Interviews

Sean Iddings is co-founder of the Intelligent Fanatics Project which helps investors and entrepreneurs see further by standing on the shoulders of organizational and leadership giants.

The book series of the same name, co-authored by Ian Cassel, is the introduction into the overall project. Sean is also a member of MicroCapClub.

Safal Niveshak (SN): Sean, you have graduated magna cum laude with a B.A. in Music Therapy. What led you into this “non-musical” world of investing?

Sean Iddings (SI): I had always been intrigued by the market and entrepreneurship from a young age. Music was my first love, so I never looked further into those other curiosities. It was a friend I worked with during college that told me about the markets/business and encouraged me to look into them. Since I was depressed about my musical future, I was finally ready to entertain those curiosities.

My musical training had revolved around “mastering the masters”, so I immediately sought out the investing masters. After reading Ben Graham’s Mr. Market analogy, I instantly got it and was hooked.

So, while my background is non-traditional for an investor/entrepreneur, I’m blessed to have it.

SN: How have you evolved as an investor and what’s your broad investment philosophy? Has your investment policy changed much through the years as your capital has grown?

SI: Yes, I’ve evolved immensely. I’d say that I’ve found much better tools over the years. I started out looking in the right places, but I had deficiencies and still do. One early one was to gloss over “mastering the masters” and focusing on learning from my own experience.

My broad policy of investment continually morphs. It has been simplified to this: put in the hard work and compound.
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Morgan Housel is a partner at The Collaborative Fund and a former columnist at The Motley Fool and The Wall Street Journal.

He is a two-time winner of the Best in Business award from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers and a two-time finalist for the Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism. He was selected by the Columbia Journalism Review for the Best Business Writing 2012 anthology. In 2013, he was a finalist for the Scripps Howard Award.

Safal Niveshak (SN): Tell us a little about your background, how you got interested in writing and investing, and how you have evolved in these fields over the years?

Morgan Housel (MH): I started in college in investment banking. I always loved investing and knew I wanted to do it as a career. But the culture of investment banking totally put me off. I like to have time to think things through, and any culture that emphasizes 24/7 speed and fixed process over deliberation is one where I wouldn’t do well at. So, I moved on pretty quickly from that.

I then got into private equity, which I enjoyed. But this was summer of 2007, and global credit markets started freezing up, which is devastating for private equity firms that own highly leveraged companies. So, I needed to do something else.

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Note: This interview was originally published in the March 2017 issue of Value Investing Almanack. To read more such interviews and other deep thoughts on value investing, business analysis and behavioral finance, click here to subscribe to VIA.

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Brent Beshore is the Founder and CEO of adventur.es, a family of North American companies that invests in family-owned companies with unfair advantages. For the past nine years, Brent’s firm has started, funded, bought, and operated organizations across a wide range of industries.

The companies adventur.es owns have recruited doctors for the U.S. military, provided online public relations to some of the world’s largest organizations, manufactured cutting-edge home solutions, created software products for small businesses, curated the latest in women’s fashion to sell on the internet, and even helped make a couple of blockbuster movies.

Brent founded adventur.es in 2007 with the goal of creating an organization that allowed him to do what he loved, in places he enjoys, with people he admires. Since then, adventur.es has made over 50 investments, and was ranked #28 on the 2011 Inc. 500. Brent reads a lot, writes occasionally, dabbles in wine-making, and was nominated for a VH1 Do Something Award for helping his hometown of Joplin, Mo. recover from the devastating tornado.

As you would have understood from Brent’s profile, he isn’t a typical public markets investor like the ones I usually profile in this series, but an owner of private businesses. The thoughts Brent has shared in this interview, however, are equally valuable for a public market investor, as you would realize as you read forward.

So, over to Brent!

[Read more…] about Investor Insights: Brent Beshore

Jason Rivera is the Chairman, CEO and Founder of Rivera Holdings, an investment holding company. He is a self-taught deep value, contrarian, and special situations investor. He concentrates for the most part on companies under US$ 1 billion in market cap. In this interview, Jason talks about how he started in the field and his evolution and experience over the years.

Safal Niveshak (SN): Could you tell us a little about your background, how you got interested in value investing?

Jason Rivera (JR): My start in value investing was a bit unusual and accidental. I started learning about investing out of necessity 10 years ago, when I was dealing with severe dizziness issues. At the time, I could do nothing but lay around all day because the dizziness was so bad. So, I could not work or do much of anything. But when my wife told me she was pregnant with our first daughter, I knew I had to do something that would allow me to provide for my family at some point when I got healthy.

At the time, I thought about going into three different lines of work. None of which could require going to college because I wouldn’t have been able to due to the dizziness. One was to become a politician but I figured the world didn’t need any more politicians. 

[Read more…] about InvestorInsights: Jason Rivera

Jatin Khemani is Founder & CEO at Stalwart Advisors, a SEBI Registered Investment Adviser. He has seven years of experience in investment analysis and portfolio management. In his last stint with a Delhi-based brokerage house he was solely responsible for the research activities of the organisation right from picking new ideas to tracking the existing portfolio thereby assisting the directors in managing the proprietary book. He is a CFA (US) Charter holder, earned his MBA in Finance from Christ University, Bangalore and graduation in Commerce from Delhi University. Thanks to his admiration for Peter Lynch & Philip Fisher, Jatin has over the years become proficient in scuttlebutt, a primary research method to find out truth about a company or an industry. On weekends, he teaches finance to MBA students and is an active volunteer with The Art of Living since 2006, where he leads state level fund-raising campaigns.

Safal Niveshak (SN): Could you tell us a little about your background, how you got interested in value investing?

Jatin Khemani (JK): I had a decent exposure to how businesses operate since a very young age. My family used to run a manufacturing setup which I often visited, and later on I studied commerce in high school and graduation. But my perception towards equity markets was bad then. I had seen my father trade and lose money. The lesson that got passed on to me was that individuals do not stand a chance in this market, which is manipulated by ‘operators’, dominated by institutional investors, and its nothing less than gambling.

However, that completely changed during my MBA days, when I met my mentor Mr. SG Raja Sekharan. He was a very senior IT professional who had left his fancy job as soon as he became financially independent and started following his passion of teaching and helping others get financially independent. He could do that by smartly investing in real estate as well as great businesses like HDFC Bank, Asian Paints, Pidilite etc. and holding on to them for years, and in some cases decades.

The nirvana moment for me was when I read ‘One Up On Wall Street’ by Peter Lynch and later on was introduced to the writings of legends like Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger and Philip Fisher. That’s when I decided to pursue investing as a career and enrolled myself for CFA (USA), which I eventually cleared in the first attempt and was awarded the charter. I worked two jobs, first at an independent investment research firm, and second as an analyst and later head of research at a Delhi-based brokerage house.

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