Thriving and Surviving | Colossus Weekly

Best of the Week

John Mayer (Podcast | 134 mins)

Spend a couple of hours with two greats, Rick Rubin and John Mayer, in a wide-ranging conversation encompassing the music industry, songwriting, family, and more.

Pair with: David’s lessons from reading Rick Rubin: In the Studio.

The Resourceful Life (Article | 7 mins)

What does it mean to be relentlessly resourceful and why is it a valuable trait? This essay explores many shades of resourcefulness and why it’s actually a source of expertise.

Pair with: Our conversation with Dan Rose on how stunning founders operate.

How Do You Know? A Guide to Thinking Clearly about Investing (Podcast | 72 mins)

An excellent discussion between Bogumil Baranowski and Chris Mayer on learning, the limits of our knowledge, and how to make good investment decisions.

Pair with: Our conversation with Annie Duke on decision making.

Main Street Summit (Event | November 8-9, 2023)

Passes are on sale now! The 2-day festival will gather the entire SMB ecosystem from manufacturing, construction, oil & gas, and retail to technology, CPG, aerospace, and media.

Choose from 100+ speakers and sessions to make the most of your time surrounded by owners, operators, and investors. The evolving line-up can be found here and includes Morgan Housel, Bryce Roberts, Tracy Britt Cool, Shane Parrish, Trish Higgins, Andrew Wilkinson, Ian Cassel, Justin Mares, Ali Hamed, John Fiorentino, and the list goes on. Passes start at $500 and are expected to go fast. Sign up now.

Pair with: Our conversation with co-host Brent Beshore on bridging the gap between operating and investing.

 Invest Like the Best - Josh Kushner

Guest: Josh Kushner – founder of Thrive Capital 

Instagram, Slack, Github, Stripe, Twitch, Warby Parker, Spotify, Carta, Plaid, Fanatics. Just some of the companies Thrive has invested in. This is Josh’s first long-form public appearance, and it doesn’t disappoint. Hear all about Thrive, Josh’s philosophy, and why concentration is a core tenet of everything the firm does.

Pair with: The One Rule That Drives Investment Decision-Making and Focus at Thrive (Podcast | 24 Pages)

Learn more about Thrive’s investing style and approach to portfolio construction in this interview with Kareem Zaki, a general partner at the firm.

Invest Like the Best is brought to you by Tegus. Tegus is the modern research platform for leading investors. Tired of running your own expert calls to get up to speed on a company? Tegus is the gold standard for research, delivering unmatched access to timely, qualitative insights through the largest and most differentiated expert call transcript database. With over 60,000 transcripts spanning 22,000 public and private companies, investors can accelerate their fundamental research process by discovering highly-differentiated and reliable insights that can’t be found anywhere else in the market. As a listener, drive your next investment thesis forward with Tegus for free at tegus.co/patrick.

Business Breakdowns - Lululemon

Guest: John Zolidis – founder of Quo Vadis

From a pop-up store in Vancouver to a cult brand with a global presence. We examine Lululemon’s unique history and business model, its fascinating marketing strategy, and where growth will come from over the next decade.

Pair with: Lululemon Athletica: Chip Wilson (Podcast | 52 mins)

Explore Chip Wilson’s entrepreneurial journey. Hear how he built Lululemon into a multibillion-dollar global brand, carving out a niche within the apparel industry by creating the athleisure market.

Business Breakdowns is brought to you by Tegus. Tegus is the modern research platform for leading investors, and provider of Canalyst. Tired of calculating fully-diluted shares outstanding? Access every publicly-reported datapoint and industry-specific KPI through their database of over 4,000 driveable global models handbuilt by a team of sector-focused analysts, 35+ industry comp sheets, and Excel add-ins that let you use their industry-leading data in your own spreadsheets. Tegus’ models automatically update each quarter, including hard-to-calculate KPIs like stock-based compensation and organic growth rates, empowering investors to bypass the friction of sourcing, building and updating models. As a listener, you can trial Canalyst by Tegus for free by visiting tegus.co/patrick.

Breakdowns Research

Read our research on Lululemon’s history, business model, and competitive position.
Prepared by Mohammad Ruhul Kader ahead of Zack’s conversation with John.

Founders - Mark Twain

Episode 312: Mark Twain: Lighting Out for the Territory

Mark Twain's life was as adventurous and colorful as his stories. David narrates the amazing story of how someone who had failed at politics, prospecting, and a career as a reporter managed to reinvent himself as one of America's greatest writers.

Founders is brought to you by Tiny. Tiny is the easiest way to sell your business. Tiny is looking to partner with venture-backed startups and help you pivot to profitability. Get in touch with Andrew and his partners at Tiny by emailing [email protected]

Making Media - Kevin Espiritu

Guest: Kevin Espiritu – Founder and CEO of Epic Gardening

A content to commerce masterclass. Kevin built a thriving media business and became the go-to source for gardening information and entertainment. But we focus this episode on his acquisition of Botanical Interests and how he has transformed Epic into a product powerhouse.

Pair with: Bootstrapping Epic Gardening to 8 figures (Podcast | 87 mins)

Hear more from Kevin as he talks about the transition from making a living playing poker to building Epic Gardening, and everything he learned about marketing, websites, and blogging along the way.

Making Media is brought to you by Scribe. Scribe is the magic behind Colossus transcripts. One of the best decisions we made at Colossus was transcribing all of our audio into a searchable transcript library. We had been using another provider up until the summer of 2022 but we were constantly having issues with accuracy if our audio was just the slightest bit impaired. Whether it's training sessions, internal Q&As, or for media purposes, the value of transcripts is huge. And we are not alone. Scribe is the transcription service that powers all of S&P Global - like CapIQ - and the client list includes our friends at Tegus. Go to joincolossus.com/scribe to unlock 150 minutes of free transcription and test their capabilities

Web3 Breakdowns - Gary Coover

Guest: Gary Coover – COO of Superlayer

Token Economies were supposed to take the world by storm but are yet to deliver on this promise. Superlayer is attempting to change that by solving one of crypto's biggest problems - designing a sustainable and inflation-resistant token economy.

Pair with: Jiho: Sustaining a Play-to-earn Economy (Colossus | 57 mins)

Axie Infinity remains arguably the most important case study for anyone looking to design a token economy. Learn about the design that led to its spectacular rise and the strategy to reverse its fall.

Web3 Breakdowns is sponsored by OKX. Want to stop paying trading fees? You can now trade for free for two months with OKX. Over 20 million traders and institutions choose OKX when they want to trade. And you can join them by signing up at okx.com/landingpage/okxtraderseries to start your two months of fee-free trading today. 

Thanks to Erick Mokaya, Mohammad Ruhul Kader, and Jefferson Rumanyika for their help and research this week.

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