Building an Antifragile Investment Firm
Interview with Soo Chuen Tan of Discerene Group
There haven't been that many times in my podcast hosting career when I was awed by the depth and breadth of someone's knowledge. But whenever I listen to Soo Chuen Tan talk about investing, I am so impressed with how quickly he switches between different disciplines and frameworks. In the interview we released today, we discussed typical investing topics such as the markets he likes to focus on and the types of companies he gravitates toward, However, we also got into evolutionary biology, sociology and the importance of understanding cultural differences across countries.
Even if you have heard other conversations with Soo Chuen, he and I covered a lot of new territory and I promise you that you are not going want to miss this episode of Compounders:
I have always been curious about how Soo Chuen Tan was able to convince LPs to give Discerene, a public equities-focused firm, a drawdown structure that is similar to structure of a private equity fund. In this clip, Soo Chuen points out that he is investing with a longer-term time horizon than are a lot of PE firms. He also highlights how strange it is that investors are fine with having their capital locked up for years in private investments, but the second a company becomes public, investors want monthly or daily liquidity.
I hope that you enjoy this episode and will stay tuned for next week’s discussion with a very compelling founder and entrepreneur who is trying to create a brand new financial asset class.
-Ben Claremon