YouSaid · the spoken record

Tom Steyer

lines on the record: 89
first: 2023-03-06
most recent: 2023-03-06
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“What it is to live next door to a chemical plant, how you think about having a kid with this problem. Not everyone would agree with me. And that's fine. It's a democracy. You get a right not to agree with each other. That's not a problem. But if you listen to each other, you're much smarter at the end. And so I found it just such an immense privilege to get out and have that experience. Other Americans just couldn't have been more fun.”
2023-03-06 · Capital Allocators · Tom Steyer – Investing to Save Humanity (Climate Solutions EP.1, Capital Allocators EP. 300) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Unbelievably fun. People always say it's so grueling. I was like, really? You think this is grueling? Get a job. It's not grueling. It's super fun. You get to learn so much. You get such a broad exposure to people across the country on a very direct basis which is incredible. I'm such a fan of Americans, such an immense fan of the people of this country and how much they know and how decent they are. I learned so much. And I travel the country a lot pushing on climate for years, but I really honestly loved it and felt it was one of the most joyous and rewarding things I've ever done. Honestly, I just love when people go, it's so hard really. You think it's hard to meet Americans and learn about the country and get a firsthand understanding of what it is to be a nurse in Las Vegas.”
2023-03-06 · Capital Allocators · Tom Steyer – Investing to Save Humanity (Climate Solutions EP.1, Capital Allocators EP. 300) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, first of all, why I did it? I did it because I didn't think anybody was talking about the issues that were most important in America, including specifically climate, but also including racial justice, including term limits, kind of the ossification of our system. I really didn't intend to run. I'd said I wasn't going to run. And then I was like, oh my God, they keep talking about the key issue in this primary campaign seems to be whether we're going to have single payer healthcare, which anyone with a brain in their head knows we're not going to have single payer healthcare. So why don't we stop talking about it and start talking about something important like what's going on in the United States of America, not what the people in Washington, D.C. want to talk about today, but actually get down to the stuff that's going to change lives, which is going to determine the future of our country. That was why I felt like, oh my God, this is ridiculous. But let me say that.”
2023-03-06 · Capital Allocators · Tom Steyer – Investing to Save Humanity (Climate Solutions EP.1, Capital Allocators EP. 300) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Years later, I've always been skeptical and afraid of this status quo. You're in charge of everything. I run a two trillion dollar bank, TED. How dare you disagree with me given how much smarter and more informed I am than you? How dare you even bring it up? That's always been something that I've wanted to forestall because I've never believed that those people had a monopoly on wisdom.”
2023-03-06 · Capital Allocators · Tom Steyer – Investing to Save Humanity (Climate Solutions EP.1, Capital Allocators EP. 300) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think by and large the funding to research was worth it, that in fact what we've seen is that a whole bunch of great companies have come out of some of that research. It took a lot longer than I would have hoped, Ed, to go from a very smart grad student with an idea to a billion dollar company. But it has happened. I think it's been meaningful. I feel pretty proud of that. The number of companies that have come out of that, particularly out of the Stanford Tomcat Center, I'm really refirst money into an awful lot of successful companies. I think that the work that we did basically pushing nonpartisan groups of economically sophisticated people so that CEOs and economists and sophisticated political people to say this is good business, this is good economics, this is very doable. We did a bunch of different things, but I think that people are now making those points in it's eight or ten.”
2023-03-06 · Capital Allocators · Tom Steyer – Investing to Save Humanity (Climate Solutions EP.1, Capital Allocators EP. 300) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To say this is not a partisan issue, this is just a challenge for humanity, and so we need to respond as a broad-based group understanding that, of course, it's a societal problem, but it's also an economic problem in terms of the transition. Nobody wants to go back in a cave and rub two sticks together, how the economy responds and how capitalism and commerce responds is really important. So I wanted to make sure that business people weren't there saying this is all a bunch of pointy-headed unrealistic liberal do-gooders who don't know anything about how the world really works. Whereas we, the big boys, we know how the world works.”
