Marc Andreessen - The Battle For Tech Supremacy

**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 businesses 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. Every investment professional knows this challenge. You love the core work of investing, but operational complexities eat up valuable time and energy. That's where Ridgeline comes in, an all-in-one operating system designed specifically for investment managers.
Ridgeline has created a comprehensive cloud platform that handles everything in real time, from trading and portfolio management to compliance and client reporting. Gone are the days of juggling multiple legacy systems and spending endless quarter ends compiling reports. 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, and we'll hear directly from someone who's made the switch. You'll hear a short clip from my conversation with Katie Ellenberg, who heads Investment Operations and Portfolio Administration at Geneva Capital Management. Her team implemented Ridgeline in just six months, and after this episode, she'll share her full experience and the key benefits they've seen.

**Katie Ellenberg** (2:33)
We are using our previous provider for over 30 years. We had the entire suite of products, from the portfolio accounting to trade order management, reporting, the reconciliation features. I didn't think that we would ever be able to switch to anything else.
Andy, our head trader, suggested that I meet with Ridgeline. And they started off right away, not by introducing their company, but who they were hiring. And that caught my attention. They were pretty much putting in place a dream team of technical experts. Then they started talking about this single source of data. And I was like, what in the world? I couldn't even conceptualize that because I'm so used to all of these different systems and these different modules that sit on top of each other. And so I wanted to hear more about that. When I was looking at other companies, they could only solve for part of what we had and part of what we needed. Ridgeline is the entire package and their experts were no longer just a number. When we call service, they know who we are. They completely have our backs. I knew that they were not going to let us fail in this transition.

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (3:41)
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 the 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.