Pitch The PM

Prediction markets are surging, but DraftKings is moving in the opposite direction. Is the issue market share? Rising customer acquisition costs? Or simply a reset from last year’s growth expectations?In this episode, Bernie McTernan, CFA, Managing Director and Senior Analyst at Needham & Company, breaks down the rapidly changing prediction-market landscape. We discuss Kalshi’s first-mover advantage, DraftKings’ strategy to replicate its regulated sportsbook playbook in currently unregulated states, Novig’s aggressive customer-acquisition push, and whether prediction markets meaningfully expand the long-term TAM for companies like DKNG.With negative estimate revisions weighing on the stock, elevated short interest, and DraftKings trading at roughly 11x forward EV/EBITDA, the debate becomes increasingly interesting: how much of the bad news is already priced in—and could today’s investments create a much larger earnings opportunity over time?“The stock's probably fifty percent lower than it was and the TAM's doubled.”“Prediction markets aren't just sports. Soon you'll be able to bet the whisper number.”“This is gonna be Robinhood on steroids.”“The numbers are going down, short interest is going up. Why do you think that the investments and lower revisions this year are actually gonna have a benefit next year?”Stocks: $DKNG, $FLUTTopics: DraftKings, Kalshi, Prediction Markets, Sports Betting, FanDuel, iCasino, Novig, Polymarket, Customer Acquisition Cost, Market Share, Regulation, EBITDA, SportsbooksNot Investment Advice[00:00:00] Introduction to Bernie McTernan, Managing Director and Senior Analyst at Needham & Company.[00:01:40] Kalshi's rumored $40 billion private valuation.[00:02:45] What DraftKings' first NFL week of prediction-market share actually looked like.[00:04:30] The retention data that killed the original bear case on sportsbooks.[00:05:00] Mid-teens to 30–40% share — the playbook DraftKings wants to run again.[00:08:00] Why the prediction-market regulatory battle could end up at the Supreme Court.[00:11:40] The data showing almost no customer overlap between Kalshi and DraftKings.[00:18:00] Hedge fund hit rates and betting the number instead of the stock.[00:20:15] Fast futures, crypto, and the iCasino land grab.[00:21:50] The potential path from $1 billion to $5–6 billion of EBITDA.[00:27:45] Why states legalize gambling — budget deficits, not morality.[00:31:25] A trough multiple on estimates burdened by TAM expansion investments.[00:43:45] Novig's $50 million ad and the Caesars cautionary tale.💡 This episode is presented by:Carbon Arc — The Infrastructure for the AI Economy.Free trial with code PTPM30:https://www.carbonarc.co/onboarding?flow=professional&billing=monthly&source=lensesResearch Sponsors:Fiscal.AI — Delivering Modern Financial Data Infrastructure.15% discount with code PITCH:https://fiscal.ai/?via=pitchOxford Data Plan — The Home of Alternative Data:https://oxford-dp.com/demoAlphaSense — Decision Grade AI:https://www.alpha-sense.com/Pitch/Pitch The PM Links:📩 Subscribe to our Substack for early episode drops, research updates, episode feedback, and the Pitch The PM Job Board:https://pitchthepm.substack.com/Doug Garber on LinkedIn:https://linkedin.com/in/doug-garber-42aa508Bernie McTernan, CFA Links:LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/bernie-mcternan-cfa-84045a23/Needham & Company:https://www.linkedin.com/company/needham-&-company/

Chandler Bocklage spent nearly two decades working alongside Steve Cohen, managing a portfolio before leading Business Development at Point72. In this episode, we discuss what separates good investors from great ones, how Point72 develops portfolio managers, why intellectual curiosity matters more than almost anything else, and how AI is reshaping the future of fundamental investing.If you've ever wondered what it really takes to become a successful PM, this is one of the most candid conversations from inside the walls of legendary investment firm Point72.“Alpha decay has been compressing and compressing. There are more and more people chasing the same alphas.”“You have to have different duration, you have to have different catalyst paths, you have to have different thought processes because”“Honestly, I think that's what it really comes down to. The sacrifices…”"We don't think AI replaces analysts or PMs."Highlights:(01:31) The intellectual curiosity that defines Steve Cohen(04:24) The unspoken sacrifices behind being great at this job(04:56) The Kobe, Jordan, and Brady comparison to elite investing(07:48) The origins of LaunchPoint and building a real development path(10:24) Why AI won't replace analysts or portfolio managers(14:41) What actually makes an investment process repeatable(29:47) The talent war, mega-guarantees, and buy versus build(33:12) The biggest mistake of his career — and what it taught him(35:18) Why Steve Cohen stepped back from trading to build the firmTopics: Point72, Steve Cohen, Portfolio Management, AI, Fundamental Investing, Risk Management, Analyst Development______________________________________________________________________💡 This episode is presented by Carbon Arc–The Infrastructure for the AI Economy. 