Rolex: Timeless Excellence - (Invest Like the Best, CLASSICS)
Episode publishedPodcast: Invest Like the Best with Patr...Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Transcript preview
Preview only
Welcome to this classic episode. Classics are my favorite episodes from the past ten years published once a month. These are n of one conversations with n of one people. This business breakdowns on Rolex is a longtime standout. The founder of Hodinke, Ben Klimer, was the perfect person to take us through the ins and outs of this legendary brand. I hope you enjoy it.
This is business breakdowns. Business breakdowns is a series of conversations with investors and operators diving deep into a single business. For each business, we explore its history, its business model, its competitive advantages, and what makes it tick. We believe every business has lessons and secrets that investors and operators can learn from, and we are here to bring them to you. To find more episodes of breakdowns, check out joincolossus.com. All opinions expressed by hosts and podcast guests are solely their own opinions. Hosts and podcast guests may maintain positions with securitie
Here's a puzzle. What do OpenAI, Cursor, Perplexity, Vercel, Plaid, and hundreds of other winning companies all have in common? The answer is that they're powered by today's sponsor, WorkOS. If you're building software for enterprises, you've probably felt the pain of integrating SSO, SCIM, RBAC, audit logs, and other features required by big customers. WorkOS turns those deal blockers into drop in APIs with a modern developer platform built specifically for b to b SaaS. Whether you're a seed stage startup trying to land your first enterprise customer or a unicorn expanding globally, WorkOS is
Oh, man. That's a really complex question for a gentleman such as myself. The Daytona is probably my favorite Rolex as an object. There are Rolexes that mean a lot to me from a sentimental point of view, beating my grandfathers, my fathers, etcetera. But the Daytona as a thing has always been the peak of my fascination from the early six two three nines, which is first generation Daytona back before it even said Daytona on the dial. I wrote a story probably ten years ago plus at this point on Houdini about those. There was some curiosity within Rolex about what they should call it, and this wa
So say a bit more about the Daytona. Like, what is it about it as a physical object that you think makes it special?
First of all, like, I'm a very serious car guy or I shouldn't say I'm a serious car guy, but I love cars a lot. And the Daytona, not just with Rolex, but with all watches, that is about cosplay and the idea of you can be whoever you wanna be. I'm just, like, quiet dork from Upstate New York. In my mind, I'm Paul Newman, and I'm driving a vintage Ferrari or vintage Porsche at Le Mans or something super badass, and the Daytona is the quickest way in my mind to get there. And then as somebody who is obsessive about things, as you can imagine being that I started a blog about watches and now here
You said something interesting, which is one of the jobs to be done for buying a Rolex is this cosplay idea of transporting you to a more interesting or fanciful lifestyle. Maybe you could describe before we get to Rolex specifically the brand, all the jobs that you think high end watches do for people. I don't want to take for granted that one of them is tell the time, but you can buy a Casio for $10 that can tell the time
or your iPhone
or anything. There's lots of ways to know what time it is. So describe to me through history and especially today all the reasons, the main reasons you think people buy high end watches.
Keep exploring with a free account.
A free account preserves the short preview. Upgrade to Pro for the full transcript and episode chat.