Chris Pedregal - Building Granola

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (0:00)
This year's presenting sponsor for Invest Like the Best is Ramp. Ramp has built a command and control system for companies' finances. You can issue cards, manage approvals, make vendor payments of all kinds, and even automate closing your books all in one place. We did an incredibly deep dive on the company and its product as part of this new partnership, and what we heard and saw in customer surveys over and over again, was that Ramp is the best product by far. We've been users ourselves since I started my business, since long before I was able to spend so much time with the founders of Ramp and their team. Over the holiday, I was with Ramp's founders. Those that listen know that I believe that the best companies are reflections of the people that started them and run them. I've always loved the idea that Apple was really just Steve Jobs with 10,000 lives. Having gotten to know Ramp's founders well, I can tell you that they are absolutely maniacal about their mission to save people time. As far as I can tell, they do not stop working or thinking about the product and how to make it better. I'm sure they're proud of what they've built, but all I ever hear when I'm with them is them talk about what they can do to improve and expand what Ramp does for its customers. I used to joke that this podcast should be called, This is Who You Are Up Against. I often had that same thought when I'm with Ramp's founders, Kareem and Eric. I would not want to compete with these guys. I wish all the products I used had a team as hell-bent on making the product better in every conceivable way. I could list everything Ramp does here, but the list would be stale in a week. I highly recommend you just start using it to run your business' finances today. This year, I'll share a bunch of things I'm learning from these founders and this company, and I think it will make you realize why we are so excited to have this partnership with them and why we run our business on Ramp. To get started, go to ramp.com. If you're attending the Invest Ops Conference in Orlando this year, I'll be speaking at Ridgeline's private breakfast event on March 11th. Ridgeline gets me so excited because every investment professional knows this core challenge. You love the core work of investing, but operational complexities eat up valuable time and energy. That's where Ridgeline comes in. Ridgeline is an all-in-one operating system designed specifically for investment managers, and their momentum has been incredible. With about $350 billion now committed to the platform and a 60% increase in customers since October, firms are flocking to Ridgeline for good reason. They've been leading the investment management tech industry and AI for over a year, with 100% of their users opting into their AI capabilities, putting them light years ahead of other vendors thanks to their single source of data. You don't have to put up with juggling multiple legacy systems and spending endless quarter ends compiling reports. Ridgeline has created a comprehensive cloud platform that handles everything in real time, from trading and portfolio management to compliance and client reporting. It's worth reaching out to Ridgeline to see what the experience can be like with a single platform. Visit ridgelineapps.com to schedule a demo.
As an investor, staying ahead of the game means having the right tools. And I want to share one that's become indispensable in my team's own research, AlphaSense. It's the market intelligence platform trusted by 75% of the world's top hedge funds and 85% of the S&P 100 to make smarter, faster investment decisions. What sets AlphaSense apart is not just its AI-driven access to over 400 million premium sources like company filings, broker research, news and trade journals, but also its unmatched private market insights. With their recent acquisition of Tegus, AlphaSense now holds the world's premier library of over 150,000 proprietary expert transcripts from 24,000 public and private companies. Here's the kicker. 75% of all private market expert transcripts are on AlphaSense, and 50% of VC firms on the Midas list conduct their expert calls through the platform. That's the kind of insight that helps you uncover opportunities, navigate complexity and make high conviction decisions with speed and confidence. Ready to see what they can do for your investment research? Visit alphasense.com/invest to get started. Trust me, it's a tool you won't want to work without.
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, stories and strategies that will help you better invest both your time and your money. If you enjoy these conversations and want to go deeper, check out Colossus Review, our quarterly publication with in-depth profiles of the people shaping business and investing. You can find Colossus Review along with all of our podcasts at joincolossus.com.