Just What I Needed

So what’s a middle aged dude to do, to get out of this funk, without going to jail? The answer is obvious, right?  Attend an investor conference!  I had the good fortune to score a Willy Wonka golden ticket to the annual Baron Investor Conference this past Friday at the Lincoln Center in New York.  It was my maiden voyage, but I can tell you, I will be going back for more.  The only way to describe it is to say that it was a microwave version of the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Shareholders Meeting, resplendent with some of the same cheese.  

With that said, I have to say that I came away inspired and re-energized.  It didn’t hurt that the surprise lunch time performance was Sebastian Maniscalco, who delivered a wide range of new material including riffs on Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk.  And speaking of Elon Musk, he dialed it in from Silicon Valley over zoom for a 1 hour interview with Ron Baron.  If you can get Elon’s focus for an hour, you know you have got some serious pull.  

I like and hate his vision at the same time

Two takeaways from that one.   One, Elon (according to Elon) doesn’t really care about owning things.  He owns a modest home in Austin, TX and a tiny home in an undisclosed location.  As he puts it, the only reason he continues to hold on to his trillions of stock(s) is so he can do with “his” companies what he wants to.  Hum…almost believable. 

The second takeaway was the fact that the robots (Optimus) are coming.  As he puts it, attainable abundance.  40 billion robots to be exact.  3+ for each human.  He pictures a world in which we all have dedicated personal assistants…at a very affordable price (less than 20k).  He painted a picture of a very different world within the decade.  I like and hate his vision at the same time.  Here is a quick snippet if you have not heard of Optimus yet:  

So Johnsen, Elon must have been the highlight, right?  

Wrong.  Harley Finkelstein blew him away.  Harley who?  The young COO turned CEO at Shopify.  Shop-a-who?  Look it up.  $200 Billion market cap.  

I would love to send you the link to his talk at the conference, but unfortunately Baron keeps that under lock and key.  If you want to try to jailbreak it, you can start here:

32nd Annual Baron Investment Conference | Baron Funds

Suffice it to say that this was one of the most impressive CEO presentations I have ever seen.  The guy’s got endless charisma and the brains and humility to back it up…and wait for it…he is only 42.  One of his best lines from the interview:  “I love working with Fortune 500 companies, but not as much as I love working with ‘Give A Shit Companies’.”  Harley what do you mean?  “I mean founder led companies where the founder and his entire team still have skin in the game, both emotionally and monetarily and they really really give a shit”.

I tried to find a good Youtube on Harley, but unfortunately there are many and its hard to pick.  Feel free to do your own search. 

Here is one:

Once again, thanks for the weather report Johnsen, but what’s the point?  I think we can all learn something about selling advertising to the market he so richly identifies with.  It’s only one variation away from what he is selling.  I would really encourage you to figure out how to be more like Shopify.  And if that’s not good enough, how do we plug Shopify into our ‘tech stack” so that we don’t have to wait 120 days for the money.  Just saying….

how do we plug Shopify into our ‘tech stack” so that we don’t have to wait 120 days for the money