The Exchanges

Q asset and wealth management firms moving to Ridgeline gain a decided advantage. That's why customers call it miraculous, game-changing, and an awakening. If that's not how you would describe your investment management tech, request a demo at ridgeline.ai. And now back to the show. What were some of the lessons that you drew from your earlier investment career that helped you take the step and then execute along the way?

A One of the things, you know, I was a value investor, or I am a value investor, uh, but I call it value the catalyst. I always like to find value in a great company, but at the same time, I like knowing there's a catalyst, whether it's a year out, six months out, something that I know will unlock that value. So it could be a simple thing, you know, when I was a hedge funder, it could be a simple thing as I really believe, you know, Wall Street had too low of estimates on, you know, out there, or it could be as complex as, you know, I predicted they were going to spin, spin a division off or, or I thought it was a great takeover play, whatever the potential catalyst was or new patent coming out, whatever. Um, so with that mindset, you know, and I always believe in doing massive research, you know, fundamental research, um, Really talking to the customers, suppliers, vendors, you know, employees, ex-employees, really getting a holistic view of a company or an industry. And that is what I applied here. You know, I called everybody, you know, just network and network and network and find out more information and learn more and put myself in learning more. But at the same time, I started to see a picture forming in that the catalyst was going to be when the internet fully arrived into Asia, the way it has in the U S and In terms of dismantling the traditional media industry, right? W…

AI assessment note: “And that is what I applied here. You know, I called everybody”

Q How do you improve the way you make decisions over time?

A I think, you know, that's one thing that I also learned from both martial arts and from being an investor, intellectual honesty is, Is the bedrock of continuous learning. Like, if you're not humble enough to say, I screwed up. Raise your hand. I screwed up. My investment thesis was wrong. You're going to keep doubling down as the stock collapses or whatever. And you said, I'm right. I'm right. No, no. You have to be intellectually honest at all times. It hits for matters. In martial arts, it's the same thing. Like, you can lie to yourself that you're good, but then you go and step in and spar with somebody or step in the ring, the truth comes out. And you can either deny and be like, oh, it was my off night, or you can really... Analyze and say, look, I'm really not good at these things, and if I improve these things, my game will get better. Same thing as a hedge fund manager, right? You can, you can, you know, BS yourself, or you can be very intellectually honest. So I think as an entrepreneur, um, That is again a skill set that I feel very blessed and fortunate that I learned from the hedge fund world and the martial arts world is I'm brutally honest with myself. I know what I'm great at. I know what I suck at. I know when I screw up, I'm willing to admit it and I'm willing to learn from it. Um, and it doesn't matter if a subordinate tells me or a peer tells me, or it doesn'…

AI assessment note: “intellectual honesty is, Is the bedrock of continuous learning.”

Q All right, let's turn to a couple of, uh, closing questions. What's your favorite thing to do that's a complete waste of time?

A My favorite thing to do that's a complete waste of time. That's a tough question. No one's ever asked me that question before. I don't know if it's a complete wisdom, but it's pretty brainless in that I'll just go to YouTube and I'll watch old fights of Mike Tyson or whoever, and it doesn't really add to my job. It doesn't really add to my day, but I love martial arts. And so even boxing like Mike Tyson, you know, watching these amazing fights or Muhammad Ali. So I will spend sometimes catch myself spending, you know, an hour or two hours just watching fights because I'm such a huge fight fan. I'm such a huge martial artist. And it doesn't necessarily add to me as a martial artist or as a CEO of, uh, forced me to profit. I just love it. So, but I guess it's helped me to relax sometimes too, I guess.

AI assessment note: “I'll just go to YouTube and I'll watch old fights of Mike Tyson”

Q Can you talk a little bit about the warrior spirit, which is something that, you know, permeates all of martial arts training, and something you've talked extensively about?

A In normal English, I think it would be called grit, or perseverance. And I know there's been a few studies about this, like if you look at the Character is the most successful people in any field. It comes down to grit and perseverance. In martial arts world, it's called a warrior spirit, because for me, you know, I've done thousands of hours of martial arts, literally over the last 30 years, and when you're tired, or you're getting beaten up, or, you know, your, your, your teacher, when I was younger, my, my master would discipline me, and, you know, I wanted to give up many, many times, I was exhausted, I was in pain, whatever, he would never let me give up. And over the time, you start to forge a stronger willpower to conquer adversity, to go through pain, to go through suffering. And, you know, that's one of the, one of the most important Skill sets. I really believe of any successful, you know, whether you, whether you are a U S Olympic athlete, whether you are, you know, a multimillionaire entrepreneur, whether you are the world's best singer, whether you're the best painter, you have to have the ability to go through immense amount of pain for something you love, right? There's no gymnast, no U S Olympic gold medalist gymnast who has not broken, you know, every bone or has not gone through massive injuries or you hear the stories of them training eight hours a day. Inhum…

AI assessment note: “In normal English, I think it would be called grit, or perseverance.”

