a full investor curriculum and then 3-4 suggestions every month at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub. Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_oshag   Books Referenced The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine   Links Referenced Sheel Tyle Podcast Seed Investing is a B2C Business, While Growth Stage investing is a B2B Business Ira Judelson podcast Free Content and Digital Media Are Increasing Socio-Economic Disparity    Show Notes 2:24 - (First Question) Ali’s investment philosophy  3:33 – History of Coventure and its unique structure  6:30 – The story of how Coventure was seeded  12:29 – What makes cost of capital such an interesting topic for Ali  14:13 – Exploring fee structures and the expectations for return in the current environment  17:02 – The current state of the VC world  21:42 – Ali’s investment process on the VC side  25:32 – What other requirements are there for Ali to make a VC investment  28:00 – Understanding the difference between judgement and empathy in founders             28:20 – The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine 29:47 – Dealing with LP’s             32:47 – Sheel Tyle Podcast 33:39 – At one point did Ali feel the most personally at risk in his career 37:55 – Why did they get involved in cryptocurrency  43:30 – What excites Ali most about crypto 46:09 – Lending as an alternative way to invest in businesses 48:09 – An overview of their lending business 50:21 – How does deal flow and sourcing work in these arrangements 52:54 – How much encroachment will Ali face from competitors 54:28 – Exploring the idea of valuing and buying digital accounts 59:36 – How Ali thinks about marketing for his own firm and the ones he invests in 1:00:06 – Seed Investing is a B2C Business, While Growth Stage investing is a B2B Business 1:03:59 – Longer term aspirations for Ali and industries that he would avoid             1:04:25 – Ira Judelson podcast 1:08:05 – Ali’s view on the potential negative impact of free content             1:08:19 - Free Content and Digital Media Are Increasing Socio-Economic Disparity 1:12:48 – Kindest thing anyone has done for Ali   Learn More For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast.  Sign up for the book club, where you’ll get a full investor curriculum and then 3-4 suggestions every month at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub Follow Patrick on twitter at @patrick_oshag

Ali Hamed

General Partner

CoVenture