Introducing Office Hours
I am a fan of the Coffee Can Portfolio, an “Active Passive” approach to investing.
The idea of a Coffee Can is simple: Buy a basket of the best stocks you can and let them sit for years. You incur no costs with such a portfolio, and it is simple to manage.
You can follow and track my stock baskets here, on my Performance Scorecard.
I made a couple of small changes to the Coffee Cans.
When I worked in Venture Capital, one of my favorite things about the job was the Monday morning Partner Meeting, a weekly meeting where everyone at the firm got together to share and discuss what was Top of Mind.
Meeting topics included the following:
Review of new potential investments
Information sharing or Deep-dives into markets or themes of interest
Discussion of recent news items and their implications
Existing portfolio company updates
etc
New Potential Investments
This was the most interesting part of the meeting, where we discussed why we liked or disliked a potential investment opportunity.
Sometimes these conversations were simple and straightforward. Sometimes, they turned into heated debates. For example, what if one person loved an investment prospect but couldn’t convince the others?
It is during these conversations that I learned that investing is a very personal endeavor. The same investment opportunity may look amazing to one person and ridiculous to another. People have different goals, experiences, time frames, risk tolerances, personalities etc. All of these affect one’s investment judgement and process.
Investment Themes
One of the best parts of working in Venture was that we had the opportunity to meet with entrepreneurs who were literally building the future. So during the meeting, we often discussed emerging themes or markets we were interested in, and debated unique ideas we had come across, the future implications of recent news events or product launches, and where we thought technology was headed.
We also answered questions like:
How much attention should we give to an emerging market?
Can our investment process be improved in some way?
Are there founders, companies or investors we should be learning more about?
This often resulted in a very unstructured and creative free-flow of ideas. I found hearing different peoples’ viewpoints to be quite informational, educational and fun.
Existing Portfolio Companies
We would share important updates about existing portfolio companies. For example, “I talked with the CEO of [Company A] on Friday. Here’s the update he shared with me. He is looking to hire his first VP Marketing, ideally someone with a background in X or Y. Do you guys know anyone?”
We also spoke about existing portfolio companies:
who were doing well and who weren’t
which ones might be ready for another fundraise soon
interesting developments in their end-markets
etc
Why am I bringing this up?
The short answer: I’d like to replicate the above...With You!
So far, Playing For Doubles has been an outlet for me to share my investment thinking.
But the investment universe is vast. There are tens of thousands of stocks around the world. I believe that when it comes to investing, diversity of thought is a wonderful thing. Different people with different backgrounds and experiences can spot opportunities in different ways. As a result, I believe there is a lot of value in discussing ideas with like-minded people from different walks of life.
So I’d like to try an experiment:
Playing For Doubles Office Hours.
I find that Zoom is a great informal way to connect. It’s been wonderful speaking to some of my readers, from total beginners, to others who professionally manage significant sums, and everywhere in between.
If you read my 2 Year Investing in Public Review, you’ll know that one of the things I hope to do more of this year is to connect with fellow investors.
If you have a passion for investing, I’d love to meet, connect, and potentially collaborate. I hope you do too!
Office Hours: How will they work?
When:
You can setup time on my calendar here:
Who:
I’d love to speak with you if:
You have a passion for investing
You invest in individual stocks, or want to do so
You are looking to build your first Coffee Can or your very own Portfolio of Mavericks
You work for interesting companies or industries (eg: Tech, Crypto, AI/ML, Biotech, an International market etc)
What:
This can be an informal conversation on any topic of your choosing.
Here are just a few things we could discuss:
Investment Basics
Investments that you think are interesting
Research you’ve done on a specific market/company
A strategic decision faced by a company or industry
Any feedback you have about Playing For Doubles or topics you’d like me to write about
Or you could have no agenda, and simply want to say hi! That’s great too!
Thank you, and I look forward to speaking with you.
I hope you do too!
If you’re New to Playing For Doubles
Read more about my Investment Philosophy here: