Jay Girotto is the President of Farmland Opportunity, a $400 million investment manager that provides direct ownership of high quality, consistently productive row crop farmland in the U.S.  Like many managers in traditional asset classes, Farmland Opportunity searches for inefficient transactions, value-added improvements, and an aligned structure to maximize the benefits of farmland for the long-term. Our conversation covers Jay’s path from software engineer to farmland investor and discusses the attractive features of the asset class, including macro characteristics of uncorrelated returns and inflation hedging, and micro features of supply-demand imbalances, labor-intensive sourcing, unprofessional operations, and land value appreciation.  We then turn to Farmland Opportunity’s strategy in the area incorporating a specific regional focus, operational partners, aligned incentives, risk assessment and exit strategies. Learn More Read the Transcript Subscribe to the Capital Allocators Blog or Monthly Mailing List Don't Subscribe, but Let Us Know Who You Are Write a review on iTunes Follow Ted on twitter at @tseides Review past episodes of the Podcast

Joe Lonsdale is a founding partner at 8VC, a leading venture capital firm that partners with top founders and entrepreneurs to build lasting technology platforms.  He began working at Peter Thiel’s PayPal while Joe was an undergraduate at Stanford, and upon graduation became an early executive at Thiel’s Clarium Capital, which became a multi-billion dollar global macro hedge fund. From within Clarium, Joe went on to become a co-founder of Palantir, and later founded Addepar and OpenGov. After operating this series of successful start-ups, he turned to early stage venture investing for himself and then as a founding partner of Formation 8, the precursor to 8VC.  In 2016 and 2017, Joe was the youngest member of the Forbes 100 Midas List. Our conversation begins with Joe’s dive into entrepreneurship out of school, the founding of Palantir and Addepar and his shift from operator to venture capitalist.  We discuss the venture landscape, 8VC’s competitive advantage, building new companies within 8VC, price competition for deals, the due diligence process, adding value to portfolio companies, and new ideas on the horizon in venture investing. Although we were pressed for time, Joe packs the conversation with great nuggets of wisdom from his incredible success. Learn More Read the Transcript Subscribe to the Capital Allocators Blog or Monthly Mailing List Don't Subscribe, but Let Us Know Who You Are Write a review on iTunes Follow Ted on twitter at @tseides Review past episodes of the Podcast