Ali Hamed – Creative Investing

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (0:00)
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Hello and welcome, everyone. I'm Patrick O'Shaughnessy, and this is Invest Like the Best. This show is an open-ended exploration of markets, ideas, methods, stories, and of strategies that will help you better invest both your time and your money. You can learn more and stay up to date at investorfieldguide.com.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:59)
Patrick O'Shaughnessy is a principal and portfolio manager at O'Shaughnessy Asset Management. All opinions expressed by Patrick and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. Clients of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast.

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (1:21)
I have a special request this week. Which is to share this episode with every curious person in your life. The conversation with the 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 this 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 and whatever it is you do by helping others solve problems with empathy.
So Ali, I'm gonna start with a question that, as I'm thinking about it, I don't think I've ever actually asked anyone on this podcast, which is for you to describe your investment philosophy overall.

**Ali Hamed** (2:34)
I think that our investment philosophy has been, how do we, we go into every single investment saying, is this a trade or is it a business?
And if we think it's gonna be a one-off trade, we probably won't do it. We look at every new investment opportunity, whether it's something we, within a current fund or a new potential fund as, can we get an unfair advantage?
Can we build a sustainable advantage where we understand why our team is uniquely positioned to get an outsized return? Do we think that we could do this a bunch of times over and over again? And do we think that the more times we do it, the greater advantage we'll have over our other competitors? An example of something we wouldn't want to do is say, hey, we've discovered this thing, and now that we're doing this thing, everyone else is gonna realize it's also a good idea. And I would be nervous to get on this podcast and talk about it. The minute I'm nervous to get on this podcast and talk about one of our investments, it means it's not defensible enough. And I never want to be the guy who's winning because I have a secret, and God forbid anyone else finds out about the secret. So I guess that would be some of the checklist.

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (3:33)
With that in mind, can you describe the history of Coventure and its unique structure in the way that it seems to organically grow into an investment firm that's quite different? It doesn't fit into a single bucket, so maybe describe the firm as it looks today.

**Ali Hamed** (3:47)
Coventure is a firm, our focus is we build funds in what we call sort of new and emerging asset classes that are propped up by new technology. So we look for things where technology helped us create a new asset class and then build a fund around it.