Whitney Tilson‘s discussing his programs, Lessons from the Trenches: Value Investing Bootcamp and two seminars on How to Launch and Build an Investment Fund and an Advanced Seminar on Short Selling, are now available on video and why he wants to build a time machine = -presented without commen
I’m writing to share with you some exciting news: for the first time (and only for a limited time), we are making videos available online of all three of the programs that Glenn and I have developed over the past year: our Lessons from the Trenches: Value Investing Bootcamp and two seminars on How to Launch and Build an Investment Fund and an Advanced Seminar on Short Selling.
Q3 hedge fund letters, conference, scoops etc
Our programs, rooted in our combined half century of experience in the investment business, are designed not only for professionals but also avid amateurs who simply want to become better investors. In them, we share everything we’ve learned about investing (both long and short), launching and building multiple hedge funds and mutual funds, answer all questions, and invite veteran investors as guest speakers to share their wisdom. Our goal is to help others stand on our shoulders and achieve even greater success. It’s equal doses of learning, self-improvement and fun!
We’ve taught all three seminars multiple times, both in person and via webinar, to hundreds of participants from every corner of the globe, at every level, from college students to retirees, to young analysts at big funds to seasoned industry veterans.
The incredible feedback we’ve received (see some of the testimonials below) reinforces our view that what we’re teaching is unique – to my knowledge, no one else is teaching this – and valuable. I’m biased of course, but I think it’s worth exponentially more than what we’re charging for it. For some investors, in fact, it could literally be worth millions of dollars.
I know because I’m one of them: I’m not exaggerating when I say that I’d gladly pay $1 million to send a video of our seminars back in time to my younger self. I built a heck of a business from scratch, growing assets from $1 million to $200 million, but if I’d had the knowledge that we’re now imparting to the next generation of investors, I would have made much more during the good years – and avoided some fateful mistakes that ultimately cost me my business.
Here’s an overview of the major topics we cover in each (a full description and additional information on Kase Learning is posted here):
Lessons from the Trenches: Value Investing Bootcamp
- The rise and fall of Kase Capital – investing and business lessons
- How to achieve superior performance
- The best of value and growth: make money investing
- Avoiding value traps
- Effective portfolio management
- Overview of lessons from 15 years of short selling
- Activism
- Case studies: Berkshire Hathaway, McDonald’s, Google, Facebook, Netflix, Valeant, Spark Networks, SodaStream, Canadian Pacific, CSX, JetBlue, Spirit Airlines, Hertz
- How to avoid – and profit from – manias, bubbles and investor irrationality
- How to cultivate mentors, make friends and develop deep relationships
- The five calamities that can destroy your life – and how to avoid them
The 36-hour video series includes 32 teaching modules, totaling 24 hours, five guest speakers, and 57 answers to questions.
How to Launch and Build an Investment Fund
- The decision whether/when to launch your own fund
- Creating a hedge fund vs. separately-managed accounts business
- The ideal management fee, carry and redemption terms
- The right service providers
- Partnerships and seed deals
- Hiring the right people at the right time
- How to make a name for yourself and stand out from the crowd
- Targeting the right investors
- An effective fundraising plan to raise $1 billion (or not)
- Great investor pitch decks
- Compelling investor letters
- How to survive periods of poor performance
- How to create great slide presentations and make killer stock pitches
The 12-hour video series includes 12 teaching modules, totaling eight hours, three guest speakers, and 12 answers to questions.
Advanced Seminar on Short Selling
- Our history on the short side
- Arguments for and against shorting
- Don’t get sucked in for the wrong reasons
- Charlie Munger’s advice to me
- How to mitigate risk in a bull market
- “Guerilla shorting”
- The three types of shorts we’ve been unsuccessful with
- The one type of short in which we’ve been successful
- How to find collapsing earnings
- Being too smart can be painful
- Look for obvious bubbles
- Avoid valuation shorts – and never short accelerating growth
- Don’t use options
- Sources of good short ideas
- Case studies: The bursting of the housing bubble, Lumber Liquidators, Tesla, Plus 500, Wingstop, K12, Zillow
The 10-hour video series includes seven teaching modules, totaling 6½ hours, one guest speaker (Mark Spiegel on Tesla), one student presentation (on Zillow), and 13 answers to questions.
