ACRIP
Scotland’s Unicorn Hunter
Article

Scotland’s Unicorn Hunter

How an Old-School Money Manager Became One of the World's Most Important Tech Investors

Jeremy Kahn
Bloomberg, 2017
Read the article

Read or listen offline

Amazon Kindle
audio autogenerado
  • 0.5×
  • 0.75×
  • 1×
  • 1.25×
  • 1.5×
  • 1.75×
1×
audio autogenerado

Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Innovative
  • Eye Opening
  • Overview

Recommendation

How did 109-year-old Scottish asset management firm Baillie Gifford go from backing Henry Ford’s Model T to Elon Musk’s Tesla? Bloomberg Technology reporter Jeremy Kahn charts Baillie Gifford’s path to becoming one of the most important backers of Silicon Valley’s biggest publicly traded names – like Amazon and Facebook – and privately owned “unicorns” – like Airbnb and Dropbox. Kahn offers a candid look at the firm’s investment track record and methodology for selecting investment-worthy companies. getAbstract recommends this article to those interested in tech-sector investing and investment strategy. 

Summary

Few people outside Silicon Valley and Shenzhen know the name Baillie Gifford, but what the asset management firm lacks in name recognition, it more than makes up for in clout. Over the course of the firm’s 109-year existence, Baillie Gifford has backed growth markets as diverse as railroads, steel mills and oil. In 2004, however, after a stretch of lackluster performance, the firm began investing heavily in the tech sector, starting with Amazon and eBay.

In many ways, these early investments, especially Amazon, served as the...

About the Author

Jeremy Kahn is a senior tech reporter at Bloomberg Technology. His work has appeared in The New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, Newsweek, The Atlantic, and others.

Comment on this summary