Henry Ellenbogen
Founder & CIO, Durable Capital Partners · 1 appearance on the record.
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Prior to founding Durable Capital Partners in 2019, Ellenbogen managed T. Rowe Price's New Horizons Fund. He is recognized for identifying long-term compounders and making early crossover investments into companies such as Workday, Twilio, and DoorDash.
33statements → 15claims → 7claims resolved → 57%fully supported → 3.91/5average certainty → 1.79/5average debate potential → ≈4.0/5argument clarity, estimated →
4 supported 1 partly supported 2 contradicted 2 not yet assessed 6 not checkable as stated how the 15 claims stand · each chip opens the sources
2 predictions · 13 assertions · 2 opinions · 9 insights · 6 disclosures · 1 what if · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 15 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 7 are resolved, 2 are not yet assessed, and 6 name 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 Henry 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
Only 1% of public stocks compound at 20% over 10 years
“The philosophy we have today is predicated that over a rolling 10 year period, you have about 40 stocks that compound wealth of 20% a year or go up a little bit over six X. So about one percent of the stock market is the, are the valedictorians.”
Their most notable contradicted claim
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 Henry Ellenbogen on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.
Everything Henry Ellenbogen said on Invest Like the Best that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →
Quants and short-horizon platforms drive 80% to 90% of institutional market flow
“We estimate somewhere between 80 and 90% of the institutional flow is basically driven either by the firms that have one month and three month agency or the quants that have to take these price signals into account, and then their models are optimized for this…”
AI will probably be more impactful than the internet was
“Think it probably is more impactful than the internet was. It's not only gonna affect obviously every technology company, which, you know, you see in the markets, but it's also Going to impact in this case, I think almost every company that, you know, needs wh…”
Robotics costs will likely drop 15% to 20% annually due to scale
“And the cost on the existing use cases probably don't go down at three to five percent at this point in the curve because of the scale brought in, the human capital brought in, the IP bought on, and the fact that you're going to be able to use these general pu…”
Only 1% of public stocks compound at 20% over 10 years
“The philosophy we have today is predicated that over a rolling 10 year period, you have about 40 stocks that compound wealth of 20% a year or go up a little bit over six X. So about one percent of the stock market is the, are the valedictorians.”
80% of elite 10-year compounder stocks start as small-caps
“About 80% of those companies actually start their compounding journey. As small cap companies.”
Physical businesses that successfully adopt tech often make the best stocks
“And often those are the best stocks when you go study the markets because you're already in a physical world business where the technology advantage transitions into a physical mode advantage or a distribution or scale advantage.”
Colliers is an asset manager, not a cyclical commercial real estate brokerage
“The asset quality of Collier's is not the quality of a commercial real estate. Firm that's cyclical. It's actually a really good real estate asset manager and a emerging really strong consulting firm.”
Elite tech businesses reinvest early cost advantages to build persistent moats
“The very best businesses that leverage technology leverage it in a way where they use it to lower costs and drive revenue that result in them gaining 30% or more incremental market share in their end market, and then they take that unit economic advantage. And…”
Great investors are better at 70 than at 50 due to pattern recognition
“The great thing about investing, and the great investors to me actually are better at 70 than they are at 50, and hopefully, you know, I'm in my fifties, I'm better than I was when I did this at 30, and you just learn, right? You understand patterns better”
Multi-year lookbacks expose compounding errors that quarterly reviews often excuse
“If you get together every quarter and something deviates a little bit, You tend to excuse it. Of course, if it deviates a little bit for 12 straight quarters, actually, it's kind of staring you in the face.”
Positive real rate regimes yield 40 compounder stocks, compared to 120 under ZIRP
“In the world of Positive real rates, which is the entire history of the US equity market, except for that short period of time, which I don't know if we will see again. There's on average about 40 compounders, and during the period of time of free money, there…”
Small public companies must show progress toward GAAP profitability, not immediate profits
“If you're a small company, You don't have to be gap profitable, and you don't even have to have an ROI that is above your cost of capital, but you do have to show progress in your path towards it.”
Even 10-year 6x compounder stocks average a 50% drawdown during strategic transitions
“When you look at these compounders that were six X companies in 10 years, the 40 of them, the average one of them has a period of time where the stock goes down 50%, and it doesn't go down 50% only when the market is down 20. They go down 50% when they basical…”
Unsold Walmart stake would have exceeded Ellenbogen's entire $8B fund
“And had the stake in Walmart not been sold, the stake in Walmart would have been greater than the sum total of everything that I was managing.”
Prior compounder stocks have a higher probability of compounding again
“If you've been one before, you have a higher probability of being one again.”
Domino's Pizza was the top Russell 2000 growth stock in the 2010s
“What was the best Russell, 2000 growth, or for your investors who don't know, benchmarks small cap company over that 10 year period in the 2010? Well, actually it was Domino's Pizza.”
Repeat founders in the same domain align organizations from day one
“And there's, you know, huge advantage when you go do it again, right? You are essentially solving the same problem with, you know, total clarity at the beginning. The other thing is, if you've been successful, it allows you to align all ports of the organizati…”
Durable Capital refuses early-stage investments that require an acquisition exit
“So when we look at an early stage growth company that is not already competitively advantaged, we write the memo that says is Duolingo does what we think it can do over the next three years. Not only do we make a fair return for the risk of the company, but at…”
Durable's largest public positions include DoorDash, Affirm, and Toast
“Even if I look at durable, among our largest positions in the public markets are DoorDash, Affirm, Toast. We led those last private rounds, right?”
The recent Q2 earnings season was the most volatile since 2008
“If you look at
The last public market earnings season, which was companies reporting Q two this past year.
If you study earnings volatility,
It was more volatile than any earnings season since the financial crisis.”
Physical-world moats are exceptionally difficult to replicate due to capex and culture
“You can't spin those things up. There, these things that are super messy, right? You got to acquire the land. You got to put it in the right place. You got to build the right network. Then you got to go stand it up with the right capex and the right systems. A…”
Holding incumbent durable assets is the riskiest strategy during major technological transitions
“The riskiest thing is to own the durable asset. And the safest thing to do is go by the next standard.”
T. Rowe Price and TCV split a Netflix PIPE recapitalization at a $4.5B valuation
“We put, when I was at T. Rowe, in half of it, and I did that, and then TCV, Jay Hogue, you know, did the other half. So this to me is like the classic example of a market-leading company embracing a transition They obviously ended up winning, right? We did tha…”
Appearances (1)
| Episode | Date | Speaking time |
|---|---|---|
| Finding The 1% of Stocks That Matter | Henry Ellenbogen Interview · Invest Like The Best | Dec 16, 2025 | 1h 35m |