30 Days free with code PTPM30Research Sponsors:Oxford Data Plan–The Home of Alternative Data. Ping Makay Redd for a trial.AlphaSense–Decision Grade AI. Free trial at https://www.alpha-sense.com/pitch/ Fiscal.AI–Delivering Modern Financial Data Infrastructure. Use code PITCH for 15% off______________________________________________________________________Pitch The PM Links:📩 Subscribe to our Substack for research updates and new high-conviction episodes from top PMs, and our Job Board: https://pitchthepm.substack.com Doug Garber on LinkedIn for daily market color: https://linkedin.com/in/doug-garber-42aa508 Point72 Links:Chandler Bocklage on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chandler-bocklage-476518a6/Point 72: https://point72.com/ ______________________________________________________________________

In 2001, Ed Salib walked into TimesSquare Capital Management as the firm's first intern. Twenty-five years later, he's co-PM of the TimesSquare Quality Mid Cap Growth ETF ($TSCM). So what does a 25-year fundamental investor do when one of the market's most debated stocks goes on sale?Ed passed on DoorDash's 2021 IPO, kept it in his research “bullpen,” and bought the 20% sell-off on conservative early-2025 guidance. He got a second bite when the stock fell from the mid-200s to ~$140 this spring on fears it could be "vibe-coded away."In the episode, we dig into why scale and density are the moat Grubhub never built, how DashPass and grocery are lifting order values, why Ed forecasts mid-20s growth through decade-end vs. the Street's high teens, and why the end of an internal investment cycle could surprise investors to the upside on margins."They gave initial guidance in early 2025 for EBITDA that disappointed and the stock sold off twenty percent. That was our entry point."“We think they can go low to mid twenties versus the Street more like high teens over the next several years till the end of the decade.”“I'm looking at the real-time Oxford data. It has August growing 31%...the Street’s at 21% for the quarter.”We cover:● TimesSquare's consumer filter: durable, needs-based demand, and why "fashion was a four-letter word"● The three-sided marketplace, two-thirds US restaurant share, and why Grubhub lost the suburbs● DashPass, grocery and DoubleDash: how grocery lifts order value and driver economics● Why Ed passed on the IPO, what changed in 2024, and how he sized the 2025 entry● The variant view: low-to-mid-20s growth vs. the Street's high teens● The bear case: cost to grow, Instacart, Uber, PE-backed competition, and Deliveroo/ERP● How Ed sets base, bull and bear price targets● How TimesSquare uses Claude, MCPs and AlphaSense in researchHighlights:(0:48) Ed's 25 years at TimesSquare, from first intern to co-PM(3:16) What TimesSquare looks for in a consumer stock(8:08) Why DoorDash is compelling: scale, founder-led, and capital allocation(11:06) Why the business exists and where Grubhub went wrong(13:20) DashPass, 45M members, and grocery(16:09) Carbon Arc data: grocery order values rising from ~$51 to ~$63(18:11) Robotaxis and drones: bull-case upside(20:44) Passing on the 2021 IPO and what changed in 2024(23:50) The 2025 guidance sell-off: "That was our entry point"(25:36) The 2026 AI sell-off and "vibe-coded away" bear case(28:55) Low-to-mid-20s growth vs. the Street's high teens(30:52) Incremental margins, ERP, and EBITDA revisions(32:23) Deliveroo integration and the 2026 investment year(35:25) ODP shows August accelerating to +31% YoY(37:20) DoorDash beyond restaurants(40:01) Valuation at ~22x NTM EV/EBITDA and the bear case(45:29) Economics with merchants and drivers(49:27) Base, bull and bear price targets(52:05) "We're a Claude shop": AI in research(54:47) Security and ring-fencing research💡 This episode is presented by Oxford Data Plan–The Home of Alternative Data. Ping Makay Redd for a trial (professional investors only) — https://www.linkedin.com/in/makay-redd-122a4364/Research Sponsors:AlphaSense–Decision Grade AI. Complimentary trial at https://www.alpha-sense.com/pitch/Carbon Arc–The Infrastructure for the AI Economy. 30 Days free with code PTPM30Fiscal.AI–Delivering Modern Financial Data Infrastructure. Use code PITCH for 15% discountPitch The PM Links:📩 Subscribe to our Substack for research updates and new high-conviction episodes from top PMs, and our Job Board: https://pitchthepm.substack.comDoug Garber on LinkedIn for daily market color: https://linkedin.com/in/doug-garber-42aa508TimesSquare Links:TimesSquare Capital Management: https://www.tscmllc.com/TimesSquare Quality Mid Cap Growth ETF ($TSCM): https://tscmetfs.com/funds/tscm/Stocks mentioned: $DASHNot Investment Advice.

In 2019, Ken Griffin, Founder & CEO of Citadel, was looking for some of the best risk-takers on Wall Street. He landed on Rich Falk-Wallace, then a top analyst at Viking, who went on to become a Portfolio Manager at Citadel’s Surveyor Capital.So what comes next after becoming a PM at Citadel at 29?For the past five years, Rich has been building Arcana, a financial technology platform designed to help the world’s top hedge funds and asset managers make smarter decisions, faster. His philosophy is heavily influenced by Steve Jobs: obsess over the details and build products that genuinely delight customers.In this episode, Rich breaks down the secular growth of beta-zero products, the rapid expansion of separately managed accounts (SMAs), the rise of alpha capture, and how human investment signals can complement quantitative systems. We also discuss portfolio construction, product-market fit, and how Arcana is integrating AI across its platform while staying focused on the customer.“How did you convince Stanley Druckenmiller to be your seed investor?”“The problem of portfolio construction is way closer to solved than that last mile of, ‘What’s a good idea?’”“The allocation of dollars in public markets is headed towards beta one or beta zero products.”“SMA-type products are growing massively in every direction. And that comes from allocators of every kind — sovereign wealth funds, endowments…”Topics: Arcana, Citadel, Surveyor Capital, Viking, Hedge Funds, Financial Technology, Separately Managed Accounts, Beta Zero, Alpha Capture, Portfolio Construction, Investment Research, Artificial Intelligence, APIs, MCPs, Product-Market Fit*Not Investment Advice[00:00:27] Rich’s journey from distressed credit and public equities into financial technology.[00:02:20] Why timing, experience, and energy pushed him to make the entrepreneurial leap.[00:04:07] Why domain expertise helps — but nobody has a “right to win.”[00:08:43] What it takes to earn backing and why product obsession matters.[00:11:07] Arcana’s “platform maximalist” approach to software, APIs, MCPs, Excel, and LLMs.[00:14:35] “If you think something is easy, it’s because you’re the buyer.”[00:17:11] Why founders need to forget how hard something is and focus on the customer experience.[00:19:56] Learning to love the incremental process of building.[00:22:38] Finding product-market fit and the shift toward beta-one and beta-zero products.[00:26:52] Why separately managed accounts are growing explosively.[00:28:11] What an SMA is and how it differs from a commingled fund.[00:31:03] How Arcana helps allocators analyze risk, performance, attribution, and repeatability.[00:34:20] Mock portfolios, analyst tracking, and creating better feedback loops for investment talent.[00:40:58] Alpha capture and turning human conviction signals into systematic portfolios.[00:45:45] How Arcana uses AI internally to build software.[00:47:32] Measuring the ROI of AI and token spending.[00:49:58] MCPs, on-platform AI, and giving different investors different ways to access the same insights.[00:54:51] Is Arcana a software company or a data company? Why Rich sees it as both.[00:59:17] Rich’s philosophy of delighting customers and continually improving the product.💡 This episode is powered by:Fiscal.AI: Delivering Modern Financial Data Infrastructurehttps://fiscal.ai/Pitch The PM Links:📩 Subscribe to our Substack for research updates, new high-conviction episodes from top PMs, and our Job Board:https://pitchthepm.substack.com/Doug Garber on LinkedIn for daily market color:https://www.linkedin.com/in/doug-garber-42aa508Rich Falk-Wallace Links:Rich Falk-Wallace on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/rich-falk-wallace/Arcana:https://www.arcana.io/

