Sam Hinkie – Find Your People - [Invest Like the Best, EP.204]

My guest today is Sam Hinkie. Sam worked for more than a decade in the NBA with the Houston Rockets and then as the President and GM of the Philadelphia 76ers. And now, after years of personal investing, he has launched his own venture capital firm, Eighty-Seven Capital. Every conversation I have with Sam is alive with insight, and this one is no different. We explore the idea of studying the "breadcrumbs" that someone leaves behind as a way to track their progress and trajectory, finding and attracting the right people into one’s orbit, and the lessons from the NBA that most shape his investing career. Sam has taught me the most about the topic of building trust, which we cover here as well. I am excited to share my conversation with Sam with all of you. Please enjoy! For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast. Sign up for the book club and new email newsletter called “Inside the Episode” at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub. Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_oshag Show Notes (3:48) – (First question) – Conducting a good interview (5:58) – Drilling into topics to learn more about people (7:49 – What percentage of people are actually worth spending time with for Sam (9:29) – People who think in a strange way that intrigues him (10:36) – Interest in digital breadcrumbs and how to follow them (14:02) – Building context around founders vs analyzing their pitch decks (17:20) – A real world example of the bread crumb strategy, Houston Rockets GM (21:25) – How successful people evolve with the erosion of their pre-established edge (23:07) – Shifting to a people-first focus (24:50) – Creating an atmosphere that attracts the best talent (26:50) – Tailoring things to someone else’s incentive structure (28:24) – Most amazing thing someone did in early days of working with Sam (30:18) – Lessons from sports that he carries with him (32:31) – Exceptions to relationships being a key to success (33:03) – Have people gone soft? (34:58) – Knowing whether founders are on the right path (36:07) – Avoiding transactional type people (37:04) – Most effective lessons he brought to sports from the investing world (40:01) – Ideas from the sports world he is bringing to the investing world (44:11) – How the size of the team can impact the success of the team (45:48) – Designing the game for himself (50:33) – Lessons learned from watching them build trust (52:26) – Market areas that have his attention (54:13) – Fascination into API’s (58:05) – Keeping your focus on your expertise (59:45) – Strangest things he’s seen in early stage investing (1:01:26) – Playing the long game (1:04:29) – Calling it Eighty-Seven Capital. (1:04:42) – Means of Ascent (The Years of Lyndon Johnson) (1:05:49) – Increasing his chance at a GM job (1:06:52) – What can Caro teach us about the long game (1:08:26) – Lessons of power (1:10:39) – Quality in leaders he respects most (1:11:17) – The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson (1:12:58) – The power of breadcrumbs and how people can start to lay them out Learn More For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast. Sign up for the book club and new email newsletter called “Inside the Episode” at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub. Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_oshag