Generating Alpha Podcast

Episode 54: Michael Shvo - Chairman and CEO of SHVO

This week on Generating Alpha, I sat down with Michael Shvo — real estate developer, art collector, and founder of SHVO, one of the most distinctive luxury development firms in the world. Michael grew up in Arsuf, Israel, the son of two organic chemistry professors. As a teenager he taught himself to trade oil and gas stocks, made millions, and lost it all before finishing school. He completed his military service, moved to New York at 23 with $3,000 to his name, and talked his way into a job at Douglas Elliman — where he invented the concept of the real estate team, building a group of 27 people around him and doing over $300 million in sales to become the firm's top broker. He left in 2004 to found SHVO, and within four years had done $15 billion in transactions worldwide. But what set him apart wasn't the volume — it was the vision. Michael pioneered the marriage of fashion and real estate, bringing Armani into residential development before anyone else thought to, and went on to build a firm defined as much by art and culture as by architecture and capital. Today SHVO oversees more than $8 billion in assets across five major American markets, with properties that include 711 Fifth Avenue, the Crown Building, and Big Red in Chicago. In our conversation, we talked about growing up between two worlds, building one of the most recognized names in luxury real estate from nothing, what he actually means when he talks about luxury, and how he keeps spotting iconic properties before the rest of the market catches on. It's a rare look inside the mind of a developer who has never once built anything ordinary.

Episode 53: Christian Angermayer - Founder of Apeiron Investment Group

This week on Generating Alpha, I sat down with Christian Angermayer — serial entrepreneur, biotech pioneer, and founder of Apeiron Investment Group, one of the most unconventional private investment firms in the world. Christian grew up in a small town in Bavaria and dropped out of university at 20 to co-found Ribopharma, a biotech built on groundbreaking RNA interference technology. He sold it to Alnylam Pharmaceuticals before turning 25, and has spent the two decades since founding three unicorns, backing four more, and completing over 50 IPOs and M&A transactions across life sciences, fintech, crypto, and frontier technology. His most defining chapter has been psychedelics. At a time when psilocybin was still considered fringe science, Christian seed-funded Compass Pathways and founded atai Life Sciences — taking it public on Nasdaq at a $3.2 billion valuation — almost single-handedly transforming psychedelic medicine from a relic of the 1960s into one of the most compelling frontiers in modern psychiatry. His latest bet is just as bold. This past Friday, Enhanced Games — his performance-enhancing-drug-permitted alternative to the Olympics that doubles as a performance medicine and telehealth platform — debuted on the NYSE at a $1.2 billion valuation. In our conversation, we talked about betting on ideas before the world is ready, building and IPOing companies across entirely different industries, the science and philosophy behind the psychedelic renaissance, and what Enhanced Games is actually building beyond the headlines. It's a rare look inside the mind of a builder who keeps finding the future before anyone else does.

Episode 52: Michael Paulus - Founder of PCM Encore

This week on Generating Alpha, I sat down with Michael Paulus — serial entrepreneur, fintech pioneer, and founder of PCM Encore, one of the fastest-growing fiduciary wealth management firms in the country. Michael earned his undergraduate degree in Economics and a Master's in Management Science and Engineering from Stanford, where he helped manage a portion of the university's endowment through the student-run Blyth Fund. He went on to consult at Boston Consulting Group and became a Partner at Andreessen Horowitz before co-founding Assurance IQ — an insurance technology platform he bootstrapped to a billion-dollar exit to Prudential Financial, making him one of the youngest self-made billionaires in the country. He also helped build Addepar, a financial analytics platform now reporting on trillions in assets. But PCM Encore is his most personal bet. Frustrated that no wealth manager could deliver the conflict-free, sophisticated solutions his own family needed, he built the platform himself — then opened it to the world. The firm crossed $1.2 billion in AUM within six months of launching to outside families, operating as a 100% employee-owned fiduciary with no commissions, no hidden fees, and no products to push. In our conversation, we talked about the lessons from bootstrapping and exiting a billion-dollar business, why he believes wealth management is fundamentally broken, what it really means to be a fiduciary, and how he thinks about portfolio construction for high-net-worth families. It's a rare look inside the mind of a builder who keeps finding new industries to reinvent — and winning. Presented by: rho.co/generatingalpha

