Lauren Loktev, Kanyi Maqubela, & Craig Shapiro - Watching a Venture Fund at Work

**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)
This week's episode is with the partners of the Collaborative Fund, a venture capital firm based in New York City. I know from experience that the quality of a team is crucial to success in investing, whether that be in public markets, private equity or venture capital. But I hadn't heard a group interview of this sort before, so I figured I would create one, and I'm glad I did.
Lauren, Kanyi and Craig touch on all aspects of their search and investing process. We discuss how they identify thematic change in the world and then build a portfolio around those themes.
I found the section on the various dimensions of brand and how to build brand to be particularly insightful. Above all, I think it's a great example of a team with chemistry on a singular mission. They all offer great advice on how to operate a business, build a team and, if you're a venture capitalist or angel investor, find interesting new investments.
One more thing, stay tuned at the end of the interview for a bonus segment, which was captured with the tape still rolling. For show notes, visit investorfieldguide.com forward slash collaborative. And now, please enjoy this group conversation with the partners of the Collaborative Fund. On the episode with Craig, I started with a question that was based on a piece that he wrote about roots. And I've stolen that and used it as like a way to understand people's backstory. And I thought it'd be fun to do it with Kanyi and Lauren as well. So maybe we could start with you, Lauren. Some formative aspects of your background, where you come from and what your experience is and how that informs your worldview and how that got you here as a venture capitalist.

**Lauren Loktev** (2:54)
Yeah, absolutely. I grew up kind of all over the place. When people ask where I'm from, it's always a challenging question because I grew up in North Carolina, Connecticut, Kentucky and then Minnesota. High school for me was Minnesota. I went to undergrad in LA, studied abroad in Paris, then moved to New York. I moved to Boston after that and then moved out to San Francisco about five and a half years ago. So I've lived in a significant part of the country at this point.
I skipped kind of southwest, Rocky Mountain area, but other than that, I've experienced quite a bit of it. And I guess because of that, my sort of worldview and home has been defined more by the people around me and family, friends, et cetera, than necessarily a physical place. And I think because of that, I've always cared a lot about solutions that address a significant part of the world.
And so it's an interesting time to be in Silicon Valley because there's a lot of discussion about Silicon Valley inventing for Silicon Valley. And that's a topic that I care a lot about because I have experienced a bunch of different parts of the world at this point, particularly the country. And so I'd say that's part of the worldview development. I think the other part of it for me was that my dad was running a clean tech company and I was working for a carbon trading firm while I was in undergrad. And so I came to really care about sustainability and wanted to work in that long before there was really a large sustainability related industry or opportunities for people with a liberal arts background.