36: Former Fund Manager at a $27B Shop Turned Boutique Founder Greg Dean of Langdon Partners on Entrepreneurship | Why AUM Isn’t the Only Measure of Success | How Different Thinking Leads to Differentiated Results

I am measuring this journey, learning from the previous journey, it has to be fun. And so I think the pride is more on the inputs. I don't necessarily have an association with pride and the assets because small caps by their very nature, we're never going to raise 10 billion. I am proud of the team. I am proud of our partner and proud of the work we put in before we got going because that infrastructure, if you lay it incorrectly, it's ahead when the rest of your career. And if you lay it correctly, it can be a massive accelerant to your success over the long term. Hey, my name is Stacy Havener. I'm obsessed with startups, stories and sales. Storytelling has fueled my success as a female founder in the toughest boys club, Wall Street. I've raised over 8 billion that has led to 30 billion in follow-on assets for investment boutiques. You could say against the odds. Yeah, understatement. I share stories of the people behind the portfolios while teaching you how to use story to shape outcomes. It's real talk here. Money, authenticity, growth, setbacks, sales and marketing are all topics we discuss. Think of this as the capital reason class you wish you had in college, mixed with happy hour. Pull up a seat, grab your notebook and get ready to be inspired and challenged while you learn. This is the billion dollar backstory podcast. Asking lots of questions might cause friction in the classroom, but it can be the source of success in the fund world. Just ask my next guest, Greg Dean, founder of Global Small Cap Specialist Firm Langdon Partners. He started his career at Fidelity Investments, then joined some colleagues as they built a 27 billion dollar investment firm, Cambridge Global Asset Management, a boutique within CI investments. All along the way he asked questions of the companies he was evaluating, yes. But the big pivot was the question he asked himself, when will it be your turn to become a founder? The answer was 2021 when he founded Langdon. This is a story about entrepreneurship, about owning your different and redefining success. It's about challenging limiting beliefs and running toward the hard things. It's always seeking out the slope. If you are a founder on the journey, grab a notebook, you'll need it. Meet my friend Greg Dean. Greg, thank you so much for being here. This has been a long time coming. I don't want to put any pressure on you, but this is a lot of build up about Greg Dean and Langdon. So I'm honored to have you in the studio today. Thank you for being here. It's a bit surreal. It's cool because early on in my journey of the crazy decision to go build a firm, I thankfully came across your material and it has been very helpful. So I'm excited that we get to chat live. Perfect. And that's the end of the podcast. Thanks for being here, Greg. I appreciate it. Thank you. That really means the world to me. And I hope today we get to just even do more exploration around authenticity and storytelling because I know you've got a special one. And that's actually where I'd like to start. So backstory to me is something that's missing in our industry, like the people behind the portfolios. And you said, you made this decision to launch your own firm. Let's talk a little bit. Let's go back before we kind of come present and then we'll go forward. But what's that journey like for you? And you can go as far back as you want. Like, did you always know you wanted to be in the investment space? I'll let you kind of take that wherever you'd like to go. Well, I feel very lucky because I think just a straight into the deep end would be paralyzing with the amount of uncertainty. You go from a certainty and structure and resources to just nothing unless you do it yourself right down to locking the door, turning the lights on, sweeping the floors. And so I've been asked that question obviously from clients and allocators. And I realized quickly I go two steps back. So leaving fidelity and joining a relatively unknown multi affiliate here in Canada with four people, including myself that I'd had years I built trust and respect and enjoyed working with was sort of my like into the shallow end. And you can imagine at a firm like fidelity, not a lot of people leave. A lot of people who leave maybe don't have the success that they maybe had at the platform that they had prior. And so that was sort of the narrative running through the halls. It's like you're crazy if you leave. This is the place that will enable your success. And you know, I'm in my 20s at this point. So I certainly thought long and hard about that decision. And it was harder than leaving the firm I left to start something from scratch because we were literally taking an embryo. It was like a former colleague that had raised a billion dollars but was taking on way too much and needed support. So four of us left to join that former colleague and take what was there and shape it into a $27 billion investment management firm with 13 strategies and 27 people that took 10 years and helped me build the confidence in myself to try if that makes sense. Totally. Okay, let's unpack. There's a lot there. So fidelity household name people will get that. When you left, you basically went to CI, right? And how big, because you had a boutique within a big, like were they a big firm when you went there, give us a little more color. Yeah. So they 2011, they were circa 90 billion. Oh, wow. Okay. 14 different managers. They wouldn't call themselves a multi affiliate, but I think that term has kind of standardized and would very much apply to what they were. And the team that we were really, I called it not a startup, but a scale up was Cambridge Global Asset Management, which was, you know, one individual and a billion dollars and three strategies. So we jumped into that and brought a lot of depth and experience and capability. And we actually also didn't join him. He's in Boston. Alan Radlow was the sort of founder of Cambridge and had spent, you know, 25, 30 years at Fidelity. We said, we're not moving back to Boston. So you got to make sure we can all work in Toronto. And so he agreed. And part of that was his personality. Like I don't know if I would have survived in the same room as him for 10 years, but I knew I could learn a lot and wanted to be 800 kilometers away. Yeah. I love that. And because, you know, that's one of the things, and I'm sure we'll talk about this when we get to, you know, now you've hung your own shingle, so to speak. But entrepreneurship has a lot of amazing elements to it and a lot of challenging elements. But one of them is, you know, you're not just building a business, you're building a life. And so that decision for you of, hey, I don't want to