Q And back then, did you think about opening up a little bit more and asking for help from friends?

A No, not at all. I was very, um, ashamed, embarrassed. And I was very fearful that I, you know, somehow everyone in the HBS community would look down upon me, um, that I come from a bankrupt family, because, you know, in Asia, we became pariahs. I mean, I'm sorry, in Thailand, you know, the family social circle, the friends, the family, the cousins, uncle, we became a pariah, because my father went bankrupt, bankrupt, not like bankrupt, oh, he lost assets, and it still has millions. No, nothing. It was like bankrupt, abandoned family, broken family, You know, when I left Thailand that time, I thought that was the last time I would never return back to Asia. I thought I'm immigrating to America now. If I make it in HBS and I somehow graduate, um, and my mom did too, and you know, my younger brother, we all thought that was, I would never return back. You know, there's some things about Asian society that, you know, when you lose your quote unquote face or your honor, that, uh, it's not like in America. Of course, in America, when going back, it's also bad, but Americans really love the underdog, the comeback story, the Rocky Balboa story. The American dream, you know, I think even Silicon Valley can fail a number of times and still be, end up being very wildly successful, you know, as an entrepreneur. In Asia, it's very, very unforgiving that way. You become a pariah, a social pa…

AI assessment note: “No, not at all. I was very, um, ashamed, embarrassed.”

Q What was your biggest fear at that time?

A That I couldn't see myself doing this until I was 80 years old, like Buffett did. You know, Buffett's, you know, he's also one of my heroes, one of my role models, but I couldn't envision that life. I was like, I, it was painful, and so then I started getting afraid of like, man, like, You know, here I am with all the, you know, my mom said, oh, wow, she's so proud of her son because he's in Wall Street. He has own hedge fund. It's, you know, prestigious, blah, blah. And all, and my network was all primary Wall Street. And then I got really worried about, like, you know, like, damn, like, I'm hiding behind all these fancy titles and all this, you know, and it wasn't me. So I was most afraid that I was going to miss out on life. And that's what really woke me up, really woke me up, you know.

AI assessment note: “So I was most afraid that I was going to miss out on life.”

Q you had at hedge funds and a lot of people compare the management of hedge funds as something suboptimal compared to the management of broader base of companies in the corporate world. Can you talk a little bit about what you saw as an employee and then an owner of a hedge fund and the management disciplines you use and how that's similar or different from what you're doing today?

A So I think one thing that I really didn't fully appreciate, understand, was in a hedge fund, incentives are fully, 100% aligned, meaning that, very simple, we're trying to make, you know, you buy a stock because you want it to go up, you're short on the stock because you want it to go down, and whether you're an analyst, a VP, an MD, PM, we're all aligned, right? Also, incentives are aligned. Everyone knows that there's been a big, big pot at the end, Of two and 20, right? You know, uh, third year, the year end, 20, that everyone was aligned. On top of it, everyone on Wall Street is hyper-driven, highly intelligent, you know, and I don't mean intelligent just because they have a paper degree. I mean, you know, genuinely, the average IQ and EQ on Wall Street, and the general hunger and ambition and drive, all that, man, is literally top one percent, top one percent. You go into the real world, into industry, into corporate, man, it's like night and day. So I was used to Wall Street competing with the best, the brightest, the hungriest, the hardest working, the most passionate, the most ambitious people, to coming to industries where people thought they're working hard, think they're working hard, genuinely they think they're working hard, but they have no clue how hard people work in Wall Street or Silicon Valley, you know, the two epicenters of capitalism. And I was fortunate t…

AI assessment note: “You go into the real world, into industry, into corporate, man, it's like night and day.”

Q That's incredible. What do you know now that you wish you knew 10 years ago?

A I really wish I did have a mentor, Ted, to tell me to do what you love, have the courage to do what you love, Earlier in my career, rather than hold on to the fear, doubts, and insecurities of being a hedge fund manager because it was prestigious, because I had the right job, because I made the right kind of money, because I had the right zip code, because I had the right, quote unquote, social network. You know, those to me are not reasons to live life. Those are, to me, a way to exist. I think that there's something deeper in all human beings that when you find it, you know it, and I didn't have the courage. I was at frog for too long, hiding behind my fears, doubts, and insecurities, where today I genuinely feel like I'm still filled with fear, doubts, and insecurities of different, different types, but I, I don't give a damn about them anymore. You know, I just don't because I'm so grateful that I get to do what I love and that I have a higher purpose to the fact that, you know, again, that whole story, the Myanmar story, uh, igniting fifty four million people, you know, with our, with our stories, with our events and our live broadcasts and our, you know, um, so we do a lot of documentaries behind our athletes to inspire people. You know, all of that to me is just, um, would have come sooner if I had the courage and the guts to do it. Right. Um, so the other thing I would …

AI assessment note: “have the courage to do what you love, Earlier in my career”

Q Let's go back to that. So, how did you get your way from where you grew up?