Watching the videos is the only way to take our programs right now, as we’ve suspended all live teaching to focus on a new investment newsletter business we’re launching in 2019.
While nothing can fully match the in-person learning experience, the videos offer many advantages:
- No need to take time off of work: You can watch the videos at any time, day or night.
- No need to travel: Anyone, anywhere in the world, can watch the videos using a smartphone, tablet or computer.
- Unlimited viewing for a full year: You can watch (and re-watch) them as much as you want for a full year.
- More affordable: Participants won’t incur any travel or hotel costs and, because we don’t have to pay for renting a room, providing meals, etc., we’re pricing the videos at a small fraction of our normal tuition.
Here is the pricing for each of our programs:
- Lessons from the Trenches: Value Investing Bootcamp: $995. Register here.
- How to Launch and Build an Investment Fund: $495. Register here.
- Advanced Seminar on Short Selling: $495. Register here.
To our readers Pease use “VW10” for a discount!
After we launch our newsletter early next year, we will no longer be selling the videos, so please register now!
To give you an idea of what we’re teaching, we’ve made available for free the introduction/overview/agenda video as well as an excerpt from the first teaching module of each program – to watch them, simply click the “Register here” links above.
The combined price of these three programs is $1,985, but if you register for the bootcamp and either seminar, we’ll give you the other one for free – reducing the total cost by 25% to $1,490.
Use “VW10” for a discount!
We want to make our programs affordable to young investors and students, so are offering a 25% discount to anyone under age 30 and a 50% discount to any full-time student. To take advantage of this, simply take a picture of your drivers license (or anything else that has your date of birth on it) or your student ID, email it to me, and I’ll send you a discount code you can use.
Please email me as soon as you register for any of our programs and I’ll send you the link to a folder with all of the slides we teach from plus plenty of background materials.
Please let me know if you have any questions, and I welcome your feedback!
Best regards,
Whitney Tilson
Founder & CEO
Kase Learning, LLC
5 W. 86th St., #5E
New York, NY 10024
(646) 258-0687
PS--Here are some of the testimonials:
- It was a wonderful, almost life-changing experience. In a nutshell, it felt like an intensive infusion of wisdom and practical advice.” – Gabriel Grego, Quintessential Capital Management LLC
- I would absolutely recommend this seminar to anyone aspiring to run their own investment management business. What is taught in this seminar is pure gold. It’s not taught anywhere else and there aren’t that many people in the world who really understand what it takes to raise a billion-dollar fund. I think that this is an incredible product. It’s not really a proxy for business school or Columbia’s value investing program. It’s more advanced and for someone farther ahead in their career. There are so many start-up, emerging managers who have no idea how to raise money and where to start.” – Anonymous
- I’m lost in words while expressing my appreciation. It was the mother of all seminars. Really. It was invaluable: so many wise teachings, thoughts and reflections, and opportunities for personal growth. When I got back to work, I spent the entire afternoon sharing with my team the many learnings from our week together. Your humility, candor and selflessness are all great trademarks of yours and were evident during the week. You are a heck of a role model and I’m so lucky to have you as my cherished friend.” – Paco Carrillo, Mexico Value Partners
- At the beginning of Whitney’s course, I didn’t know what to expect and had little idea of how to set up and market my business, but after only a few days it’s not an understatement that the seminar will make me millions of dollars and save me a great deal of trouble. Whitney laid out everything he did right in launching and growing his fund for more than a decade and then, perhaps more importantly, very honestly detailed what he did wrong.” – Angelo Martorell, Martorell Capital Partners
- As a young analyst trying to get ahead, this was the shot in the arm I needed. I know the hedge fund world has become increasingly difficult and competitive, so I’ve been looking for any leg up I could find – and the seminar delivered, far surpassing my expectations. I was blown away by the one-on-one, personalized attention and can’t imagine a better way to learn than from Whitney’s case-based format. I left the seminar a better investor, entrepreneur and, unexpectedly, better person. Highly recommended!” – Jeremy Lichtman, SevenSaoi Capital
