Invest Like The Best
Episode 204 Find Your People
Invest Like The Best

Episode 204: Find Your People

Invest Like The Best

Episode 204

Find Your People

Sam worked for more than a decade with the Houston Rockets and Philadelphia 76ers and recently launched his own venture capital firm, Eighty-Seven Capital. We cover how to attract the right people, lessons from the NBA that shape his investment decisions, and building trust.

This episode is brought to you by:

Tegus. Tegus has built the most extensive primary information platform available for investors. With Tegus, you can learn everything you’d want to know about a company in an on-demand digital platform. Investors share their expert calls, allowing others to instantly access more than 10,000 calls on Square, Snowflake, or almost any company of interest. Visit https://www.tegus.co/patrick to learn more.

MIT Investment Management Company. MITIMCO is the endowment office of MIT. New and small investment funds listen up. MITIMCO is looking to find investors starting funds today. MITIMCO is partnership-driven, long-term focused and has an extensive history of backing investors early in their careers. These partners are key in delivering the outstanding investment returns required to support MIT's pursuit of world-class education, cutting-edge research, and groundbreaking innovation. MITIMCO is focused on finding and partnering with the best investors across the globe no matter the market environment. No firm is too small, too young, or too non-institutional. If you or someone you know is currently in the process of starting a fund or recently launched, please email partner@mitimco.org or discover more on their website https://mitimco.org/partner/.

[00:03:48] – (First question) – Conducting a good interview

[00:05:58] – Drilling into topics to learn more about people

[00:07:49] – What percentage of people are actually worth spending time with for Sam

[00:09:29] – People who think in a strange way that intrigues him

[00:10:36] – Interest in digital breadcrumbs and how to follow them

[00:14:02] – Building context around founders vs analyzing their pitch decks

[00:17:20] – A real-world example of the bread crumb strategy, Houston Rockets GM

[00:21:25] – How successful people evolve with the erosion of their pre-established edge

[00:23:07] – Shifting to a people-first focus

[00:24:50] – Creating an atmosphere that attracts the best talent

[00:26:50] – Tailoring things to someone else’s incentive structure

[00:28:24] – Most amazing thing someone did in the early days of working with Sam

[00:30:18] – Lessons from sports that he carries with him

[00:32:31] – Exceptions to relationships being a key to success

[00:33:03] – Have people gone soft?

[00:34:58] – Knowing whether founders are on the right path

[00:36:07] – Avoiding transactional type people

[00:37:04] – Most effective lessons he brought to sports from the investing world

[00:40:01] – Ideas from the sports world he is bringing to the investing world

[00:44:11] – How the size of the team can impact the success of the team

[00:45:48] – Designing the game for himself

[00:50:33] – Lessons learned from watching them build trust

[00:52:26] – Market areas that have his attention

[00:54:13] – Fascination into API’s

[00:58:05] – Keeping your focus on your expertise

[00:59:45] – Strangest things he’s seen in early-stage investing

[01:01:26] – Playing the long game

[01:04:29] – Calling it Eighty-Seven Capital

[01:05:49] – Increasing his chance at a GM job

[01:06:52] – What can Caro teach us about the long game

[01:08:26] – Lessons of power

[01:10:39] – Quality in leaders he respects most

[01:12:58] – The power of breadcrumbs and how people can start to lay them out

Find Your People

Introduction

Patrick
My guest today is Sam Hinkie. Sam worked for more than a decade in the NBA with the Houston Rockets and then as the president and GM of the Philadelphia 76ers. And now after years of personal investing, he has launched his own venture capital firm, Eighty-Seven Capital. Every conversation I have with Sam is alive with insight and this one is no different. We explore the idea of studying the breadcrumbs that someone leaves behind as a way of tracking their progress and trajectory, finding and attracting the right people into one's orbit, and the lessons from the NBA that most shape his investing career. Sam has taught me the most about the topic of building trust, which we cover here as well.

I'm excited to share my conversation with Sam with all of you. Please enjoy.

Interviewing & Understanding People

Access the full transcript
Sign in or register to view episode transcripts.

Contact

Get in touch at help@joincolossus.com