A I was raised in Thailand, and I, as a child, I lived in a very comfortable upbringing. When we first started, my father was, you know, I would say lower middle class, but You know, when I was my teenager years, he would, he was what I would call well-to-do. I wouldn't say he was spectacularly wealthy, but he was very well-to-do. Uh, he had his own real estate company, small real estate company. So I was very fortunate in that, but the Asian financial crisis hit, uh, in the nineties and literally two thirds of the banks in Thailand went under, and there's no such thing as FDIC insurance in Thailand. So when you lost your life savings, you lost everything. And, uh, my father, unfortunately, had massive months of debt, so he went bankrupt, and eventually we lost the family house, everything.

AI assessment note: “I was raised in Thailand, and I, as a child, I lived in”

Q And were there aspects of the research process or just stock picking that you really did enjoy a lot?

A Yeah. Oh, oh, Matt, when I was a hedge fund manager, you know, even to this day, I manage my own public portfolio and, and with the same kind of enthusiasm. When I was a hedge fund manager, I'll do two things. So when I was at Maverick Capital, I had a blast. I really loved it. You know, it's an amazing organization. Lee Ainsley is an amazing guy. He built an amazing, you know, hedge fund. And also I felt very free as an investor to invest. I wasn't tied down by monthly returns or anything like that of that sort. We're long-term investors. When I became a hedge fund manager on my own, that's when things really became less fun for me because Every month having to report, I'm like, dude, I don't even invest that way. You know, how am I supposed to know what I'm going to deliver for you? And yet they'll be like, oh my God, you know, your volatility is out of control or whatever. And I'm like, you know, for me, monthly returns is a byproduct of your portfolio. It's not something I'm actively managing. I like all I did was I, I bought great companies for what I perceive to be a low valuation and I shorted crappy companies where what I perceive to be a high valuation. And usually to be a catalyst on both the long and short side. But these monthly returns drove me insane and literally, literally drove the love of magic money out of me because it was stressful, you know, because when I…

AI assessment note: “I felt very free as an investor to invest. I wasn't tied down by monthly returns”

Q So take me back a little bit to, you have the idea, you have the location, you can move to Singapore. What do you do? What's the first step in making that kind of shift in your career and your life?

A I would say, you know, while I had this plan in this attack, I had a business plan and I thought it out careful and all that stuff. I still was full of fear, doubt, insecurity. I really was because yes, I was a reasonably educated guy. Yes. I had capital. Yes. I had some connections, but I didn't know anything about sports media. I didn't know anybody in Asia. It's been so long that I lived in Asia. I didn't have any connections into the broad media broadcast world. So it was really, really, really, really tough at the beginning. You know, no one returned my emails, no one returned my calls. It was very lonely. You know, it was very, very lonely. It wasn't like, you know, when I was on Wall Street, people would return my call or return my email because they know me or I had a professional network or they knew of me or they need my fund or whatever it was, right? Here it was like literally just grasping for straws in the dark. I was hoping, you know, so during that phase, and I would say it lasted the first three years of the company, but it was really, really hard. Because everyone I talked to, including my own family and friends, thought I was insane and that it was, it was never going to work. You know, the whole thesis was like, Chasri, Asians don't like sports. Why are you doing that? Or martial arts will never tell you. You love martial arts, but no one else does Chasri. Y…

AI assessment note: “no one returned my emails, no one returned my calls”

Q And so you started with the facility, and then how long did it take to expand from just one gym to a chain of gyms? And how many, and how many chains are there today?

A After I launched Evolve shortly after, I think a couple years after is when I launched one championship. So that's when my focus became one championship. Um, because, you know, but I think what Evolve gave me was, Man, I was having so much fun. I've never experienced so much fun in my life. Like, I couldn't believe that was my life. I still can't believe this is my life today. Literally, like, we're going to Macau next week, ok, to throw a major event at the Venetian. And, you know, you know, 15,000 person stadium, massive, it's gonna be, you know, light sounds, fireworks, lasers, it's gonna be music, it's gonna be unbelievable. And I just sit there, I'm like, that's my, that's my job? I'm like, I just train all day, and I throw these amazing martial arts events with all the best world champions, all the best martial arts on the planet. Competing against each other, and somehow the whole world loves it with me right now, you know, and I just can't believe it. So, you know, Evolve taught me How much I love martial arts and how much, how much happier I was doing it than I was a hedge fund manager. Don't get me wrong. When I was doing it, I really was into it a hundred percent and I, I still love it, but it was, it was after a while it became empty because there was no purpose. At least for me, it was no purpose. Again, maybe it's, it sounds kind of like arrogant because once you …

AI assessment note: “a couple years after is when I launched one championship. So that's when my focus became”