Lee Ainslie - Hedge Fund Maverick

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (0:00)
If you're a regular listener of my podcast, I have another recommendation for you. The podcast is called Founders, and it's hosted by David Senra, who has devoted his life to learning from history's greatest entrepreneurs. Each week, David distills the lessons of a different founder, from Henry Ford to Coco Chanel to Edwin Land. His recent episode on James Cameron is particularly excellent if you're looking for somewhere to start. I guarantee if you listen to Founders, you'll feel inspired to level up whatever you're working on. You can find a link to Founders in the show notes of this conversation. And because Founders is part of the Colossus Network, you can search all the past transcripts on our website at joincolossus.com.
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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, stories and strategies that will help you better invest both your time and your money.
Invest Like the Best is part of the Colossus family of podcasts and you can access all our podcasts including edited transcripts, show notes and other resources to keep learning at joincolossus.com.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:48)
Patrick O'Shaughnessy is the CEO and founding partner of PositiveSum and 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 PositiveSum or 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 PositiveSum or O'Shaughnessy Asset Management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast.

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (2:20)
My guest today is Lee Ainslie, the founder of Maverick Capital. Lee started his investing career at Tiger Management where he worked for Julian Robertson. In 1993, he left to start Maverick and has built the firm into one of the top-performing hedge funds of the last 30 years.
Lee doesn't speak in public often so this is a fascinating insight into what it takes to build an enduring investment business, both psychologically and operationally. Throughout the conversation, we flick between his lessons building Maverick, his perspective on the market, and what he's learned about the craft of investing. I hope you enjoy this great conversation with Lee Ainslie.
So Lee, this is going to be such a blast. I think a fun place to begin is actually with your origin story because the firm is so old. It's just not often that a firm like yours is able to stand the test of time. We're going to talk a lot about investing culture and building a team. The tenure of your team is remarkable relative to others over several decades now that have been with you for so long. And that has to be rooted in the earliest days of building the firm, of meeting other peer investors at the time. Obviously, you were at Tiger. At lunch, you were telling me this incredible story about Steve Mandel and your relationship with him early on. Maybe you could retell that as just an amazing precursor to some of your ideas about integrity, ethics, and culture in an investing business.

**Lee Ainslie** (3:39)
Well, thank you. I appreciate you having me on.
It was a great fortune to work at Tiger in that amazing environment with so many really talented people. As you were pointing out, one of the people that was quite nice to me at that point in time was Steve Mandel. We started about the same time, but I had just come out of business school and he already was a well-recognized investor, an old American at Goldman Sachs, etc. And so I was under his wing for the first few months.
And then I went into my year in review. I think there was a decent chance I was probably about to be let go. But to my surprise, I was paid well beyond my expectations. They actually doubled my percentage interest in the firm's profits and they made it very clear this was all happening because of Steve's recommendation.