Caryn Seidman-Becker: Rebuilding CLEAR - [Invest Like the Best, EP.432]
Episode publishedPodcast: Invest Like the Best with Patr...Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
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Something I speak about frequently on Invest Like the Best is the idea of life's work. A more fun way to think about it is that I'm looking for maniacs on a mission. This is the basis for our investment firm, Positive Sum, and it's the reason why I'm so enthusiastic about our presenting sponsor, Ramp. Not only are the founders, Kareem and Eric, life's work level founders, certainly maniacs on a mission, they have created a product that is effectively an unlock for founders and finance team to do more of their life's work by streamlining financial operations, saving everyone their most precious
I'm excited to introduce our newest sponsor, Arkana. Arkana is the world's most advanced portfolio intelligence platform trusted by institutional investors managing trillions in assets under management, including market neutral, long short, long only, and capital allocators. Arkana enables portfolio managers, risk teams, analysts, and CIOs to drill into exposures and IDEO, construct optimal portfolios, and decompose performance at incredible granularity. Arkana is the only real time intraday system in the market with extensive live scenario analysis, custom screening and tagging, and a slate o
Patrick O'Shaughnessy is the CEO of Positive Sum. All opinions expressed by Patrick and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of Positive Sum. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. Clients of Positive sum may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. To learn more, visit psum.vc.
My guest today is Karen Seidman Becker. Karen is the chairman and CEO of Clear. She bought the company personally out of bankruptcy for $6,000,000 in 2010 and has built it into the identity platform millions use in airports and stadiums today. Her Wall Street background investing in Apple, Amazon, and Price Line taught her to recognize when products become platforms, which shaped her vision for Clear as the definitive secure identity platform far beyond travel. Karen shares the gritty early days of literally hunting down hardware and airport storage facilities and rebuilding the entire busines
So when we started Clear fifteen years ago, what we said is today it's a travel centric company, and tomorrow it's the de facto secure identity platform and leisure, access, commerce. We didn't say health care. So a kind of ballsy vision, but one that came from my experience on Wall Street of watching products become platforms. And the concept of identity to make experiences safer and easier physically and digitally was the foundation of CLEAR. This concept of enroll once used everywhere. As a woman, I'm, like, always digging through bags for all these plastic cards to prove who I am and what
What did you learn about the product to platform switch or flip that happens in companies from your Wall Street days?
I invested in a broad spectrum of companies, started out in risk arbitrage, and then went on to asset management and hedge funds. And in 02/2002, we started Aryans Capital, which stood for art and science, which is my view of investing. It's highly quantitative and highly qualitative art and science. We had the good fortune, although every day didn't necessarily feel that way, of investing in Apple, Amazon, and Priceline in 02/2002. And when you looked at Apple, they used to have signs in their boardroom that said five down and 95 to go, and that was their market share. They had candy colored
The old Bill Gates line definition of platform was this idea that
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