#94—Ralph Birchmeier: Insights for Strategists from an Investment Expert

Outthinkers

Ralph Birchmeieir’s expertise is in accounting, finance, valuation, and strategy. He is a former partner at a global investment firm where he headed financial research into banks, insurers, and real estate concerns. He and his team routinely met with company managements, emerging fintechs, insurtechs and IT professionals. He also sat on two investment committees, constructing global equity portfolios in small cap and all cap strategies.

Ralph retired at the end of 2018, taking time out to teach, volunteer, and to become more involved in private company investments. He was an advisor to a digital life distributor, an advisor for a fintech accelerator, and consulted in the AI health care space. He was also a member of Tech Coast Angels, one of the largest angel groups, where he participated in the due diligence process. His first investment book, Reasons To Pass, was published in early 2023.

In previous roles he worked as a CPA at a tier one accounting firm, for a quantitative investment manager, obtained his Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation and earned his MBA with honors from Columbia Business School.

In this episode, he shares:

• The top four reasons investors might pass on investing in your company – that are particularly important for strategists to be thinking about.
• Why governance in an organization is so indicative of future success—and what specifically investors will be looking at when assessing your CEO or board or compensation or decision-making.
• He lays out some key strategic measures that strategists and management don’t typically think about – like asset liability mismatch – and why this can be a game-changer for a company
• What factors really matter when thinking about valuation of your own company

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Episode Timeline:

00:00—Highlight from today's episode

01:15—Introducing Ralph + The topic of today’s episode

3:42—If you really know me, you know that...

4:11—What is your definition of strategy?

5:18—Could you tell us a little bit about why you wrote Reasons to Pass?

7:30—What should management be thinking about when it comes to corporate governance?

11:55—Can you talk to us about as a strategist, what should I be thinking about with regard to asset liability mismatch?

14:46—Can you talk to us about valuation, and making sure the messaging is appropriate for the market?

17:39—Let's get into financial leverage...

20:51—Let's recap the reasons to pass addressed in this episode...

21:28—How can people follow you and connect with you to continue learning from you?

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Additional Resources:

Newest Book: http://cup.columbia.edu/book/reasons-to-pass/9780231556804

Thank you to our guest. Thank you to our executive producer, Karina Reyes, our editor, Zach Ness, and the rest of the team. If you like what you heard, please follow, download, and subscribe. I'm your host, Kaihan Krippendorff. Thank you for listening.
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