move back to Boston. I mean, yes, it was Alan's firm and you had to kind of get his blessing. But like that's part of why I think entrepreneurs and founders are attracted to starting their own thing because they can do it their way. Both the business and the life piece. Yeah. Okay. So you're there for how many years before you leave to start Langdon? Ten years. Okay. So you're there for 10 years and you joined it was a billion. Yeah. To 27, did you say? Yeah. That's massive. Okay. So then what happens? I feel like I've got my popcorn and I'm like, what's what happens next? Well, that journey was its own experience. And I think what we all, the four of us joining Alan really all looked at each other and said, like, let's all go do this together. And then every single day was a roundtable discussion on the most important things. Like it was very flat. I was fortunate that the people more senior than I at that time. They just wanted to build something and they weren't super fost on who got credit and who took the responsibility. And so it was really just jump into stuff and add value. And so I quickly found myself supporting the larger cap strategies as an analyst, but wanting to kind of incubate and then eventually launch a small cap fund that would be in the same investment process as what we were establishing at Cambridge, but where I wouldn't have to go meet the big companies. And I could just focus on these smaller ones. And so it took time because you had to make sure you did right by them and supported the PMs. And the other thing I realized very quickly was I need to be close to people. So I ended up being in charge of recruiting. We had 60 interns in 10 years. That was just interns? 60 interns came through the door over those 10 years. And every single one of them I hired interviewed went to the schools or had them come to Toronto and it became 1A1B what's the most fun part of your job is like finding investments but also finding people to help you find investments. Ooh, I love that. That's super cool. So when you launched Langdon, which obviously is the specialist in small cap, was that part of the reason like this was your time to kind of make that vision for a small cap specialist real? I'm sure many of the guests you've had on have come to some similar realization, but it was years before I left that I realized I would leave. I realized I would leave. What I joined was an It was a scale-up. It was autonomy. We had like every single person we hired. C.I. never met them was very, very good at saying like independent business unit, make your own decisions within your domain, had great respect and enjoyed working with the executives at C.I. One of them is actually on our board. So the CEO who hired us is actually on the Langdon board. But the problem with getting big is it all of a sudden becomes like the business plan maybe gets a little hijacked or you have to start compromising or being asked to compromise on things that you don't think you're willing to compromise on. So you know, at some point call it halfway through two-thirds of the way through that journey, we realize number one dumb us, but this is not our firm. We work here, but it is not our firm. So that was like one humbling on insight into entrepreneurship. You can feel like an entrepreneur but not have the control. You're doing all the work. Yeah, you've got the roller coaster. Yeah. And then two, it was sort of just this like how can I come to work every day if I can't look the people I work with in the eyes and tell them what is true. If we say this is what's important to us and this is what we need you to go do, if ultimately that becomes you served by external forces, it became this like I can't wear that for much longer. I don't want to wear that for much longer. And so and then you just decide well it has to make sense for everybody, you know, on the right terms at the right time. And we ended up having a performance challenge in our global small cap strategy around the time I thought initially I would leave. And I wasn't leaving during that. Yeah. So yeah, so it was maybe a couple more years of thinking. Yeah. And really decided if I'm leaving, I want to get the structure right and I want to get the people right because those were the two things that really helped accelerate our foundation when we got to Cambridge. I love that. I'm going to stand back story a little bit more because there's an interesting thread in your materials and on your website and even just like I've listened to you talk about Langdon. One of the things you talk about in small cap is it's under research, it's under followed like in some ways and maybe I'm just saying this because I cheer for the underdogs. But small cap is kind of the underdogs of sort of the equity market, if you will, right? Like no one's really paying attention. Some of the bigs can't because they just can't invest in them. Where does that come from for you? Where does that value around these are misunderstood? And I feel like I'm the one to be the guide for investors in these types of businesses. It's a really good question. Certainly in the common view of small caps being under followed under relevant like why bother? I'm not a customer of these products. I don't know what these businesses do. I like where is cold lens? I've heard of Berlin, but I've never heard of this small town in rural Germany. So why bother is definitely a reasonable statement. For me, it was actually, I started a fidelity in large cap and the way that the whole firm operates is like get your large caps right. You'll have a great career here because we move big dollars and we need to be able to make decisions and move big dollars and at value. And then they kind of tell you on your first day, like if you're looking at small caps in your first three years, like someone's going to be upset. So just be really careful. And if you're going to go off script, then you better be right because you're not going to have the support of the institution. And so I didn't really spend much time on them initially. But it was before even graduating, I couldn't decide between math or business. I was like, this is your words are numbers in narrative. Like it resonates for me so much because I said, I love numbers and the clarity and the transparency of like, you are right or you are wrong. But then I also felt like I enjoy people, I enjoy working with people, I enjoy learning from people and interacting with people. And I grew up on autobiographies. So like, how do I marry numbers and people? And I think what happened was I made that decision as a teenager that I want to spend the rest of my life intersecting numbers and people. And then when I got to small caps at fidelity, I was like, that's what this is. It's numbers and it's people. And I didn't really feel that when I was, you know, trying to chase down mega cab CEOs and you had to go through four like I'll never forget SAB Miller, which is no longer public. But they told me you have to go meet all of our regional IRs, North Africa, Europe, US, Canada. And once you've met the regional IRs, you can meet the global IR. And then, and I'm like, okay, let's set this up for Tuesday. I'll do back to back five hours. And they were like, no, no, no, it doesn't work like that. And so anyways, random tangent, but those sort of situations don't happen in small cab. No, I would imagine you're much closer to the actual people. It's not a huge IR department with 10 locations around the globe. That's very interesting. And the autobiography thing, I hope we come back to that later on in the conversation. There's a quote, which I was going to say for later, but it's so aligned with this narrative and numbers thing. So I'm reading Morgan Howell's new book. Same as ever. I don't know if you've read it. It's, I mean, it's fantastic. He's an incredible, incredible storyteller and an incredible mind. But there's a quote in there that says, every market valuation is a number from today multiplied by a story about tomorrow and the stories change much faster than the numbers. And I can imagine that that's even more true in small cab. For sure. Yeah. Hindsight narrative is a real thing. And it can cost you a lot of money if you're not intellectually honest about the information you have at the time you're making the decision and the things you're expecting from the future. Because down the road, if it works out, you'll tell yourself a whole different story. And if it doesn't, you'll just go back to that initial decision and say, well, I actually made it for this reason. So we were big on like decision journals and documentation because, you know, as humans, like we're all valuable to that storytelling and getting carried away with our storytelling. But that was actually another great story from growing up at Fidelity. You're surrounded by people telling you about what they did in the past and why. But Fidelity's note-taking system is second to none. And so in my evenings and weekends, because I'm a Canadian kid who moved to Boston. I don't have any friends. I don't have any family there. I'm reading about what we thought about all these like legendary situations, AOL time-warner, for example. I was maybe 15, but reading about what the analyst thought and what the PMs did. And then being able to talk to the PM about what they said they thought or said they did, like there were gaps. And it's just not about being dishonest. It's just about being human and probably misremembering what happened or the place you were in all those years ago. And for me, I fall victim to that too, but how do we shrink the gap? It's by being very deliberate in documenting and sharing with others. Like we have two people that do research on every investment idea so that it isn't you versus you. To mitigate. Yeah. You know, it's interesting because I totally see what you're saying. And maybe that was the intention of the quote was that sort of the bias that the narrative can spin you in, I don't want to say wrong direction or misdirect you. But for me, maybe it's because I'm just an eternal optimist. I was like, oh, it's numbers and numbers times narrative. So in other words, when you're analyzing a small cap company and you say we meet with management, there's like some crazy stat on your website about hominem management meetings. You've done. To me, I would think that that's part of why you do it is because yes, the numbers tell one story. But when you meet the people and the qualitative research that you do tells another story. And in my mind, maybe that's where the alpha potential is because everyone knows the numbers, but it's sort of like how are you going to process the cross of the narrative and the numbers together in a positive way, not so much that it could hurt you, but could it help you, could it unlock alpha for the future? So it's a good point for me, the training over the years has come from avoiding good stories. Oh, yeah. And because small cap is littered with great stories that are not rooted exactly in reality or data. And so I think the best investments are what we would call observations, not predictions. When you're saying, this is the situation today, but it's such an embryonic stage for this business, it's going to be this wonderful thing in the future. Like, I have a hard time until we can prove that as opposed to hope that we're not going to invest. So I like that because that's the cross, right? That's that cross between narrative and numbers. So talk about that because you mentioned I watched another interview where you said, like, that's one of the things that differentiates you. And I think as a boutique and as an entrepreneur, that's really what allocators want, right? Not that I need you to be better. I want you to be different. So talk about that a little bit and what you think your edges or what differentiates you. Yeah, that intersection of numbers and narrative would be a very good thread to pull on because a lot of, I think if you look at what other people are able to do, they'll either sell you one of two things. Army of individuals, offices around the world, resource coming out the wazoo, or we're super narrow or super focused, and our conviction leads to magic and great opportunity. comes. And I think while both could be true, the power comes from being able to say we observe we don't predict. So we don't have the resources of humans in the thousands and billions of dollars to deploy in operating costs. But also like how do we not just read a great piece of research and say we agree and spend somebody else's money? Because that technically is the bar. Like there are firms that operate at that bar, but that bar would keep me up at night with my own money. So it better keep me up at night even more with other people's money. And so I think one of those differentiating aspects is what can you prove versus what do you think or we call it trust but verify. And so that verification process has to be independent from the company. Like I always love when allocators ask like aren't you worried about getting sold by these executives that you go meet? Wouldn't it be better to kind of just say behind your desk and then you're independent and able to keep that not fall in love with the investments you're making. And so what we do now is whenever we invite clients to anything, we also invite executives of stuff we own, but or of stuff we use to own. Cool. Yeah. And then we say don't ask us. Yeah, tell me what we you have to explain that. So you're doing something at your office. Wait, just tell me what that is. That's so different. If we were to say which we do, trust but verifies an integral step in our process. But then we were to meet with allocators and their trust but verify is just as important. Yeah. So if they're only meeting with us and hearing from us, everyone sounds amazing. Everyone's great at what they do. But what other avenue can we give them to potentially verify? They're going to go and do behind the desk research of their own. They're also good at interrogating managers. But why don't you also talk to the CEO of a three billion dollar company whose shareholders could be anybody? And we're not paying this person to speak on our behalf. So everything they say is probably true. The good, the bad, the mediocre. And so we just found that to be a more powerful statement around like you should verify what we're telling you about us. And we need to get that from the companies we're investing with. So when we go meet them, we don't just write it all down and then assume it's going to happen. That's the starting point. Management said is the starting point for four months of work. If that makes sense. Yeah. Absolutely. Did the allocators like that? I would imagine that would be really cool for them. I wish we could get more in front of when we host it's something that we do. We offer it to the ones that will meet in their offices where you can't just kind of bring a Russell 2000 CEO alongside or along with you for the ride. But they do. I think they just appreciate the transparency and have that conversation with us not in the room. We'll make the connection and then let us know how it goes. That's so cool. So one of the other things that jumped out to me, mostly because I've heard it with value investors. But I would say probably more, I don't know, mid cap large cap is this idea of compounders. Because I think in small cap you do get a lot of takeouts and there's a lot of ways you can create value in small cap certainly in an environment where M&A is hot. There's lots of ways. But you actually talk about compounders in small cap. Can you unpack that for us a bit? Yes. So again, with my college, academic or math background. In theory, the return on invested capital that a business earns would be what you would earn as a shareholder if you held it forever. Because almost no one does, most people don't. You end up getting a totally distorted return. It could be better. It could be worse. It just depends on the time horizon and the time period in which you own that investment for. And so just remembering that when you're doing work on a business can really help improve your return on time. Something that we talk a lot about in the office. Everyone talks about return on capital. That's the job. But return on time is just as important in small cap because you got 4,000 things you could look at and you want to make seven great investments this year. So in large cap, you can meet every single company every year and it just wouldn't take you very long. But in small cap, that's not possible. So return on time and having some of these would call them just like quick nose can really help you triage, you know, where and how you're spending your time. So that's been something that has just become even more important as we scale because we are talking to 500 different companies a year doing a thousand meetings like these are the things that you're not supposed to be able to do as a group of six. But we're all kind of wired that way and that's obviously the direction we've chosen. Fascinating. There's another piece I wanted to talk about in kind of setting up the firm that's unique. So I think we touched on a couple of different shaders on the sort of philosophical side which I like and if there are more we can come back to that. But you also made a decision as an entrepreneur to partner with pinnacle and was that right at the start or is that something that built later? Can you talk about that evolution? Yeah, it wasn't that long those three years ago. But what a crazy time leaving the place I'd worked for 10 years basically not able to work for 15 months because of, you know, restraints. And like the world was close. I was having calls with them and they couldn't come to meet me and I couldn't come meet them just due to restrictions. And so they were one of 18 different I'll call it business plan accelerators that I met with or one to seven meetings. You know, I was running what I called a dual track process. I knew I was leaving. I've left. But I don't want to attach anybody to this business plan unless I feel great about the value they're going to add at the beginning and the middle and the end. I'd rather keep going it alone. And part of this was, you know, coming out of a work relationship work marriage that didn't end up as you'd hoped. Like when I left fidelity, I thought this is the last job I'm ever going to have because it's with people I've always wanted to work with and we're working closely together. And so just the baggage that comes with like that wow as a group we couldn't make it work. And now I'm going to go try to make it work and currently it's just myself. Met 18 different firms and had great conversations and it went to every single one of them and said we need three things. We need seed capital working capital and global distribution because the dynamic in Canada is that banks have 70% of the distribution market. And that has only been going up over time. I know it's crazy in the US that like ended 20 years ago and we've got a lot of independent avenues for distribution but that isn't the reality here. And so we were the first company. This was told to me by our lawyers at the time of startup. We were the first company to go after the retail market in Canada out of the gate in 17 years. 15 at that time. And by retail you mean the bank channel. Banks. Yeah. So lots of like firms had started a of course hedge funds and high net worth a credit investor. Butteaks but nobody had said we are going to launch with a $5,000 minimum available to anyone straight out of the gate because it's expensive and you've got to get these big counter parties to co-sign on your credibility as a counterparty. So global distribution was our hedge. It was like what if no one in Canada cares like we had 22,000 clients and 27 billion dollars from Canadians but what if nobody wants us back and so you know had those conversations and probably by meeting three realized oh there's a fourth thing. Minority stake only will not sell control and that shrank the list like I was just going to ask how much did that shrink the list 18 to three. Yeah. I mean I shouldn't laugh but I mean that's the dynamic good for you. Everybody wants to be your partner if they can control it. Absolutely. Yeah. Wow. Okay so now you've narrowed it down to three and of course pinnacle is are they in Australia? Yeah. And so was that part of the distribution because Australia has a pretty unique distribution channel as well right with the superannuation. I'm not a surmolier with Australia but was that part of the vision? There was as there always is there was a lot of serendipity along the way so that yeah when I maybe realized this journey