Morgan Housel – Walking and Thinking

**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 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** (0:46)
My guest today is Morgan Housel, who just about all my listeners will already know. Morgan just left a long-time post at the Motley Fool to join the Collaborative Fund, a venture capital firm here in New York City. Morgan is a good friend and will hopefully be a recurring guest on the show.
In this episode, we discuss the differences between private and public markets investing, how to foster innovation and creativity, how businesses are structured and organized, and how Morgan finds interesting books and information. For show notes, visit investorfieldguide.com forward slash Housel, H-O-U-S-E-L.
Now, please enjoy my conversation with Morgan Housel. Thanks Morgan for being here with me today. I think this might be the first, hopefully, in a series of these conversations between you and I touching on all sorts of stuff. I hope so. Maybe we can start with, given that you've recently made a change in your career, I think you're going to be doing some similar things that people know you for, but in a new venue. Maybe you could talk a little bit about your decision to move from the Motley Fool to the Collaborative Fund.

**Morgan Housel** (1:51)
First I would say I really thought I would be a writer at the Motley Fool for my whole career. I worked there for nine years. I started there when I was a junior in college.
To me, it was a dream job because what I did five days a week, seven days a week was read stuff that I was interested in and then go and write about it.
That was effectively my job description from A to Z.
Even after nine years, it was still every morning, it was like, I can't believe I get to do this. This is fantastic. I had to ask myself though, if I worked in the exact same job, same company for my whole career, would I at the end of my career look back and say, I regret not trying something new? And it took me like two years to answer that question. And I finally figured that the answer was yes. Even if I love this on a day to day, this is great. I love everything I'm doing. If I'm 70 years old, am I going to look back and be like, man, I wish I had branched out a little bit. And I was like, yeah. So two years ago, I met a guy named Craig Shapiro who runs the Collaborative Fund.
I think he had read some stuff that I wrote and he emailed me one day and he said, hey, if you're ever in New York, let's grab breakfast. And as luck would have it, I was going to New York the next day. So it was just kind of like a blind date. We met two years ago. And instantly, within 10 minutes, I remember thinking to myself, this is the kind of guy I want to work for. I just felt like we see eye to eye on where the world's going and what matters in investing. And it was just pretty clear that I really like this guy's philosophy. And then you reached out to me about a year ago and said, hey, let's do something together. And it still took me like nine months before I could finally pull the trigger and said, okay, let's do it. So I've worked there for two weeks now. That's great.

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (3:34)
Already writing a lot.

**Morgan Housel** (3:36)
My job isn't going to change that much, at least at first. I'm going to get into doing a lot of different stuff. But right now, I'm still writing and speaking and doing stuff like this, like I always done.

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (3:46)
Was any of this, we'll get into some of these topics today. You've obviously spent a lot of time writing about all called public markets and investing and are now in the venture world or moving into the venture world.