Investing For Life: with Jason Pellegrino, MD and CEO at Domain

Welcome to the Investing For Life podcast, where we apply proven investment principles to the lives of successful business people to help you enrich your own. 

Like investing, at the heart of this series is a simple idea. Investing professionally is a long-term game underpinned by a strong philosophy.

And having first joined Platinum Asset Management back in 2003, the approach that was first laid out by our founders has become deeply embedded in the way that I think. 

Sometime after that, I was reflecting on my own journey when it struck me that there are three elements of Platinum's philosophy that can be applied to life. These lead to better outcomes over the long run, and our so-called midlife forces us to look back to reflect and to adjust for a better long-term future.

Platinum has found opportunities through three principles:

• By exploring companies facing temporary setbacks
• By investigating long-term change, and above all,
• By trying not to follow the crowd. 

This last part can be uncomfortable because we're hardwired to want to fit in. And as we've found with investing, I think these three principles can provide a unique insight into opportunities that can enhance the way in which we live our lives.

Setbacks scare investors. Recent examples might include how people felt about travel stocks during the first COVID outbreak, or semiconductors during the 2018 trade war. These were incredible opportunities.

 Long-term change is a challenge for investors to process. Appreciating the potential of businesses, like Samsung, or Google, or Tencent, or PayPal before they were so widely known was very lucrative. 

And going against the crowd requires fortitude, but it allowed for our business' reputation to be enhanced by sidestepping the technology bubble as it burst, or finance companies at the epicentre of the GFC.

I'm going to explore each of these three ideas with my guests for your benefit as a listener. We'll hear about our guests' origin stories and what setbacks they've overcome along the way. We'll learn about the changes they made to improve their own odds of long-term happiness.

And we’ll discover how they stand out from the crowd, absorbing all the discomfort that that can entail.

Introducing my first guest: Jason Pellegrino

Launching the inaugural season of Investing for Life, I recently sat down with Jason Pellegrino, MD and CEO at Domain about the most critical career decisions he has made and why.

Prior to joining Domain from Google in 2018, Jason worked in several roles spanning Corporate Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions and Finance at Dakota Capital Partners, LEK Consulting, PepsiCo International and KPMG, leading him to his former position as Google’s Managing Director Australia and New Zealand and member of Google’s Asia-Pacific Regional Leadership Team.

Listen to this conversation to:

• Gain insight into Jason’s family life and upbringing;
• Be drawn in by the raw and honest recount of the setbacks and career mistakes he has made along the way – and, importantly, how these have shaped the leader he is today;
• Learn why he pivoted his career, leaving Google to take up the role at Domain and how he continues to apply past learnings to inform future decisions.

Jason’s Investing for Life story will encourage you to keep challenging yourself and learning what motivates you, to help ensure this next stage of your career builds on the experiences of your journey to date. 

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In this season of Investing for Life, I'll bring you a number of leaders, including the CEO of one of Australia's most successful online businesses, a leader of a profession who provides clarity through numbers, another leader who's driving a diversity empowerment agenda in a very traditional world, and a coach of a successful female sporting team, among others.

And I hope that via the Investing for Life podcast series you'll hear life stories that help you think about your own. I'll ask about setbacks, improvements, and about daring to be different. I know that this works in investment markets, and I like to believe, from my own sneak preview, that it can work in real life, too. Ultimately, investing in ourselves for life should pay dividends. And I hope that this series is a worthwhile investment of your time. 

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