Episode 51: Fabrice Grinda - Founding Partner of FJ Labs

This week on Generating Alpha, I sat down with Fabrice Grinda — serial entrepreneur, prolific angel investor, and founding partner of FJ Labs, one of the most active venture funds in the world with over 1,100 investments across six continents. Fabrice grew up in Nice, France, the son of a doctor. He arrived at Princeton, graduated summa cum laude in economics, and was already running his first business — Princeton International Computers, exporting hardware to Europe — before he had his degree. He spent a matter of months at McKinsey before walking away at 23 to launch Aucland, a direct eBay competitor in France that became one of Europe's largest auction sites. From there he built Zingy, a mobile media company he scaled to $200 million in revenue in four years, before founding OLX in 2006 — a classified ads marketplace that grew to 350 million monthly users across 40 countries and became one of the most trafficked websites on the internet. Along the way, he tried to buy the Alibaba.com domain from an unknown Jack Ma — and ended up an early investor in Alibaba instead. Forbes later named him the #1 angel investor in the world. Today, through FJ Labs, he has made over 1,100 investments and seen more than 300 exits — backing companies like Coupang, Delivery Hero, and Rappi — all without leading rounds, taking board seats, or spending more than two calls on a decision. But what makes Fabrice genuinely singular isn't just the track record. It's the intentionality behind it. In 2012, he gave away all his possessions. He's designed his life around Turks & Caicos, New York, and Revelstoke, optimizing not for accumulation but for happiness on his own terms. In our conversation, we talked about growing up in France and catching the entrepreneurship bug early, what he learned from nearly going bankrupt and borrowing on credit cards to make payroll, the contrarian logic behind launching OLX in over 100 countries simultaneously, his pattern recognition for great marketplace businesses at the seed stage, why his two-call investment model is a feature and not a bug, and how he thinks about designing a life most people never consider. It's a rare look inside one of the most prolific and unconventional investing minds of his generation — and a masterclass in building wealth, companies, and a life entirely on your own terms. Presented by: ⁠rho.co/generatingalpha⁠

Episode 50: Ian Livingstone - Co-Founder of London Regional Properties

This week on Generating Alpha, I sat down with Ian Livingstone, co-founder of London Regional Properties, one of Europe's most successful and enduring private investment firms — with over $30 billion deployed across four decades and approximately $10 billion in assets under management today. Ian's journey began in Ealing, London, where he grew up the son of a dentist. After qualifying as an optometrist in 1984, he opened his first eyewear store in 1989. Within three years he'd acquired the David Clulow chain, growing it to 170 stores across the UK including concessions in Harrods and Selfridges. He served as chairman of the Optika Clulow Group for two decades, building it into one of the leading optical retail businesses in Europe, before selling to Luxottica in 2011. But the business that would define his career began in 1987, when Ian and his brother Richard founded London Regional Properties at the height of a commercial property crash — buying distressed assets at half price while every institution in the market was running for the exits. That contrarian bet became the foundation of a portfolio that today spans David Lloyd Leisure, Hilton hotels in London, the leasehold on Cliveden House, a $2 billion development in Panama City, and the Fairmont Monte Carlo — one of the most iconic hotel addresses in the world, which Ian acquired in 2007 and spent nearly two decades transforming. Along the way, they provided seed funding for Evolution Gaming, a Swedish online gambling company whose 8.6% stake grew into a position worth nearly $3 billion. Through it all, Ian and his brother have retained full family control — no outside capital, no institutional partners, no compromise. In our conversation, we explored Ian's unlikely path from optometrist to entrepreneur, the philosophy behind buying aggressively when everyone else was selling, how he thinks about opportunity across wildly different asset classes, the story behind the Fairmont Monte Carlo, what nearly four decades of family control actually looks like, and where he sees the market today. It's a rare look inside one of the most deliberate and disciplined investing minds in Europe and across global markets — and a masterclass in building lasting private wealth on your own terms. Presented by: rho.co/generatingalpha [http://rho.co/generatingalpha]