Talking Billions with Bogumil Baranowski

As Talking Billions nears its fourth anniversary and 250 guests, I look back on a month of conversations, the ideas I’ve been carrying with me, and the questions you’ve sent in. I recap episodes with Eric So on protecting our judgment in the age of AI, Octavian Graf Pilati on saving his family’s centuries-old estate, Michel Ingenbleek on the psychology of long-term investing, and Neeraj Khemlani on The Coffee Can Investor. I also share a special 100 Year Thinkers conversation that Matt Zeigler and I recorded with Chris Davis and Robert Hagstrom.From there, I go through ideas from your emails. I talk about why the best leaders are often reluctant ones, and about looking past retirement to wealth that outlasts us. I explain why strict deadlines can sabotage our goals, and why I prefer a relaxed range of outcomes. I offer a simple test for any advice: “Will you be eating with us?” I also cover why investing rarely moves in a straight line, why we all need a small win, and why great businesses stay far from perfect competition.I close with what I’m reading, David Robson’s The Expectation Effect. I also share two research habits: sleeping on every big decision, a lesson from my grandmother, and studying the stocks that have moved most from their 52-week highs and lows to understand the bigger picture.Links:The Power of Reluctant Leadershiphttps://bogumilbaranowski.substack.com/p/the-power-of-reluctant-leadershipNapkin Portfolioshttps://bogumilbaranowski.substack.com/p/napkin-portfolios-a-forest-youllWrite to me: bogumil@talkingbillions.coPodcast Program – Disclosure StatementBlue Infinitas Capital, LLC is a registered investment adviser and the opinions expressed by the Firm’s employees and podcast guests on this show are their own and do not reflect the opinions of Blue Infinitas Capital, LLC. All statements and opinions expressed are based upon information considered reliable although it should not be relied upon as such. Any statements or opinions are subject to change without notice.Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. Investments involve risk and unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed.

Eric So, an MIT Sloan professor and former Nasdaq researcher, bridges investing, behavioral science, and AI in his book The Collision.
MIT Sloan professor Eric So, a former Nasdaq researcher who studies investing, behavioral science, and artificial intelligence, joins Talking Billions to discuss his new book, The Collision: What AI Does To Us. The book began with a moment of unease. Eric finished a colleague's email with ChatGPT, felt the rush of efficiency, and then realized he had removed his own brain from the process. That "splinter" set him on a quest to understand what our growing reliance on AI is doing to us.
He revisits Steve Jobs' bicycle for the mind and argues that AI has become a motorcycle: more power, more risk, and increasingly the one setting the direction. Eric explains why so much work comes in "bundles of inseparable tasks." If you skip building the model or the slides, you lose the ability to defend them. He warns of cognitive short-termism in companies that reward AI usage over capability. He also draws on Walter Camp, Socrates, chess grandmasters, and the USS Vincennes to show how tools reshape the people who use them.
We explore why AI is built to flatter, how that can harden disagreements, and his simple trick of asking AI to explain why a colleague's idea is wrong. Eric contrasts a Turkish study, where unrestricted AI access hurt learning, with a Nigerian program designed as a tutor that delivered strong gains. He closes on agency, calibration, and the one thing he'd urge everyone to stop outsourcing: judgment.
Podcast Program – Disclosure Statement
Blue Infinitas Capital, LLC is a registered investment adviser and the opinions expressed by the Firm’s employees and podcast guests on this show are their own and do not reflect the opinions of Blue Infinitas Capital, LLC. All statements and opinions expressed are based upon information considered reliable although it should not be relied upon as such. Any statements or opinions are subject to change without notice.
Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. Investments involve risk and, unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed.

My guest today is Octavian Graf Pilati — a member of an Austrian aristocratic family whose lineage traces back nearly a thousand years, and the founder of The Antifragile Family. At 25, he was handed responsibility for saving his family's centuries-old estate through a devastating financial crisis, a story so instructive that Harvard Business School turned it into a case study — Burning the Sails to Save the Ship. Since then, Octavian has built a body of work around what actually makes multigenerational families endure: governance, conflict, succession, and the human systems that either hold a legacy together or quietly tear it apart.

At 25, Octavian Graf Pilati was handed responsibility for saving his family’s centuries-old Austrian estate, a crisis triggered by a bankrupt Costa Rican teak company his father had guaranteed. The story became a Harvard Business School case study: Burning the Sails to Save the Ship.
Octavian recalls walking into creditor meetings with an engineer’s mindset, expecting to solve a problem together, only to learn the other side mostly wanted to get paid fast. He reflects on selling a forest and a palace held for 300 years, and why every asset, legacy assets above all, must serve a clear purpose rather than become a burden for the next generation.
He traces deeper roots of fragility: the fall of the Habsburg Empire, when the family “became just a wealthy family” and lost its sense of purpose, and 1945, when Soviet occupation scattered the family and the estate came back a decade later stripped of half its forest. He explains why he chose to research his family’s wartime past himself, and recounts a COVID-era scheme in Costa Rica involving a forged passport and a stand-in for his father.
Octavian lays out the crisis ladder, from incident to catastrophe, and why family catastrophes almost always combine slow-building internal tension with an external shock. He walks through the five capitals of family wealth, argues that spouses strengthen a family, and offers a line worth keeping: “the currency of love is time.”
He closes with what he’d tell his children at 25: understand how your brain works, look after your body, and remember that practice without rest doesn’t make a master.

