This week, we speak with Brad Gerstner, founder and CEO of Altimeter Capital, a technology-focused investment firm, which has about $7 billion in assets under management. Altimeter manages a variety of venture and public funds and serves as a long-term partner to companies as they enter the public markets. (Note: This episode was recorded on Nov. 8, before the most recent Elon Musk amplification of anti-semitic comments).
Gerstner is a serial entrepreneur, who has successfully founded or joined several start-ups, including Room77 (sold to Google), and Openlist.com (sold to Marchex).
He explains how he launched Altimer as a founder-run venture fund with interests in both public and private investments. Altimeter was an early investor in many start-ups and pre-IPOs, including a Series B investment in Farecast (sold to MSFT). Other early investments include Zillow, Kayak, 23andMe, Okta, MongoDB, Unity, and AppDynamics.
Gerstner is also the energy behind Invest America which proposes opening a private investment account for the 3.7 million children born each year in America, seeded with $1,000 from the federal government.
The goal is to help close the wealth and opportunity gaps in America, improve financial literacy, and give every American “skin in the game.” The idea has been gaining traction on Capital Hill, and may be introduced as new legislation in 2024. (Twitter here).
A list of his current reading is here; A transcript of our conversation is available here Tuesday.
You can stream and download our full conversation, including any podcast extras, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and Bloomberg. All of our earlier podcasts on your favorite pod hosts can be found here.
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business next week with Peter Atwater, who teaches confidence-driven decision-making as an adjunct professor at William & Mary and the University of Delaware. He coined the phrase “K-Shaped Recovery” to describe the confidence divide between the top and bottom of the economy post-pandemic. His new book is The Confidence Map: Charting a Path from Chaos to Clarity.
Brad Gerstner’s current reading
Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown
