partnerships,” says Phan. “The idea is that I only get paid if I can provide value over what an investor can achieve themselves with a passive index fund and no manager.
Investing is his singular passion and what motivates him to research and apply knowledge. “I started off with cheap cigar butts, moving from deep value, and then to value, and then to cash flow, and eventually to long-duration quality,” he says.In his frank speaking way, Phan dismisses his former profession – the law – as toxic, slow-moving, backwards-looking, apathetic, even disdainful, towards advancements in science and technology.
DNA sequencing, synthetic biology, cellular engineering, miniaturisation, microfluidics, robotics, and machine learning are now areas of research and interest for Phan.; its Nasdaq-listed shares are already up 30 times since 2007 to give it a $US52 billion valuation. “The problem is Illumina is now valued at roughly 50 times earnings,” Phan laments.He says a British business spun out of Oxford University named Oxford Nanopore Technologies has potentially superior DNA sequencing tech.