Tom Russo is the Managing Member of Gardner Russo & Gardner, where he manages $11 billion in a long only, global value strategy. Tom buys the stock of global consumer businesses with great brands and holds them for a really long time. He looks for businesses with a capacity to reinvest free cash flow and a capacity to suffer through short-term pain in order to achieve long-term gain. Tom started his investment career at the Sequoia Fund in New York, where he worked from 1984 to 1988. His first partnership, Semper Vic Partners, has compounded at 14.6% per year for 33 years, besting the S&P 500 by 3.6% per annum. Tom is a graduate of Dartmouth College (B.A., 1977), and Stanford Business and Law Schools (JD/MBA, 1984). He has served on Dean's Advisory Council for Stanford Law School, Dartmouth College's President's Leadership Council, and the Advisory Board for the Heilbrunn Center for Graham & Dodd Investing at Columbia Business School, as well as on the boards of the Winston Churchill Foundation of the U.S., Facing History and Ourselves, and Storm King Art Center. Our conversation covers how Tom created an investment strategy by personalizing early lessons from Warren Buffett, the capacity to re-invest, the capacity to suffer, and what it takes to own a stock for decades.  Tom’s time horizon and fortitude as an investor parallels those of institutions with permanent capital. Listeners will get a fresh perspective on what it means to be a long-term investor For more episodes go to CapitalAllocatorsPodcast.com/Podcast Write a review on iTunes Follow Ted on twitter at @tseides Join Ted’s mailing list at CapitalAllocatorsPodcast.com   Show Notes 3:20 – How the spark got lit for Tom to become a value investor             3:54 – The Sharpe Ratio  6:26 – Family and personal background 8:03 – Move to consumer brands 12:06 – Key tenants to investing in consumer brands             12:26 – Family controlled             14:04 - Capacity to reinvest             15:17 - Capacity to suffer 19:10 – Portfolio turnover and the investment in Heineken 22:46 – Position sizing when portfolio turnover is so low 25:08 – Opportunity costs and behavioral finance 28:58 – Benefits of insider insights 31:02 – The capacity of Tom's investors to suffer 34:00 – What is happening today with the investor base and their capacity to suffer 36:07 – The structure of Tom's strategy vs. a more a diversified portfolio 37:28 – Sitting on investment committees 38:02 – Comparing Tom's decision-making process to Warren Buffett's 40:29 – Case study of Wells Fargo 44:21 – Does reputational damage impact the ability to reinvest 47:04 – Tom's research process and the importance of listening 49:46 – How Tom keeps track of nuggets in everyday conversations 51:00 – Closing questions

Chris Douvos is Managing Director at Venture Investment Associates, a fund that invests $1B in commitments to venture capital funds. Chris is responsible for the management of relationships with the funds’ managers and the identification and development of new manager relationships. He is the author of an entertaining blog about venture capital entitled SuperLP – Adventures in Investing, available at SuperLP.com. Prior to joining VIA, Chris spent seven years co-heading the private equity program at The Investment Fund For Foundations, or TIFF. In this role, he was responsible for another $1 billion in new capital commitments. Before joining TIFF, Chris worked on Princeton University’s endowment team. He started his career as a strategy consultant at Monitor Company. He is a graduate of Yale University and the Yale School of Management. Our conversation starts with Chris’ path to venture capital, through strategy consulting, investment banking and an endowment investment office. We talk about perception and reality in venture investing, exciting areas of future innovation, and the nuts and bolts of research, portfolio construction and decision making when running a portfolio of venture funds. When Chris pulls off his suit, the red undershirt of the Super LP remains. He’s a charismatic guy with great insight into how the venture capital game is played and draws many parallels from venture to investing in general. For more episodes, go to capitalallocatorspodcast.com/podcast Follow Ted on twitter at @tseides