2023-03-06 · Capital Allocators · Tom Steyer – Investing to Save Humanity (Climate Solutions EP.1, Capital Allocators EP. 300) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Really evolved because I thought, okay, this is a tech problem. We need to have better technology to do this. And so I, in some sense, invested, in some sense, donated money to different research institutions, basically schools, universities, to do research. So we won in the marketplace so people no longer use destructive machines and lifestyles. I thought it was really a tech problem and then I really thought it was a understanding problem. And I spent a lot of time doing intentionally nonpartisan efforts at consciousness raising with some very prominent Republicans, including George Schultz and Hank Paulson and Mike Bloomberg did some stuff. And he's been a Republican as well as an independent and a Democrat, but trying to bring in the business community.”
2023-03-06 · Capital Allocators · Tom Steyer – Investing to Save Humanity (Climate Solutions EP.1, Capital Allocators EP. 300) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sustainability is much broader than just climate change, even though that's the leading edge of the wedge. I see that in the context of human suffering debt. It's not a question of am I worried about the end of the elm tree or the elm of the snail darter. Do I care about those? Sure. But why do I care about those? Mostly because their impact on other human beings. And so when I look at this, I look at it in the context of avoiding almost unimaginable human suffering, mostly born by people who had nothing to do with causing it, by and large completely innocent, but are going to undergo privation and destruction almost more than we can imagine if we don't do the right thing. Have I always cared about other human beings? I hope so.”
2023-03-06 · Capital Allocators · Tom Steyer – Investing to Save Humanity (Climate Solutions EP.1, Capital Allocators EP. 300) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now I had a focus, but not a plan. I felt as if the natural world is deteriorating and we're going to have to change the way we as a species, we as a country, we as an economy interact with the natural world. And that's going to involve a change in the way that we think about that relationship and a change in the way that we build things, use things, a dramatic change in attitude and activity, and that that's going to be a long conversation in American around the world. And I'd like to be part of the people pushing for a more aggressive, robust, positive response. We have presumably one chance at life. And so I wanted to participate in what I perceived as the overwhelming threat.”
2023-03-06 · Capital Allocators · Tom Steyer – Investing to Save Humanity (Climate Solutions EP.1, Capital Allocators EP. 300) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For over such a long period of time, Ted, and Andrew is a very articulate, trustworthy person. I think overall people, both inside and outside, figured that out so that it wasn't that tumultuous. I don't think they really missed a step, and I don't think it was pretty seamless.”
2023-03-06 · Capital Allocators · Tom Steyer – Investing to Save Humanity (Climate Solutions EP.1, Capital Allocators EP. 300) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There were a couple things that were true that made it possible. One is I was very clear for years before I left at the end of 2012 that the person who was going to take over was Andrew Spokes. And so that was no surprise to anybody. I said it for eight years beforehand. He was someone who I still have a very close personal relationship with, still feel as if I understand him intellectually and from the standpoint of integrity. And I was not worried about either. So that is the first step for understanding. And then the real question was, what would the transition look like would some people not like to work in a firm where Andrew was going to be the CEO slash CIO? Would some of the people who were our clients feel as if I weren't there that it would be materially different? But they'd all had such a long period of time.”
2023-03-06 · Capital Allocators · Tom Steyer – Investing to Save Humanity (Climate Solutions EP.1, Capital Allocators EP. 300) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So you've been out for 10 years and Farallon is still thriving today. There are a lot of firms still led by their founder that may have started around when you did in the business. How did you make that succession work?”
2023-03-06 · Capital Allocators · Tom Steyer – Investing to Save Humanity (Climate Solutions EP.1, Capital Allocators EP. 300) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When you have less strong personal relationships and you're further from actual investment decision making or tangentially involved in the decision. And so I felt for a while in any rational level, it's actually exactly what you want in terms of producing income for yourself from a selfish standpoint. When I left Goldman, they said, you will never make as much money anywhere as here, Tom. You're a fool. And I was like, you're probably right. I agree. But that's not how I want to live my life based on my net present value going forward. And I felt the same way at Farrawn, which is I want to live a life. I don't want to maximize my income. I want to live a life that I find meaningful and rewarding. And I felt like this has pulled me away from the things I actually enjoy the most.”
2023-03-06 · Capital Allocators · Tom Steyer – Investing to Save Humanity (Climate Solutions EP.1, Capital Allocators EP. 300) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I could walk around literally and see you and say, Hey, Ted, what are you working on? Or Ted, you look upset is something the matter, and you could say, yeah, we just lost our babysitter for tonight, or you could say, yes, we just heard news on this investment. It's an absolute disaster, and we could have a conversation. You could say, I'm thinking about what to do about this, and we could have an informal conversation about how to frame that and what we should care about and blah, blah, blah, which I really enjoy. And to a very large extent, because of the nature, and I think this is true of Fairlumber, I think it's true of organizations. If you get beyond 125 people, you really can't manage informally. You have to have systems and processes and hierarchies and rules. I found that a lot less fun. That took me, in effect, a step away from the investments because there are just too many people and too many investments. So they'd really only bring me in when there was a problem. That's a less rewarding way to ask.”
2023-03-06 · Capital Allocators · Tom Steyer – Investing to Save Humanity (Climate Solutions EP.1, Capital Allocators EP. 300) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In some ways, I had built what I was looking to build, which was a lot of really good teams of smart people who are expert in their area, who could be relied on in many ways to be independent and who were trustworthy and good and that we had a lot of money under management. We had a lot of relationships that were enduring and strong. And we built a machine that kicked off a bunch of cash and we felt like we were doing a good job for our clients and it was lucrative for us. What was also true was I was no longer able to do what I'd been able to do probably for the first 10 years of the business, which was walk around and see everybody. At Stanford Business School, one of the things they talked about was that HP Way, the Hewlett-Packard way of doing management, which was management by walking around.”
2023-03-06 · Capital Allocators · Tom Steyer – Investing to Save Humanity (Climate Solutions EP.1, Capital Allocators EP. 300) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Your last couple years before you retired from Farallon at a very different stage of the business, much more institutionalization. And then you were in this process of trying to figure out succession. We'd love to hear your thoughts on how that period was different from what you had experienced until then.”
2023-03-06 · Capital Allocators · Tom Steyer – Investing to Save Humanity (Climate Solutions EP.1, Capital Allocators EP. 300) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“was the year of the crash, and I convinced myself by looking at market history that Black Thursday in 1929, that's as bad as it can be. That's the precursor to the Great Depression. It's not going to be worse than the Great Depression for God's sake. It was like two and a half times worse on a market basis. I literally did not sleep a whole night for six months after that. I would just wake up at two or three in the morning upset and I'd stay upset until I went to work at five. There was a bunch of other things that happened along the way, and each time it would be very, very emotionally concerning because we were basically telling people the market's not going to impact us. We're doing things that aren't driven by the GDP return this year or interest rates this year or the direction of the market this year in a real upchuck, everything gets it.”
2023-03-06 · Capital Allocators · Tom Steyer – Investing to Save Humanity (Climate Solutions EP.1, Capital Allocators EP. 300) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's hard to exaggerate how tumultuous the markets were in the 80s and 90s. I mean, it was incredible. Our market had a huge upchuck in November of 1986, which was our first year, where the Wall Street scandals broke and they arrested the biggest arbitrager Ivan Boski, who went to jail, and no one knew what was going on or what was going to happen. So all of the so-called ARB stocks, people just sold them as fast as they could, which means that they all went down a ton. And so from Friday to Monday, every position we own went down a lot. And that was in our first year of operation thinking we were doing a great job and getting great returns. It was like, oh my God, a completely exogenous, unpredictable event has just made us look very stupid. And then the second year, 1980.”
2023-03-06 · Capital Allocators · Tom Steyer – Investing to Save Humanity (Climate Solutions EP.1, Capital Allocators EP. 300) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You look back at Farlon today, the great success in Juggernaut it's been, there's always bumps along the road. And I'd love to hear what was that one time where you were really wondering how you're going to get through a tough situation”
2023-03-06 · Capital Allocators · Tom Steyer – Investing to Save Humanity (Climate Solutions EP.1, Capital Allocators EP. 300) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What I knew from the beginning is you can't fake excellence. If you're going to hire somebody, if they're not excellent coming in, they're not going to do an excellent job. That is an overwhelming fact of life. And that is something that I'm not sure everybody believes right now, but that is something that I absolutely 100% believe. The other thing that I think is true that people underestimate in my mind is that character is destined. If I say you've got to be smart enough and it's not just smart, it's something more than smarts. It's intelligence slash judgment. You have to have it. But then you don't have to know too much financial history to find out that character is destiny and that if somebody's not straight, they're not straight and it's going to come out and it's going to be terrible. And that's something that you can.”