at CI was going to come to an end but not imminently I was approached they had just bought a distributor in Australia in I think 2016 2017 called Grant Samuel Funds Management and they did nine billion they distributed nine billion their biggest client was Epic the Bill Priests firm base in New York that was bought by TD and they had bought this business as their first investment outside of Canada and I guess they were looking for a synergy because one day we had these Aussies in our office in Toronto at CI and they said we want to take your global small cap fund to Australia and it was maybe only three years old at the time and I saw that as an opportunity to build a business that was going to be fun and interesting and what do I know about Australia and so and CI didn't know anything about Australia so I would be sort of an important part of the decision making architecture and so we got you know three years into that and then I left and so it was actually an asset consultant in Australia after I left said if you want to keep doing what you were doing and you maybe want to find a great partner I have a couple recommendations that I'd love to make and so credit to this person for making two connections both of which offered us gave us term sheets and I knew from the first meeting pinnacle was the best fit because it felt like talking to entrepreneurs as opposed to a logo And they are a big firm with 100 billion and almost 20 year track record, but they still run it like it's a small firm. And so long story short, we ended up signing with Pinnacle in the fall of that year. So roughly six months after I left. And we get to say three years later, like we're even happier. Their motto, which isn't just Kumbaya, their motto is supported independence, which is really easy to say. But very hard to offer because they trust us to build the business. They don't have some sneaky oversight or multi-vote or any of these things. They have put their capital in our business. They have transplanted two individuals who not work in our office in operations post-settlement, like post-trade and also risk and compliance. So they don't just write checks. They actually do the hard thing, which is help you build your business. They've got a world class distribution organization that's helped us raise a lot of money and get global consultant ratings and things that we would never have been able to achieve on our own at this stage. That is so nice to hear because not all of those partnerships work out as planned either. And I'm always floored when I meet like bigs that still somehow have that founder vibe, that entrepreneur vibe. There's not a lot of them, but there are a few. And it just always twists my brain because I'm like, wait, don't you have like 50 billion? How do you still have that vibe? I get chills here and you say that because it's so true. They have all the potential to help in the world and they don't have the ability or they aren't organized to support entrepreneurs in an intellectually honest way. They'll call you an entrepreneur, but they have super majority voting rights on basically every important decision except what color you want to paint your office. And it's like, that's not really. That's not what I signed up for. Yeah. So, and you would think going from like start up to where we are today, which is not very far, that's going to be the rockiest period in my view. Yeah. Are you going to do what you said you were going to do? Are you going to be as advertised because the whole courtship was virtual because it was COVID? That's right. Let's just back up for a second. You have three strategies, right? If global, tell me how many strategies you have, global small cap and then domestic smalls, two strategies, three vehicles. Okay. Two strategies, three vehicles. I'm assuming you see it with your own capital plus pinnacle. Yeah. So the seed capital was how much, let's say, so roughly 10 employees, 10. Okay. So you have 20 million bucks and you're like, game on. Let's go. Who cares about COVID? We're going to just do our best. Where are you now? About 250. That's pretty amazing. Do you feel proud? I'm happy. Like we are having fun. I am measuring this journey, learning from the previous journey. It has to be fun. That would be the worst thing we could do for clients. So if we wanted to go hang our hat on the size, we would have launched a totally different strategy. So I am proud of the team. And I think I got great advice along the way. One of which was make sure you want these people around at the beginning, middle end, and so being in that now three years, I can very much say, I want them around. We want their help. We benefit from their knowledge and experience. We were just in the UK meeting in Ireland and London, meeting with a whole heap of clients that we would have had no shot meeting. We're talking about launching a usage in Q3. We had no following in that market. It's their reputation. They only back a manager a year maybe. So that has given us, like I joke, it's like Intel inside. You know, you got whatever laptop, it's like pinnacle, pinnacle inside. It just goes a long way for these very large counter parties to say, okay, if they stamped you guys, I'll take a meeting. Well, there's so many, like, I had to literally, like, keep my mouth from saying a word because there's so many mic drop moments in that little riff right there. My favorite has to be like that you're measuring sort of your pride and your success, not just by the dollars, but by the fun. Oh my God. If that's not a reason to become a founder, I don't know what is. That is so good. Good for you. I'm proud of you for saying that because I know it's true. I don't even know what to say next. Okay, that's amazing. So wait, we have UK listeners. So that's good. They'll be jazzed that you're going to maybe have a usage. What about the US investors? What about the rest of us do you have anything for us? Yeah, potentially the real interesting thing and this happens in our market too. The difference between Canada and the US is Canada's 5% of the world's investable assets. The US is like North of 50. So the way allocators think and act is I want my domestic exposures and then I want my non-domestic exposures. So this global small caps is not really tried and true category for most investors in the US. Yeah, they want domestic smalls and international smalls and international XUS. And I think the additional challenge we face is you're going to carve up your capacity every vehicle as you know is a certain amount of dollars a year to manage. And we're not by launching international smalls. It wouldn't necessarily unlock capacity. No, because there'd be too much crossover. So what is your capacity? I think it's in that 2 to 3 billion US range. So CIs have 50 year old company and they've capped one fund in their life. And it was my domestic small cap fund. And I can tell you that