Michael Mauboussin Master Class — Moats, Skill, Luck, Decision Making and a Whole Lot More

We sit down with the one & only Michael Mauboussin to dive deep into his incredible body of work: untangling skill and luck, measuring moats, persistence of returns in venture capital, decision making and — particularly timely — expectations investing and how to think about valuations in the current 2021 market environment. (!!) Michael's work is maybe our most frequent carve out on Acquired, so we're pumped to finally have a chance to interview the man himself. Big thank you to Patrick O'Shaughnessy and Brent Beshore for introducing us all at Capital Camp this year! 

Sponsors:

• Legora: https://bit.ly/acquiredlegora
• Vanta: https://bit.ly/acquiredvanta
• ServiceNow: https://bit.ly/acquiredservicenow26
• Statsig: https://bit.ly/acquiredstatsig26

More Acquired!

• Get email updates with hints on next episode and follow-ups from recent episodes
• Join the Slack
• Subscribe to ACQ2
• Merch Store!

© Copyright 2015-2026 ACQ, LLC

Links:

• Michael's wonderful talk at Google: https://youtu.be/1JLfqBsX5Lc
• The new revised edition of Expectations Investing:  https://www.amazon.com/Expectations-Investing-Reading-Returns-Heilbrunn/dp/0231203047/
• The Success Equation:  https://www.amazon.com/The-Success-Equation-Untangling-Investing/dp/1422184234/
• Measuring the Moat:  https://research-doc.credit-suisse.com/docView?language=ENG&format=PDF&sourceid=csplusresearchcp&document_id=1066439791&serialid=4uA2wHojCvFKzqWfwIyDvkSN1pkXRpb43LvyclLcJsk%3D&cspId=null
• Public to Private Equity:  https://www.morganstanley.com/im/publication/insights/articles/articles_publictoprivateequityintheusalongtermlook_us.pdf

 ‍Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.