2023-03-06 · Capital Allocators · Tom Steyer – Investing to Save Humanity (Climate Solutions EP.1, Capital Allocators EP. 300) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“China and two people in Hong Kong and they would say do you want the banker or the broker? Had a Japan desk, but other than that, that was their Asian team. I don't know what the numbers are now, but they're thousands in Hong Kong and thousands in Shanghai, not two. It's hard to remember how parochial the different markets were. So as we moved into different markets and we ended up having a pretty big London team and teams in Asia and Latin America, it got to be more people because of hours. Do you really want to be covering Hong Kong between 11 at night and 9 in the morning? You just can't do that. So you have to basically build teams in Japan and around the world.”
2023-03-06 · Capital Allocators · Tom Steyer – Investing to Save Humanity (Climate Solutions EP.1, Capital Allocators EP. 300) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Part of that had to do with size in terms of how much money we were investing. We in general weren't taking positions that were infinitely large. It wasn't like buying IBM. You can buy $1,000 of IBM or you can buy $100 million of IBM. We were doing investments that you couldn't do an unlimited amount of. So you needed more people to make more investments. That was one reason. The other reason is we did more and more new things. And if you're going to be good in a market, you have to be focused on that market. You can't do it out of your hip pocket. So as we did new things, we needed to have more people to do each vertical. Thirdly, one of the things that was happening, it's hard to remember or imagine in 2023. But Goldman Sachs, which was, as I said, I think the premier investment bank in the world when I worked there in 1983 to 1985 had zero people.”
2023-03-06 · Capital Allocators · Tom Steyer – Investing to Save Humanity (Climate Solutions EP.1, Capital Allocators EP. 300) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When we met in the early nineties, Farallon was a dozen or two dozen people basically sitting around the same table, actively investing. And it became over the subsequent decades much, much more than that.”
2023-03-06 · Capital Allocators · Tom Steyer – Investing to Save Humanity (Climate Solutions EP.1, Capital Allocators EP. 300) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Maybe as a result of my big fat mouth, it got to be better known and more popular, which meant that we were always having to innovate new strategies because once a financial strategy is known, then people put money into it, and that means there's more on the demand side than there was before. And if it works more, it gets commoditized. And so we were always having to come up with new ideas and new markets and new ways of thinking to apply the same approach.”
2023-03-06 · Capital Allocators · Tom Steyer – Investing to Save Humanity (Climate Solutions EP.1, Capital Allocators EP. 300) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We were doing a lot of arbitrage. I didn't call myself a hedge fund. I thought that a hedge fund was a macro fund. And to this day, a hedge fund is a structure, not a strategy. I think hedge fund in common parlance means financial speculator. And you can throw in rapacious go-go financial speculator if you'd like. That's the implications. What I was doing was something very, very different than that I was trying to do arbitrage, distress, deep value, things where I felt like we were obeying Warren Buffett's first rule of investing, don't lose money. And so we were looking at things with a very specific outcome in mind over a period of time with expected return where you're betting on outcomes, not on beta. Our opinion was we should have very, very low beta. It was a very unpopular or a little-known strategy when we started.”
2023-03-06 · Capital Allocators · Tom Steyer – Investing to Save Humanity (Climate Solutions EP.1, Capital Allocators EP. 300) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, first of all, no one did it. No one left Goldman to do that ever. They were furious at me for leaving and really, really, really annoyed when I asked two different people if they would basically back me with limited partner money. One of them was a firm in San Francisco where the number three person was my old roommate called Helman and Friedman. And I think they guaranteed me $8 million of LP money. And one of my good friends at GA said they would go on the hook for $5 million of LP money. Hellman Friedman was on the West Coast. Aid is more than five. It's about as complicated as it was.”
2023-03-06 · Capital Allocators · Tom Steyer – Investing to Save Humanity (Climate Solutions EP.1, Capital Allocators EP. 300) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That I was comfortable with the idea that if I was going to fail at Goldman Sachs and do a bad job of investing, they would dump me. If I went out on my own and did a bad job of investing, the investors would dump me, but in one case I would have a little more control. I felt like I'm going to take the same risk at Gulf. They're still going to dump me if I do a bad job. So I might as well do it on my own behalf. My last year Goldman Sachs, just to put it in a context of investment, I was running half of the investments for the art group. They paid me one tenth of one percent of the income from the art group. I thought it was a little low.”
2023-03-06 · Capital Allocators · Tom Steyer – Investing to Save Humanity (Climate Solutions EP.1, Capital Allocators EP. 300) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Real question is why would I want to leave Goldman Sachs, which was the premier investment bank in the world, actually? I think that's continued to be true, and a place where I think everybody at Goldman, including me, thought that I would make much more money and take much less risk staying where I was. But there were a couple things I wanted to move back to the West Coast because I'd gotten to Stanford and I was engaged to somebody from the West Coast. So there was a huge draw to move west. Bob Rubin, who was the person to whom I had the personal loyalty, had gone from running four people to running half the firm two years later or something was going to be running the whole firm so that my connection to the group was completely different. I didn't realize this at the time either, Ted, so who knew?”
2023-03-06 · Capital Allocators · Tom Steyer – Investing to Save Humanity (Climate Solutions EP.1, Capital Allocators EP. 300) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And Bob said, okay, I can understand that. We're going to do it your way if you're wrong. You're fired. And he guys like, okay, we're going to do it your way. He was tough, but extremely clear, extremely fair, what that guy had to say was completely dumb. I was only 26 years old and I was thinking, oh man, dude, seriously. But the other thing I think is true. In investing, you don't get paid for degree of difficulty making a straightforward, good investment that you have high confidences is good. You don't have to do the triple flip half gainer in investing to make a good decision. You can make a simple decision, degree of difficulty, difficulty is bad.”
2023-03-06 · Capital Allocators · Tom Steyer – Investing to Save Humanity (Climate Solutions EP.1, Capital Allocators EP. 300) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Take you one measurement philosophy and then philosophy about investing, but in terms of management, we would get together to make a decision as a group, five people. He would listen to everybody. He would ask questions. He would make the decision at the end. And that was it. It's like, Ted, you don't agree, but we've made the decision and you are now officially 100% on board to that decision, and we'll proceed with it. And Bob was someone who thought new information requires new consideration. And so if new information comes in that suggests we should adjust, we will adjust and we'll have a conversation about it. And he was always very clear about it. But he was also very clear that we're going to make a decision, I'm going to make the decision, and you were going to go along with it. And there was a guy from outside the group, and we did this. We were trying to make a decision about how to proceed on an investment. And he made his pitch that we should go route B. Bob chose root A, done, ready to roll. And then guy goes, well, I really don't agree with that.”
2023-03-06 · Capital Allocators · Tom Steyer – Investing to Save Humanity (Climate Solutions EP.1, Capital Allocators EP. 300) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Look at and then see what happens so you can do pattern recognition. So there was a lot of that. I'd work there for something like two years and four months. It was an amazing opportunity to learn.”
2023-03-06 · Capital Allocators · Tom Steyer – Investing to Save Humanity (Climate Solutions EP.1, Capital Allocators EP. 300) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A lot they had a very strong philosophy about how to think about investing, the Warren Buffetism applied in different ways, but first rule of investing is don't lose money, second rule of investing is don't forget the first rule, and that had taken them through the 70s, and it really had given them a compound that was really amazing for a lot longer than just the 70s because that group had been central to Goldman Sachs for a very long time. Bob was a very disciplined, clear, fair boss, best boss I've ever had, was really exceptional. I think they gave me a very clear sense of how to frame an investment situation, but also how to stay current more broadly and just think we looked at all kinds of different things. And a lot of investing is reps. How many things do you get?”
2023-03-06 · Capital Allocators · Tom Steyer – Investing to Save Humanity (Climate Solutions EP.1, Capital Allocators EP. 300) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I knew that Bob Rubin both had a great reputation financially and a great reputation in terms of being a dedicated and involved Democrat. And I thought it would be a great job. So I interviewed for it and got it.”