was a fun one to clear it with marketing and sales and senior leadership like most big firms don't want to cap one of their best selling strategies. No. But it was the right thing to do. It is the right thing to do and that push me pull you between sort of the investment side who says I have a process and I have a philosophy and I want to execute it to the best of my ability for my investors. And the so the investment side and the business side that friction. I can't imagine what it's like. But it is in some ways I'm grateful for it because that is the spark. That's the catalyst for so many talented boutiques to say I'm out. Yeah, there's a better way. I'm out of the big. I am starting my own thing because those are not the rules I want to play by. Well, okay, so 2 to 3 billion. All right, that's the journey so far. I want to talk a little bit about qualitative due diligence, which we've talked about with companies. We've talked about it even with pinnacle because that was a very big part of your decision to partner with them. How does that show up for you when you're meeting with allocators? I'm sort of talking my own book here because I think that's sort of the missing piece especially for boutiques. So much of the qualitative due diligence when you work for a big shop is beat out of you. It's not about you. It's not about the people. It's about the firm and the process and the numbers. So how have you worked through that? Well, this is probably the first major topic that lit me up that I heard you speak on kind of at that early stage of my journey to leaving. It was like, it's about them. It's about the allocator and the problem that you might help them solve. And so having sat at two bigger firms and done plenty of marketing, the best meetings were the ones that were dynamic and two-way dialogue. We're looking for this. Tell us about that. How can you do it like this? What are your thoughts on that? When it's like, thank you for coming to my office and it's almost like someone's kind of pulling the string and just going to get you to what slide one, slide two, slide three. No one enjoys that. The allocator probably doesn't enjoy that. The manager doesn't enjoy that. And so I think just credit to you for helping people focus on making sure you're adding value for the customer. And so I think I've always been a curious person and so I'm at my best when I know why I'm there. What problem am I potentially able to solve or where is there a fit or not a fit? I think that's part of the issue. As some people go in a room and think they have to win every room versus the first 10 minutes where you're like, this person owns, you know, preferred securities and basically only invest in private credit and has never bought a mutual fund. So what are the odds that Langdon is going to become a big supplier to them? It just isn't going to happen. So I think the qualitative do deal that we, because I'm not the only one on the team that meets with allocators, everybody understands that it's okay to say, I don't know, let me get back to you. Or that's a good question. Let me think about it. And I think we're trying to come across as honestly as we can in help painting that picture for like, what is the experience you're going to get when you invest with us? The good, maybe not so good. And so a lot of that can be helped by who helps you get in the room, right? Because the distribution team, if they're sending you pre-nodes and helping you get like, this person is like this and they've made these other types of investment decisions in the past and really talk about the concentration of the portfolio, talk about your willingness One of the things we've realized very quickly at Cambridge was there's not a lot of people in the investment business that are willing to take career risk. Understatement of the year? Yeah, century. They will put impairment of capital risk on their clients to avoid career risk. And so we, again, flip that on its head and say, actually, we're here to take career risk and save you from impairment of capital risk. You might not believe us. And so let's go through the details and the pack and the discussion and the data, every data collection process is different, but I think having been trained as a, like, we are professional interrogators. That is our job. We can do math, but we also interrogate executives for a living. And so it's totally reasonable to allow allocators to interrogate us. Yeah, and it probably doesn't make you uncomfortable because you're like, I get it. We do the same thing. You probably want them to interrogate you and have that back and forth. That is what makes a meeting fun. I also love what you said about not every dollar is the right dollar for you, not every investor is the right investor for you, which by the way, when you're running capacity constrained strategies becomes even more critical. Because you said, like, if we launch a use it, that takes capacity. If we do a US thing, that takes capacity. So now you've got to weigh all the elements around that. Yeah. I wanted those decisions. Like, this is how I knew early on, choose your problems wisely. I wanted to be in the conversation on what is our capacity and where should we set the fee and what is the right composition of high net worth institutional family office wealth? These are just interesting for me. Again, everyone's different, but I mentioned this to somebody actually yesterday, who's probably two years behind where we are in terms of just like, they're at that stage where they know it's not if I leave. It's when I leave. And like, that was the hardest thing to get to. But once you get there, you know what's going to happen. You just don't know exactly the circumstances. And my advice to them was, don't overvalue things you don't understand. Go spend some time thinking about or looking into whether it's, you know, because this person was saying, I, you know, we want to find a partner like a pinnacle for our asset class. And just based on that early discussion, it was like, I think you might be overvaluing what you need. People think you need as much as what you think you need and you might regret what you give up for what they'll provide. And then you are going to be unhappy at some future state. And I think, I think what happens is, and I'd be curious, your thoughts. Yeah. When you're at a big company, it feels like people undervalue stuff they don't know. Like all this stuff just happens. Yes. Then you get it up on your own and maybe out of fear or anxiety or whatever, you're like, who is our auditor? Yeah. How much does an audit cost? How much is a vehicle to set up? You don't know. So you're like, oh, if this person or group is going to take this off my plate, like we'll pay this for that or we'll give up this for that. But it's like, we'll give up 51% of the firm for an auditor. Yes. Like exaggeration, but that is, that's a great point. I