Michael Mauboussin
Head of Consilient Research, Counterpoint Global · 1 appearance on the record.
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Michael Mauboussin is Head of Consilient Research at Counterpoint Global and an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School. He is known for his research on decision-making, capital allocation, skill versus luck, and analyzing competitive moats.
32statements → 11claims → 10claims resolved → 100%fully supported → 3.91/5average certainty → 1.81/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated → 17said about them ↓
10 supported 0 partly supported 0 contradicted 1 not checkable as stated how the 11 claims stand · each chip opens the sources
1 prediction · 10 assertions · 1 opinion · 20 insights · every statement was checked. The prediction and assertions are the 11 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 10 are resolved, and 1 names no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.
The record, in short
What the tape says about how Michael argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.
Their most notable supported claim
Mauboussin: Tesla's Stock Surge Saved Its Underlying Business Fundamentals
“So I think that it was not too many years ago that, that Tesla was sort of skating on thin ice in terms of finances and so forth. And then as a stock took on a life of its own, the stock went up a lot that allowed them to raise capital and get themselves on mu…”
How they sound: not measured why? →
We measure speaking style by listening to the audio itself, and a fair number needs at least 2,000 words from one person on tape we have measured. There is too little of Michael Mauboussin on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.
Everything Michael Mauboussin said on Acquired that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →
Mauboussin: High-Return Companies Should Maximize Investment Over Positive Free Cash Flow
“Some people think, oh, you want positive free cashflow. Well, the answer is not really. I mean, what you want is you, if you can invest at a high return, you want to invest as much as you humanly possibly can, right? That you have access to.”
Mauboussin: As Average Skill Increases, Luck Ultimately Dictates Outcomes
“The paradox of Gil says, and activities were both skill and luck contribute to outcomes, which is most stuff as skill increases, luck becomes more important.”
Mauboussin: Stock Outperformance Requires Exceeding Priced-In Market Expectations
“Your stock price reflects a set of expectations about the future financial performance of your company. And it behooves you to understand what's priced in. And if you want to do really well from the point of view of the stock market, you have to not only meet,…”
Mauboussin: Competitive Advantage Requires Outearning the Cost of Capital
“And so we argue that a competitive advantage should have two features. One is an absolute one. One is a relative one. The absolute one is you should have returns today or returns that are promised to be above your cost of capital, right?”
Mauboussin: Industry Shakeouts Offer Prime Investment Opportunities as Markets Consolidate
“When it rolls over, you know, so in other words, the number of companies is declining. It's actually really interesting time to invest because usually the industry itself is continuing to grow and it's a fewer number of companies that are capturing the spoils,…”
Mauboussin: Entry Valuation Barely Matters for Startups That Reach $10B
“Whether the thing's worth fifty million or a hundred million, if it's going to be worth ten billion in 10 years or three years, like it doesn't really matter that much what you pay for it today.”
Mauboussin: Tesla's Stock Surge Saved Its Underlying Business Fundamentals
“So I think that it was not too many years ago that, that Tesla was sort of skating on thin ice in terms of finances and so forth. And then as a stock took on a life of its own, the stock went up a lot that allowed them to raise capital and get themselves on mu…”
Mauboussin: Relative Skill Gaps Between Top and Average Performers Have Narrowed
“What we've seen in domain after domain is relative skill gaps have narrowed. The difference between the very best and the average is less today than it was in the past.”
Mauboussin: The Distribution of Active Manager Alpha Has Consistently Narrowed
“One of the ways we can measure that is to look at the standard deviation of excess returns, right? So alpha, right? So excess returns. So, so you'd imagine and if you'd imagine If you're an active manager, what you want is a big fat bell shaped distribution, r…”
Mauboussin: Investors Should Expect Muted Returns Across All Asset Classes
“I think that the, you know, we should have relatively muted expectations for returns in all asset classes. I know we had, we're going to have, we're up for another great, but you know, because of where we are with risk-free rates and credit spreads and so on a…”
Mauboussin: Cash Flow, Not Accounting Earnings, Drives Business Value
“It's not about earnings that, that matters. It's really about cashflow. So the ultimate driver value of business is cash. Not accounting earnings.”
