Nikhil Kalghatgi – Moonshot Investing - [Invest Like the Best, EP.82]

My guest this week helps me complete the first trilogy of guests on the podcast. His name is Nikhil Kalghatgi. Along with past guests Ali Hamed and Savneet Singh, Nikhil is a partner at the asset management firm CoVenture. If you liked those two conversations, you will love this one—it is somehow even more wide-ranging than the first two. Nikhil is the CEO of CoVenture Crypto, but he ended up there because of an overarching investing style that he calls moonshot investing, which we explore right from the start and in great detail. He is obsessed with productivity and happiness, and we spend a long time on those topics. One of the most interesting experiments I’ve heard about on the podcast is his Happiness project, for which he interviewed more than 100 of the wealthiest people in the world. The lessons he gleaned from those conversations are very helpful, and I won’t soon forget the lesson related to sacrifice. We also discuss asteroid mining, networking, shared experience, and philosophy. Oh and crypto currencies. Nikhil’s take on crypto has always been refreshing to me. In fact the first time I met him he was throwing cold water on a room full of enthusiastic crypto investors. Within crypto we discuss business opportunities, mining, and how new retail and institutional capital will affect the asset class. 

Hash Power is presented by Fidelity Investments.

Please enjoy this sparkling conversation with Nikhil Kalghatgi.

 

For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast.

Sign up for the book club, where you’ll get a full investor curriculum and then 3-4 suggestions every month at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub.

Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_oshag

 

Show Notes

2:42 – (First Question) –  What moonshot investing is

4:41 – Creating sustainable differential investment advantage

9:30 – Assessing the market for moonshots

12:15 – Types of people suited for moonshots 

13:42 – The Happiness Project

17:45 – Commonalities among successful people

25:15 – The importance of humor in life

17:16 – Recipe for a good joke

28:00 – The night Patrick and Nikhil met

29:17 – His perspective on the world of venture capital

33:26 – What did Nikhil learn from his time at SoftBank

34:52 – Craziest thing Nikhil has done

40:27 – What he took away from his time in military intelligence

46:10 – The idea of manufactured serendipity

47:13 – Nikhil’s approach to investing in cryptocurrency and what he finds interesting about it

53:23 – How Nikhil reconciles the excitement of crypto with the lack of tangible asset

58:10– The timeline of retail and institutional investors becoming more involved in crypto

1:02:43– Exploring their liquidity strategy

1:04:10 – What happens if regulators shut down the cryptomarkets

1:09:48– The role of miners in crypto and how that might change moving forward

1:10:43 – What is the frontier of crypto mining

1:12:31 – What’s the most compelling rabbit hole in crypto

1:16:23 – How would the original creators of crypto currency feel about the current state of the market

1:20:01 – What Nikhil sees as the value proposition for the whole ecosystem.

1:21:00 – Kindest thing anyone has done for Nikhil

 

Learn More

For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast. 

Sign up for the book club, where you’ll get a full investor curriculum and then 3-4 suggestions every month at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub

Follow Patrick on twitter at @patrick_oshag