Daniel Pilling, Co-PM of the Sands Capital Global Growth Fund, has spent nearly 20 years investing across long-only and long-short strategies, including time at Fidelity, Millennium, and Balyasny. Today at Sands Capital, he takes a very different approach: concentrated, deep-dive investing in high-quality growth companies with the potential to compound for years.In this episode, Daniel breaks down why he believes the AI investment cycle is still incredibly early. We discuss $NVDIA, $TSMC, $ASML, memory, AI agents, the return on GPU infrastructure, and why compute could remain supply constrained for a long time. Daniel also explains why Anthropic's growth has been unlike anything he's seen before and how Sands thinks about finding the long-term winners as AI diffuses across the economy.If you're wondering whether the AI trade has gone too far—or whether we're still at the beginning of a much larger cycle—this conversation offers a long-term investor's framework for thinking about what comes next."I've never seen anything like this.""We're going to be supply constrained in terms of compute for a very long time."“The reason for that is, again, the low penetration and the high ROI of what’s happening.”"Anthropic and agentic AI is incredible. And it's just going viral and the pace of adoption is unheard of."Stocks: $NVDA, $TSM, $MU, $ASML, $AMZN, $GOOGL, $META, $AMD, $ZMTopics: Sands Capital, Artificial Intelligence, NVIDIA, TSMC, ASML, Memory, AI Agents, Anthropic, Compute, Semiconductors, GPU Economics, Long-Term Investing, AI Infrastructure, AI Innovator Fund*Not Investment Advice[00:00:00] Introduction to Daniel Pilling, Co-PM of the Sands Capital Global Growth Fund.[00:01:15] Daniel’s path from banking and multi-manager investing to long-term growth.[00:03:02] How Daniel became obsessed with investing at 12.[00:04:13] Why Daniel left Millennium and Balyasny for Sands Capital.[00:05:14] Sands Capital’s philosophy: concentrated portfolios, deep research, and long-term ownership.[00:07:32] Why memory and NVIDIA remain high-conviction AI investments.[00:09:54] NVIDIA’s market share and why open-source AI could support GPU demand.[00:12:20] Why NVIDIA, Cerebras, Trainium, and TPUs can all win.[00:14:13] The case for a memory shortage as AI agents scale.[00:19:00] Why memory may not follow a traditional cyclical pattern.[00:22:13] AI infrastructure returns and increasingly valuable compute.[00:23:48] Why rising older-GPU prices challenge depreciation concerns.[00:24:23] Anthropic’s growth, Zoom during COVID, and rapid agentic AI adoption.[00:26:46] Why AI compute could remain supply constrained and create an “upside cliff.”[00:28:34] Why Daniel compares AI adoption to electricity.[00:30:42] How AI could make investment research faster and more effective.[00:32:03] Why ASML and TSMC remain key AI infrastructure constraints.[00:34:28] Generating differentiated returns through multi-year views.[00:37:52] Why 99% of daily market information doesn’t matter.[00:39:52] Humility in investing and recognizing when the Zoom thesis changed.[00:43:42] Why AI remains early, underpenetrated, and rapidly improving.[00:46:22] Sands Capital’s AI exposure across semis, memory, cloud, and software.[00:52:56] The case for Meta despite rising CapEx and declining free cash flow.[00:56:45] The fund’s AI exposure and global diversification.[00:58:14] The AI Innovator Fund thesis: low penetration, constrained compute, and AI winners.💡 This episode is powered by:Oxford Data Plan: Request a Demo AlphaSense: Request a DemoPitch The PM Links:📩 Subscribe to our Substack for research updates and new high-conviction episodes from top PMs, and our Job Board: ⁠https://pitchthepm.substack.com/⁠Doug Garber on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/doug-garber-42aa508 Sands Capital Links:Daniel Pilling on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-pilling-14343116/Sands Capital: https://www.sandscapital.com/