Mauboussin: Strategy and Valuation Must Be Integrated to Evaluate Businesses
“You have to combine these two things to understand a business and to do evaluation properly. So in other words, the litmus test of a strategy is that it creates value. And you really can't understand or value a business until you understand the competitive sit…”
Mauboussin: Investors Should Reverse-Engineer Stock Prices to Identify Expectations
“So the idea is to say a stock price, or it could really be any asset price, a price of an asset, but let's say a stock price reflects a set of expectations about future financial performance. So the first step is to say, what do I have to believe for this to m…”
Mauboussin: Asset Prices Reflect a Distribution of Potential Probabilistic Outcomes
“Expectations investing, I should have been more explicit about it, is very probabilistic, right? So what we're really trying to do is think through scenarios. So The if-then kind of scenario. So we're getting knowledge that the price today is just one of many …”
Mauboussin: US Corporate Intangible Investments Reached $2 Trillion in 2021
“Back in 2001. So the year the first book came out capital expenditures and intangible investments. And this is for like called the Russell 3000. So basically us public companies Was about the same amount, 636 hundred and forty billion, something like that. So …”
Mauboussin: Intangible-Asset Businesses Produce Much Fatter Outcome Tails
“So if you think about, you know, sort of the tails pushing out the tails relative to traditional businesses, that's the way I think the way I think about it, there are more extreme good things and more extreme bad things than what we had witnessed in the past.”
Mauboussin: Walmart Had Negative Free Cash Flow for Its First 15 Years
“Walmart for the first 15 years that it was public had negative free cashflow for each of those years. Walmart was profitable on the income statement, but they were investing like crazy.”
Mauboussin: Great Investors Are Differentiated by Temperament, Not Technical Skills
“What differentiates good to great investors has little to do with their sort of technical skills, like their ability to build spreadsheets or whatever, and much more about their temperament. And in particular, their ability to make decisions under some sort of…”
Mauboussin: Higher Market Volatility Increases the Value of Real Options
“So in an option, what you want is lots of volatility. You want lots of volatility, right? Which is sort of counter. So the more volatile the world is, the more valuable the option is.”
Mauboussin: Stock-Fueled Roll-Up Strategies Eventually Collapse Under Scale Requirements
“Often where the gig ends up is that they have to do deals that are so large to perpetuate their growth rate, to perpetuate, to fulfill the expectations that it just becomes like essentially An insurmountable task.”
Mauboussin: Base Rates Are the Single Most Important Mental Model
“If you asked me to, if I could go back to my twenty-year-old self and say, whisper in the ear and say, there's one mental model to sort of put into your life, I would say base rates.”
Mauboussin: Basketball Is the Least Luck-Driven Major Professional Sport
“Basketball is a sport that's furthest away from randomness. So the most essentially skilled dictates the outcomes.”
Mauboussin: Top Venture Capital Firms Retain Return Persistence Unlike Public Equities
“And so it turns out if you look at venture capital in particular by the way, in public equity markets, very limited persistence, right? So if you did really well last year, your expected value is closer to the average the following year. Buyouts. They used to …”
The other half of the tape: Michael Mauboussin's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 16 times in 6 episodes on Acquired. 1 statement on the record names them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Ben Gilbert 8David Rosenthal 6Brinton Johns 2
Statements about Michael Mauboussin, by other people (1)
Gilbert: Venture Capitalists Historically Lack Financial Investing Fundamentals
“For the longest time, venture capital investors have not had a financial investing fundamentals background. They often come from being entrepreneurs and, you know, not, not necessarily the original VCs, but a recent trend. And so you have people that don't hav…”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
2022 12 mentions in 5 episodes 2 per episode
2021 4 mentions in 1 episode
Appearances (1)
| Episode | Date | Speaking time |
|---|---|---|
| Michael Mauboussin Master Class — Moats, Skill, Luck, Decision Making and a Whole Lot More | Oct 5, 2021 | 59m |