Antifragile Businesses with the Most Upside

Interview with Jim Edwards, Founder and Managing Partner of Maestria Partners

Our guest on the show this week was James Edwards, CFA, CPA, the founder and managing partner of Maestria Partners. Jim and I were at UCLA Anderson together. From there he spent a number of years working for big university endowments (including UCLA's) before launching Maestria in 2023.

Jim is a fundamental investor at heart who thought deeply about how to differentiate his firm before going out on his own. In this wide-ranging conversation, we discussed:

·      Jim’s journey from the allocator world to launching his own investment firm;
·      What he learned about differentiation and best practices during his time as an allocator;
·      The types of business models he gravitates toward;
·      His approach to valuing companies that the market already has a deep appreciation for; and
·      Why he has chosen to run a pretty concentrated portfolio.

Please enjoy this insightful conversation here:

As an allocator, Jim had the privilege of being able to observe some of the best investment managers in the world and how they created alignment with their investors. He also got to witness plenty of situations where there was a lack of alignment. In this clip, Jim discusses his approach to creating alignment when he started Maestria.

We are methodically working through the backlog of interviews we did earlier in the summer. We hope you will stay tuned for future episodes of the Compounders podcast.

Have a good weekend,

Ben Claremon