This is a very special episode of Compounders: number 100. To celebrate that milestone, my guests on the show today are Alex Rubalcava and Connor Sundberg, Managing Partner and Partner, respectively, at the early-stage VC firm Amplify LA. Alex and I have been friends for many years, and it is an absolute treat to finally get him on the podcast. Alex recently merged his firm, Stage Venture Partners, into Amplify, where Connor was already a Partner. In this intriguing conversation, we covered: The rationale for the merger of the two investment firms; How they expect decision making and sourcing to change going forward; The idea of focusing on companies that are tackling challenges that are different and hard; Their current views on the pre-seed and broader venture capital investment universe; and How the SaaS-pocalypse is and isn’t impacting how they view investing in enterprise software companies.
My guest on the show was Bob Frady, the CEO and co-founder of PropertyLens, a company that aims to become the CARFAX for residential real estate. After a number of successful prior ventures, Bob co-founded PropertyLens to solve what he sees as a large information asymmetry between home sellers and home buyers. With that as the background, I was excited to speak with Bob about: The founding inspiration for PropertyLens; The unmet need the company’s property reports are filling for homebuyers; The existing competitive set that is tackling similar problems; How the various players in the home selling ecosystem are reacting to the emergence of PropertyLens; and How he defines success going forward for the company. To learn more, please visit https://www.propertylens.com/
My guest on the show this week was Jonathan Nurick, the founder and Co-CIO of DivGro, an Australia-based investment management firm that puts dividends at the center of its investing strategy. Jonathan started DivGro at a relatively young age, and the firm’s AUM has grown substantially over the recent years. In this intriguing conversation, we covered: The founding inspiration behind DivGro; How Jonathan began to center on dividends as a signal; What people underappreciate about dividends; Portfolio construction, including concentration and position sizing; and What a quintessential DivGro investment looks like. To learn more about DivGro, please visit the firm's website: https://www.divgro.com.au/
My guest on the show this week is Jake Barfield, the founder of Asheville Capital Management, a long-only investment firm that seeks to invest in world-class companies before they are broadly recognized as such. Jake is also the host of his own podcast, Quality Investing. In this informative episode, we covered: The founding inspiration for Asheville; The type of companies that Jake is NOT going to invest in; Position sizing and concentration; What Jake finds so interesting about a company called InPost; and Why he decided to start his own podcast. For more information, please check out Jake's website, and Jake's excellent podcast, Quality Investing.
My guests on the show are Michael Demaray and Vishal Mishra of Bard Associates, a boutique wealth management firm that has been in business since the 1980s. Michael and Vishal are true value investors who like to look in places other investors neglect. Specifically, Bard invests in a space that is near and dear to my heart: US microcap stocks. In this informative conversation, we discussed: The strategies that Bard runs today for its clients; The firm’s long history of investing in small companies; Why some microcap stock prices are so volatile; The common characteristics of a core Bard holding; and The firm’s approach to interacting with company management. Please see Bard's website for more information: https://www.bardassociatesinc.com/