Brian Christiansen – High-Conviction Growth Investing at Sands Capital

**Ted Seides** (0:05)
Hello, I'm Ted Seides, and this is Capital Allocators. This show is an open exploration of the people and process behind capital allocation. Through conversations with leaders in the money game, we learn how these holders of the keys to the kingdom allocate their time and their capital.
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**SPEAKER_1** (0:32)
All opinions expressed by Ted and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of capital allocators or their firms. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. Clients of Capital Allocators or podcast guests may maintain positions and securities discussed on this podcast.

**Ted Seides** (0:51)
My guest on today's sponsored insight is Brian Christiansen, executive managing director and senior portfolio manager at Sands Capital. A growth-focused public and private equity manager that oversees $50 billion in assets. Our conversation covers Brian's journey to Sands Capital, the firm's investment philosophy and approach to growth investing, six key investment criteria, portfolio construction, competitive advantage and investment examples.
Before we get going, my daughter Skylar is taking over the mic for this week's Spread the Word.

**Skylar** (1:26)
I've just started my second semester of my senior year of high school. You might think that that's a time to kick back and relax, and it is.
So while I slack off, have some fun and don't tell my dad about it, I'd suggest you keep listening and do tell a friend or two about the show. Thanks so much for spreading the word about Capital Allocators.

**Ted Seides** (1:45)
Please enjoy my conversation with Brian Christiansen. Brian, great to see you.

**Brian Christiansen** (1:51)
It's very good to see you as well, Ted. Thank you for having us.

**Ted Seides** (1:54)
Why don't you take me back to your upbringing and your path to getting in this business?

**Brian Christiansen** (2:01)
I graduated from Yale in the mid-2000s, and I had received a fellowship as a Yale Silver Scholar. And that program is a little bit unique in the sense that they choose five undergrads to go straight to business school.
And it was really there that I learned a lot more about how the investment management industry worked. My dad was a naval officer, so he was in the Navy for 27 years. He actually ran a Navy hospital, so he was in hospital administration.
My mom was also in hospital administration, so she actually ran civilian hospitals. I didn't really have much institutional knowledge about how the investment management industry worked, but I did have a very strong interest in not only health care given the family background, but also technology and business. When I was in high school, I owned my own web design company, so I had this extra cash lying around. So that's when I bought my first mutual fund. There was definitely an interest in investing, but I got sort of cultivated in that business school environment because that's the first time I met other people who had worked in the industry. That's when I really dug in to try to learn everything I could. Right around that time, David Swenson was a rock star on campus. Even if you didn't know much about investing, everybody knew who he was because of the impact he had had on student life with how successful the endowment had been.
Essentially, one of the things that he talked about in his books was some of the correlations of the strong investment management firms that they had had and some of the qualities that they had looked for in the manager selection process. So I literally just was like, I'm going to pretend like I'm an institutional buyer of an investment management firm and just kind of use that same list that Swenson talked about in his books. And I just went to the career service office and started just organizing a list of potential target firms to go work for. And Sands Capital was one of the companies. And it piqued my interest because I was originally from Northern Virginia. Sands is located in Arlington, Virginia, right outside of Washington, DC. And I was pretty lucky because Sands was hiring. And so I've spent my entire career at the firm since then.

**Ted Seides** (4:25)
So when you were at school management at Yale and you were reading Swenson stuff, what were those principles that you started looking at that led you to Sands?

**Brian Christiansen** (4:35)
Yeah, so some of the things that he talked about in the books were things like the firm having low turnover as part of its investment strategy, being large enough to obviously pay the bills, but not so large that they're asset gatherers, employee ownership rather than being owned by an outside institution. Located outside of New York, I thought that was a really interesting one.