Eugene Wei – Tech, Media, and Culture

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (0:04)
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_1** (0:24)
Patrick O'Shaughnessy is the CEO of 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** (0:47)
My guest this week, Eugene Wei, has one of the most interesting backgrounds of anyone I've had on the podcast. He worked at Amazon early in its life, was the head of product at Hulu and Flipboard and head of video at Oculus. Our conversation is about the intersection of technology, media and culture. We discuss Eugene's concept of invisible asymptotes, why growth slows down for both companies and people and how some can burst through.
I'd list more of the topics, but we covered so much that you should just listen. Finally, I'll say that after spending a day with Eugene, including a wildly interesting dinner with Eugene, past podcast guest Sam Hinkie, and future podcast guest Kevin Kwok, that he is the type of uniquely interesting and kind person I'm always searching for, and one that I wish I could bet on somehow. If you know more people like this, reach out and suggest them for this podcast. Now, enjoy our conversation.
So we're going to jump all over the place because, again, of your kind of smorgasbord of interests and this notion of travel is a good excuse to talk about your idea of cuisine and empire. So walk us through that concept.

**Eugene Wei** (1:48)
It was inspired by a podcast I had heard about this book, Cuisine and Empire. You know, I had just realized that, you know, when I was younger, music really felt like it was the heart of culture in America. Music was where young kids turned to express their sense of rebellion, to protest things like the Vietnam War, you know, as music was, you know, like punk rock and all of that was the way that people sort of would choose bands and music to express their point of view on the world. And I realized that now, you know, food has sort of become that for a variety of reasons.
One is, you know, certainly the advent of the internet and television channels like the Food Network started to make celebrity chefs into celebrities. You know, we used to only know the names of restaurants growing up, but nowadays you can talk to many people who are into food. They'll be able to name who the chef is behind a particular restaurant and all of that. And my notion there was just that we are constantly in this cultural battle to find sources of scarcity and, you know, music and music experiences used to be more scarce. You know, I remember an age when I would try to collect rare LPs or things like that, you know, be like a huge find if you went to some weird record store in some weird small city and found one of these mythical LPs that you couldn't find easily music, like concerts and things like that were these coveted tickets that you would go to and all of that and at that age, you know, music just wasn't reproduced the way it is now. But now we live in an age of Spotify and, you know, there were the CDs before that, which is just printed in mass. And so it no longer became hard to track down any piece of music.
Whereas food experiences, especially at the high end, are really scarce. You know, the French Laundry or, you know, if you take any three star Michelin restaurant, they usually only have two seatings at night.
Only a certain number of people can roll through that. And so for you to be able to say, hey, I went and had that meal is a badge of honor that you can hold out. It's a, it's a scarce accomplishment. And so I think that we will always continue to fight that battle because humans are status seeking by nature. And so we're always trying to find that thing that gives us the edge over another person when it comes to status. And food has really become that for many people.

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (4:15)
It reminds me of another interesting thread that you were pulling on, which is your impressions from watching the documentary, The Defiant Ones about Jimmy Iovine and Beats and Dr. Dre. I would love kind of the key takeaways there because one of the things I want to spend a lot of time on is this notion of scarcity, marketing identity, signaling, etc. So what were your primary takeaways from The Defiant Ones?