MISSION

Creative explorations to elevate learning for our community.

The Artist Studio serves as our team’s R&D lab.

ⓘ

From our unique approach to pattern recognition and culture research, to our location in Laguna Beach—a quaint artist colony in Southern California—we live and breathe creative thinking. We value independent thinkers. We value artists.

For far too long, money management firms have suffered the same fate. Explosion in team size, sudden risk aversion, reinvesting in the wrong areas - we are focused on avoiding those mistakes.

 

ABOUT THE

Artist
Studio

1

Growth to Advance Learning

Surviving our past failures has made us better people, investors, leaders, and teammates. WCM has never been consumed with preserving anything. It’s been about taking the next hill, the next opportunity to learn.

Danny Meyer, famed restaurateur, summed up our feelings, “How do we use our growth to advance our culture, as opposed to how do we worry that our growth is going to prevent us from maintaining our culture?”

2

Artist Collaborations

We are open minded about where we want to spend time. We continually strive to advance our existing process (e.g. moat typologies and culture assessments). Think of this as the “D” of our R&D process. We seek new perspectives (the “R"), even if the payback is uncertain.

We love interacting with people from different walks of life, from self-taught industry experts to founders who have created new market leaders. Pedigree and credentials are not what we’re focused on.

3

Passionate People with Big Ideas

We want to ensure that every interesting discussion or idea is explored and acted on with vengeance. This is the next step in institutionalizing work we’ve been doing for years.

As Bob Ross would say, "Every day is a good day when you paint." We want to paint every day.

RESIDENCY

We're looking for creative, independent thinkers to help us:

Take on high-impact projects.

Challenge traditional thinking.

Approach research differently.

Compound "non-expiring" knowledge.

Residencies can be a few weeks or long-term. The Artist Studio is a home for two-way learning where residents and the WCM research team can expand their knowledge on a range of topics.

Who are we looking for?

People we can’t ignore.

Steve Martin famously said, “Be so good they can’t ignore you.”

We want residents who are genuinely curious about their craft and constantly looking to get better.

Topics of interest:

  • Culture

  • Moat Typologies

  • Leadership

  • Decentralization

  • Technology

  • An Operator’s Perspective

Potential projects:

  • Examining a leader's "playbook" and identifying secular trends they're betting on.

  • Scaling culture at high-growth companies.

  • Frameworks for assessing cultural and operational turnarounds.

  • Exploring bottlenecks, moats, and emerging trends.

  • Dissecting an operator's industry perspective (marketplace, SaaS, social internet, etc.).

Think Different. Get Better.

These are our core values as an investment team. We believe that getting better is a version of thinking differently. We lean into continuous improvement and iteration to enhance the investment process.

— Sanjay Ayer & Mike Trigg