2023-03-06 · Capital Allocators · Tom Steyer – Investing to Save Humanity (Climate Solutions EP.1, Capital Allocators EP. 300) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I could have gone back to General Atlantic and for a variety of reasons, which turned out I was too short-sighted about because General Atlantic turned out to be a fantastic place to work that did an amazing job. And I have the utmost respect and very long-term friendships with the people from GA. Goldman was hiring one person into the RISCARB group, and the Risk ARB group basically was investing the equity money on behalf of the partners in the context of a 33-to-1 brokerage firm. And they'd had a great record through the 70s, which the 1970s were a total mess from an investment standpoint because it was a time of hyperinflation and they came from the Go-Go 60s and the nifty 50. And they just got decimated. But the Goldbenard group managed to make money every year through the 70s. And I knew that. And so I had a ton of respect for him. They had four people and they're going to hire a fifth person to be low person on the totem haul, namely Moa.”
2023-03-06 · Capital Allocators · Tom Steyer – Investing to Save Humanity (Climate Solutions EP.1, Capital Allocators EP. 300) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like fixing the electricity and the plumbing. But my point being, it wasn't like I made a conscious decision ever to be an investor. It was just like, okay, some people think that way. My father was probably much smarter than I was. He just didn't think that way.”
2023-03-06 · Capital Allocators · Tom Steyer – Investing to Save Humanity (Climate Solutions EP.1, Capital Allocators EP. 300) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was not something that someone told me to do or that I thought of. In nineteen seventy four I was sixteen years old, I think that was the year that the famous New York Post headline was for De City Drop Dead and New York City almost went bankrupt and was a mess. So I'm 17 years old going to high school. And I said to my father, so we're living in the middle of New York City. And there was a very nice townhouse, which in Manhattan, there are very few nice townhouses and they're super expensive. And it was for sale for $40,000, which even then was ridiculous. And I said, Father, we should definitely, it's three houses away from us. We're living in an apartment building. I said, we should buy that. There's no question to Jesus. That's a great buy. And he said, I don't want to live in a townhouse, Tom, because in an apartment building, someone else does the maintenance. In a townhouse, I'm the maintenance man. And I don't really feel.”
2023-03-06 · Capital Allocators · Tom Steyer – Investing to Save Humanity (Climate Solutions EP.1, Capital Allocators EP. 300) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was not a carefully thought out logical plan, I assure you, Ted. When I was nineteen years old, I worked on a cattle ranch outside Gardnerville, Nevada for the summer. I got paid $100 a month. I worked six days from eight to five milking two cows before breakfast and two cows after dinner. He works after about 36 cents an hour. But when I got back home, I said to my father, look, these ranches are not businesses. They live as far as I can tell to buy equipment from John Deere in International Harvester. And I would like to buy stock in John Deere and International Harvester because it's very clear to me about who's making all the money out of these ranches. And it's not the people who you think it is. And I think I bought literally eight shares of John Deere, which was I could afford 12 shares of international harvester. Being an investor.”
2023-03-06 · Capital Allocators · Tom Steyer – Investing to Save Humanity (Climate Solutions EP.1, Capital Allocators EP. 300) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I went to Stanford Business School. My summer job between the two years of business school was working in investment firm called General Atlantic. And they were the only investment group, as far as I knew, that was hiring summer people from Stanford Business School. So they had one job and I applied and I got it. And I had previously worked for two years. And acquisition analyst. Of college, and I'd spent one summer working as a research analyst at an investment bank called Kidder Peabody. So I knew the difference between investing and investment banking. And I was very intent on being on the investing side. That was what I was interested in.”
2023-03-06 · Capital Allocators · Tom Steyer – Investing to Save Humanity (Climate Solutions EP.1, Capital Allocators EP. 300) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I guessed on the first episode of Climate Solutions is Tom Stier, the founder and former head of Farallon Capital Management, climate activist, candidate for President of the United States in twenty twenty, and most recently co-founder of Galvanized Climate Solutions, a mission-driven investment platform addressing urgent climate solutions. Our conversation covers Tom's early career and founding of Farlon 1986. We discuss his original strategy, history, and succession to new leaders at the firm. We then turn to Tom's retirement from Farallon, work on the environment, and presidential run. From there, we dive into Tom's return to the investment business at Galvanize, covering his investment thesis, strategies to deploy, and creation of another investment organization today. All the way through, Tom shares a lifetime's worth of investing”
2023-03-06 · Capital Allocators · Tom Steyer – Investing to Save Humanity (Climate Solutions EP.1, Capital Allocators EP. 300) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source