think you're right. I agree with you. We talked a little bit about this in the green room. It's one thing to be a portfolio manager and that has a whole set of challenges. You know, it's like, that's your craft. When you become an entrepreneur, that's a whole other thing. That's a whole other thing. And those of us who are good at our crafts usually aren't also good at entrepreneurship. Like we have to figure that out. And so once you get out there in the wild, so to speak, you're like, oh, shit. I either have to do it. Like I have to turn the lights out every night or I need someone else to and every person's different how they react to that. That's interesting. You would give them that advice. We won't go too much into it, but I agree with you. I have found to your point about different investors and kind of finding the ones that are right for you. I always talk about that adoption curve and you have the early adopters and then like the lagers. And there are a lot of early adopters who are willing to take career risk. I sort of say career risk with quotes because many of them are founders themselves or family offices who've built their wealth by being a founder. They're willing to invest in your strategy often without economics. Like if they meet you and they're like, wow, Greg, your story's fantastic. And you said, oh, hey, I want to do something in the US. There are allocators that will be like, I'll be day one with you. And I don't need economics. And so I share that as a way to say there are lots of ways to get there. And I think as an entrepreneur, you have to figure out what's the right one for you. Yeah. And I think the risk and the reward has to make sense. Like you can't get greedy. And I think some people think I want the uncapped upside of entrepreneurship, but I also can only take a 10% pay cut from this amazing job that I have right now. And it's like, you're not ready. No. And that is something. So going back to my earlier question about how do you feel about where you are today? Here you are at 250. And you've got an amazing firm and you've made the great comment of it's more than the AUM. And it will always be more than the AUM given the specialty that you have. I think there's also a bias when you leave a big firm that everything should happen like that. Like, oh, I'm going to set up my shop. I'm going to launch my strategy. I'll have a billion in a year. Anything less than that I'm not going to be happy. And you laugh. And I laugh too because I'm like, okay, I don't want to be the one to burst your bubble, but that's probably not going to happen. My again, the humbling experience of leading a business as someone who also for a living invests in other people's businesses, we hold these executives to such micro like they guide 10 to 14% on revenue this year and it comes in at 9.4. And the whole quarterly call is like, well, you missed and how come you missed and why did you get it all wrong? And here you are being like, I don't know if we'll have four clients next year or 40. I hope it's 40. But thank goodness there's not some transcript that somebody can read about what I was saying two years ago about what was going to happen in three months. And so that just is a constant reminder for myself to be like, have race and patience and understanding and empathy for these people who run companies for a living. It's hard. That is such an interesting. So do you think becoming an entrepreneur has changed how you, I won't say how you evaluate companies, but just kind of maybe it has. How you evaluate them or kind of the grace that you give these executives now that you know a little bit more about what it's like. It's been a game changer for me personally. Wow. Because you just have a much broader array of things in your aperture as a business leader. Then you do as a fund manager. And fund managing is by far the biggest, most important thing that I stay close to because I enjoy doing it and I think it's, you know, what our clients hire me to be doing. But when you're talking to companies, it's both you have more empathy and maybe more grace, but you also have less, you're less willing to placate what I'll call hyperbole. You're like, tell me what that actually means. We own a hotel chain in Ireland and they were onboarding a revenue management tool that was going to help them figure out what to charge, what how to price the inventory more accurately and ultimately to improved outcomes. And I'm like, well, how long did you demo that software tool before you decided to buy it? And like, oh, well, no, they said it's going to be 5% is the targeted revenue improvement that we'll get from implementing. And I'm like, well, if they said zero, would you buy it? And like as someone who has to think about every dollar we spend, I can picture someone coming saying, Greg, this AI tool is going to make your team a better investment firm. And on average, we improve your batting average by 3%, 2%, 1%, 5%. I would be going through a whole host of like, A, B testing and I can put myself in their shoes more easily, I think, in the good and the bad. Yes. That's such a fascinating insight. I love that. I could talk to you for another hour, but people might be annoyed that the call is going that long. So maybe we should switch gears a little. You shared some advice that you gave a friend who called you who's kind of like you said two years ahead of you. But I want to stay with that advice piece a little bit because here you are, you're three years in. You've obviously been very thoughtful about how you're building the firm today and sort of looking towards the future. What other advice would you give founders on the journey? One is make sure you have a network, like really invest time into not just like transactional networks, but really like I've spent probably it's step changed in the last three years because you lose all this inherited infrastructure and you're really like it's just me right now and you can be more deliberate with who and how you spend your time. But make sure that network you're investing in it, like be a great steward of other people's thoughts and feelings and needs and ambitions. But also like don't be afraid to tap that network for advice. You don't have all the answers and it's okay but somebody else probably does because none of us are going down a path that someone else hasn't already gone down like that apprenticeship mindset should always be top of mind. And so that would be one big one and I'd also probably say. run towards hard things, not away from hard things. And that has really, that was its own journey, it's still a journey, but was a journey for me. Like, I've made some very expensive mistakes. I've bought a domain for $15,000 that we abandoned 60 days into our, Langdon was not the first name that we started putting money behind, but it was going to be hard to back out of that, because of the costs and because of the things that you'd started to lay, but it was the right long-term thing to do to avoid future problems. I think someone was probably going to sue us, so, or it would compromise which markets we could be relevant in, and like, what IP did we have at that stage? Just run, leave, let it go. But that would be the other thing I would say, run towards hard things. >> So good. We've all had those mistakes where you're like, you know what? Fail fast. Fail fast. Just, okay, that's not the name. We're moving on. We don't need to fight that panel. Great advice. Just such great advice, such thoughtful advice. I would like to transition to some questions patterned after proofs questionnaire, which is designed to sort of let us see a little bit more of Greg, so to speak. And I'll start with an easy one. Now, you mentioned you like autobiographies. You said at the, at the beginning, so I'm very curious what your answer is going to be here. No pressure. First question. What book inspires you? >> That has been the genre of choice for at least the last 20 years. But the book I recommend to everyone, anyone, must read before you join us on our Langdon Mission is actually Startup Nation, which is DIN Center. It's about how flat the work environments are in Israeli companies, and how a lot of that comes from the IDF experience that you basically have to have as someone growing up there. Challenging up and challenging down. And for me, that just resonated. It's probably why I didn't do well in high school, but I did well in university. It's like I have a lot of questions. I like to know why things are the way they are, but feeling comfortable, challenging up and challenging down, and how required it is in that culture was, I probably read that book once a year. >> Okay, I'm reading that. Also, I love how that ties back to you said, I'm a professional interrogator. Apparently, that was also, there were signs of that in high school, it sounds like. >> Yeah, great school. >> I love it. Okay, next question. What place inspires you? What's your happy place? >> Nature and fitness. It's tough to pick. Sweating is just like a, it's a cure all, very grounding. Some people, like even my wife, like for her sweating is uncomfortable for me. It's like oxygen, just need it. >> And it's so good for your mind, isn't it? Especially like as an entrepreneur now, you've got tons of stuff swirling around in your head. I can imagine. So what's your fitness of choice? >> Cardio's palatine, for sure. >> Okay, you didn't give it up after COVID. You're still going. >> Yeah, I used to ride outdoors and if you live in a city and you're spending half the time getting out of the city on the bike or getting in the car to drive the bike. >> Yeah. >> To where you actually want to ride. I got two little kids, so my windows are unpredictable and short. >> So get in, where are you fitting? >> Yeah. >> Okay, next question. We're going to music a little bit. So we're going to pretend it's three years from now and you've been asked to give a talk to a thousand of your true fans. You're about to take the stage. What is your walk out anthem? >> Oh, man. I love music. >> Okay. >> It is very contextual. My answer to this would be very contextual. How I'm feeling, where we are, who's in the room. >> How about today? What would it be if we did it today? >> 22, 2s. Jay-Z. >> I feel like people come on my podcast because they really want to say that they're rap and hip-hop fans. I think that's the driver. >> You might be self-selecting. >> I think you. >> Rap and house for me or if my kids aren't in the car, that's where we're going, for sure. >> So good. Yeah, my daughter had an issue at school because of Aliric and I was like, okay, my bad. >> I don't know how that happened. I'm not sure where she heard that. Fantastic answer. I'm not biased at all. What profession other than your own would you like to attempt? >> I think the ingredients, you need to have, I don't want to be selling my time. I decided I had like 15 different jobs before I graduated and it was all some version of restaurant or dish washing or whatever and it was like, this is not going to be for me. So I think there aren't many jobs where you're not selling your time. So I kind of feel like I've locked out and I have the best job for me. I have also thought about if my skill is analyzing financial statements and interrogating executives, I think I would really like to apply that in the government. Let's go look at some of these crown corporations where they say they're doing okay and they're not making any money and let's just start asking why until we save a billion dollars. I think I could have some fun in that sort of realm but I'd also love to be a detective. >> That's where I thought you were going to go with it. I'm like, he's going to say, this is like, solve crimes, like a true crime. Yeah, I could see it. I could see either one of those. >> Yeah. >> Okay, flip side, what profession would you not like to do? >> Probably the one I mentioned about going into the government and just asking why. I'd maybe last a day. >> Yeah, it'd be fun for the day and then over it. Okay, last one and I realized that you're nowhere near this. What do you want people to say about you after you've retired or left the industry? >> Oh, man. We talk a lot about, I talk a lot about slope versus elevation, I credit a former colleague for helping me be able to articulate it that way. But I want to be able to say there was slope for as long as I was breathing air. Like just always trying to get better, learn, improve and also then ask that of everyone that you come into contact with your family, your friends or colleagues. It's really about like test your limits and try to see how far you can get. I think that's what gets me up every day at whatever the thing is that I'm doing and I'm bad at a lot of things. Doesn't have to be a super high bar. It's just about that slope. But I would say that if I was someone who encouraged other people to do that as well, would be the nicest thing anybody could say. >> Fantastic. The limiting beliefs element is very real and encouraging people to think more about the slope than the elevation. I love that. It has been a pleasure and I know our listeners will feel the same. We are all cheering for you on the journey. >> Thank you, Stacey. It's fun to be part of your body of work. Appreciate it. >> This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. The information is not an offer, solicitation or recommendation of any of the funds, services or products or to adopt any investment strategy. Investment values may fluctuate and past performance is not a guide to future performance. All opinions expressed by guests on the show are solely their own opinion and do not necessarily reflect those at their firm. Managers' appearance on the show does not constitute an endorsement by Stacey Havana or Havana Capital Partners.