Podcast Program – Disclosure Statement
Blue Infinitas Capital, LLC is a registered investment adviser and the opinions expressed by the Firm’s employees and podcast guests on this show are their own and do not reflect the opinions of Blue Infinitas Capital, LLC. All statements and opinions expressed are based upon information considered reliable although it should not be relied upon as such. Any statements or opinions are subject to change without notice.
Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. Investments involve risk and, unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed.

Chris Davis and Robert Hagstrom explore the tension between holding great businesses and keeping a winning stock from becoming too much of a portfolio risk. Why do two investors who believe in letting winners compound also use 10% position limits?
On this episode of 100 Year Thinkers, Chris Davis of Davis Funds and Robert Hagstrom of EquityCompass join Matt Zeigler and Bogumil Baranowski to discuss position sizing, selling mistakes, index concentration and the cost of growth. From Chris Davis’s experience selling Costco to the debate over who will capture AI’s economic benefits, they examine what it takes to hold a business through uncertainty without ignoring risk. Stay for Matt and Bogumil’s closing discussion of the lessons for investors.

Available now on Excess Returns Podcast and Talking Billions. 🎧 I’m excited to share this episode with you—it’s reposted here with permission and blessing from the Excess Returns team. Don’t miss it! And follow their work, links below.
Topics covered:
Why selling a genuinely great business can be an investor’s most expensive mistake

How client behavior and fund constraints influence 10% position limits

Chris Davis’s concerns about index concentration, momentum and future IPO incentives

Robert Hagstrom on trimming positions as the margin of safety shrinks

The bull-case pre-mortem: asking what could make selling today a mistake

What Chris Davis missed about Costco’s growth and ability to adapt

Why identical earnings growth can produce different shareholder returns

Whether AI spending builds durable pricing power or delivers more value to users

How customer trust and restraint on margins can strengthen competitive advantages

Balance sheets, circular financing and the humility required to size a position

Chris Davis / Davis Funds https://davisfunds.com/
Robert Hagstrom / EquityCompass / https://www.equitycompass.com/

Chapters:
00:00 Holding great businesses and the case for position limits
06:47 Robert Hagstrom on concentration and client risk
12:40 Index concentration, momentum and IPO incentives
19:03 Trimming winners, margin of safety and the Costco lesson
30:09 Valuation, return on capital and the cost of growth
36:01 Is AI’s capital spending cycle temporary?
40:10 AI pricing power: builders versus users
45:35 Competitive advantage, margins and customer trust
51:45 Balance sheets and circular AI financing
55:53 Evaluating the AI investment cycle
01:00:23 Matt and Bogumil’s takeaways: position sizing and AI
01:10:25 Being an AI user versus an AI investor
Learn more about the Excess Returns podcast network
https://excessreturns.co

No information discussed in this podcast should be construed as investment advice. Securities discussed may be held by the hosts and guests, their firms or their clients.
Podcast Program – Disclosure Statement
Blue Infinitas Capital, LLC is a registered investment adviser and the opinions expressed by the Firm’s employees and podcast guests on this show are their own and do not reflect the opinions of Blue Infinitas Capital, LLC. All statements and opinions expressed are based upon information considered reliable although it should not be relied upon as such. Any statements or opinions are subject to change without notice.
Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. Investments involve risk and unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed.
Information expressed does not take into account your specific situation or objectives, and is not intended as recommendations appropriate for any individual. Listeners are encouraged to seek advice from a qualified tax, legal, or investment adviser to determine whether any information presented may be suitable for their specific situation. Past performance is not indicative of future performance.

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Today on Talking Billions, I'm joined by Michel Ingenbleek — an investor and writer whose career took an unusual road here: from leading teams in the Dutch Korps Commandotroepen and Royal Netherlands Marine Corps, to two decades running offshore energy projects and corporate strategy at companies like Subsea 7 and Technip. These days he writes Capital and Character, a weekly Substack on the psychology of long-term investing, and his debut book, Staying Intact, turns two decades of his own investment mistakes into a framework he calls the behavioral margin of safety.
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Michel's path to investing began a hundred meters down, inside a pumped-dry habitat on the seabed, finishing a days-long weld on a 48-inch pipeline and asking himself, "is this it?" The former Dutch commando and Royal Netherlands Marine went on to project and strategy roles at Subsea 7 and Technip, and chose to invest his offshore bonuses himself rather than hand them to a wealth manager. The mistakes that followed became his book, Staying Intact.
At its heart is the behavioral margin of safety. Graham's margin tells you the price at which an asset is worth buying; Michel's tells you the size you can hold without your judgment breaking if the position falls further before you're proven right. He shares the story of selling ASML and Nvidia in 2022, then realizing his follow-up research was really a search for reassurance: "I get fooled so easily basically by feelings."
We trace the recurring ingredient of every bubble, from tulip mania to GameStop: not a lie but a truth, until rising prices get mistaken for evidence. Michel applies that lens to AI without pretending to forecast it. He separates loud, fast narrative risk from quiet, slow economic risk, explains why a deliberate pause can save a position better than more information, and revisits Long-Term Capital Management as a lesson in what models can't see. We also talk about red-teaming your own ideas, the strength in saying "I don't know," why "enough" is a horizon rather than a destination, the neglected years of simply owning, and his current work on what happens to investors when intelligence becomes commoditized.
Podcast Program – Disclosure Statement
Blue Infinitas Capital, LLC is a registered investment adviser and the opinions expressed by the Firm’s employees and podcast guests on this show are their own and do not reflect the opinions of Blue Infinitas Capital, LLC. All statements and opinions expressed are based upon information considered reliable although it should not be relied upon as such. Any statements or opinions are subject to change without notice.
Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. Investments involve risk and, unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed.