Joe Mansueto – Lessons From the Founder of Morningstar

**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)
My guest this week is Joe Mansueto, the founder, longtime CEO and current executive chairman of Morningstar. Almost everyone listening will have used Morningstar at some point, as I have often, so it was incredibly fun to hear about the company's simple beginnings. Joe is an entrepreneur at heart. We discuss his early business exploits and how he and his colleagues built Morningstar into the global business it is today. Along the way we discuss investing, what to look for when interviewing people, philanthropy and a lot more.
After we finished our conversation, Joe is kind enough to walk me around Morningstar's incredible offices, which ooze with energy and feel much more like a Silicon Valley tech company than a Wall Street mainstay. You can tell that Joe has injected his entrepreneurial spirit into the entire company and it's a great sight to behold.
A huge thank you to Joe for being so generous with his time and for sharing so many wonderful lessons on business and life. For show notes, visit investorfieldguide.com forward slash Joe. And now, please enjoy my conversation with Morningstar founder, Joe Mansueto.
Thank you, Joe, so much for joining me today. This is really going to be a blast. There is a ton to cover because of your unique history and the seat you sit in kind of looking across the entire industry but also having kind of grown up in it. So I think there's going to be a lot of fun lessons to learn today. I would love, and I feel like a fool for not having known this until yesterday, for you to tell me about how Morningstar got its name.

**Joe Mansueto** (2:48)
So the name Morningstar comes from the book Walden by Thoreau. It's the last line of that book, The Sun is But a Morningstar. And it was one of the first books I read as a first-year student in college at the University of Chicago.
And to me that book is all about independence, about thrift, self-reliance. And so when I was looking to name the company, I thought those were all good qualities for a company to embrace and body. And so the name harkens back to that last line, The Sun is But a Morningstar.
And I often tell the story where I remember being a first-year student at the U of C. And if you've read Walden, the conclusion is very powerful. And I'm wondering how is Thoreau going to end this book?
And so I get through the conclusion. I get to that last line, The Sun is But a Morningstar. And I still remember very vividly, I put the book down on my lap. I look out over the quads. I'm in the fourth floor of Regenstein Library. The snow is falling.
And I read that line, The Sun is But a Morningstar. And I think to myself, what the hell does that mean?
And it kind of stuck with me. And I had to think about it. And to me, it meant, you know, something that's been around as long as the sun is still in its infancy. It's still just getting started. And it's a very optimistic statement that no matter where you are in life, you're still a rising sun. And then I like the word morningstar. It had a very positive ring in my ear. And so but it's all about Thoreau and his independence and Morningstar is all about independence. And that's where the name derives.