The Legend Michael Mauboussin on Acquired!

We sit down with the one & only Michael Mauboussin to dive deep into his incredible body of work: untangling skill and luck, measuring moats, persistence of returns in venture capital, decision making and - particularly timely - expectations investing and how to think about valuations in the current 2021 market environment. (!!) Michael's work is maybe our most frequent carve out on Acquired, so we're pumped to finally have a chance to interview the man himself. Big thank you to Patrick O'Shaughnessy and Brent Beshore for introducing us all at Capital Camp this year!
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*Sponsors*
- Thanks to SoftBank Latin America for being our presenting sponsor for this special episode. If you are an entrepreneur, employee, other investor or simply someone who's interested in learning about the best young companies in LatAm right now, get in touch with them at: bit.ly/acquiredsoftbanklatam , and tell them that Ben and David sent you!
- You can get learn more about careers at their portfolio company QuintoAndar at carreiras.quintoandar.com.br
- Thank you as well to Modern Treasury and to Fundrise. You can learn more about them at:
- bit.ly/acquiredmoderntreasury... you can find our reverse interview with them at www.moderntreasury.com/acquired )
- bit.ly/acquiredfundrise
*Jobs!*
- Big news - we now have a full Acquired Job Board! It's a one-stop-shop with all the very best opportunities from the amazing companies in the Acquired community, including folks like Solana, Italic, Pilot, RabbitHole, Modern Treasury, Vouch, Zapier, Levels and more. AND, if you're more casually open to opportunities, we have a form you can fill out and we'll handpick the best ones and personally send to you as they come up. Check it out at www.acquired.fm/jobs
*Links:*
- Michael's wonderful talk at Google: • The Success Equation: ...
- The new revised edition of Expectations Investing: www.amazon.com/Expectations-I...
- The Success Equation: www.amazon.com/The-Success-Eq...
- Measuring the Moat: research-doc.credit-suisse.co...
- Public to Private Equity: www.morganstanley.com/im/publ...
‍Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.

[@annasatelier7792]

Have been a fan of your podcast for years, never checked it out here. So different seeing your faces Ben and David! Well done!

[@backpackly]

How does this only have 5k views? Incredibly insightful interview, this is one that I will go back and watch multiple times.

[@MichaelBabich]

Great content! Also, it's very useful to also have a video version.

[@ThatonedudeCR12956]

I know the comment won't be seen, but the answer to the question at the beginning is actually really straightforward. Many people DO start off by reverse engineering a price to determine how that price was reached. It doesn't work. You can compare 5 companies in the same sector and all of them will have wildly different p/e, p/fcf, p/b, etc. And if the market is dropping today then you have to assume those metrics are "too expensive." But then the market rallies 5% meaning you can't reverse engineer this way. If a p/e of 45 is "bad" because the market dropped this week at that p/e, then logically it must be good if it then rallies even higher next week.

[@I-0-0-I]

Woot.

[@tomths]

Do you guys have the transcript for this?

[@annasatelier7792]

Have been a fan of your podcast for years, never checked it out here. So different seeing your faces Ben and David! Well done!