Introducing "CEO Interviews" 🚀

10 timeless questions for every CEO — plus 5 company-specific questions that matter most for long-term value creation

Most investors spend 99% of their time on numbers — and almost none on the person making the decisions behind them: 👤

Over a 10-year holding period, a great CEO can matter more than a great quarter.

That’s why I’m adding a new format to Slow Compounding: CEO Interviews.

The idea is simple: great companies are built by a handful of decisions repeated consistently over many years — capital allocation, incentives, culture, risk management, and the discipline to say “no” to the wrong opportunities.

I want a format that captures that operating system in a way that’s comparable across businesses — and still useful years from now.

Each CEO interview will follow the same structure:

10 timeless, general questions that EVERY CEO gets — regardless of industry. The purpose is to make answers directly comparable across companies and to build a library of patterns: how exceptional operators allocate capital, compound competitive advantages, manage risk, and keep their edge as they scale. 🔁📈

On top of that, each interview will include 5 company-specific questions tailored to the business model and current situation — the bottlenecks, strategic choices, market share ambition, and the key variables that will decide whether the next decade looks like the last. (for example). 🔎

One important note: I’ll run these interviews after I’ve done my research and published the Deep Dive. That’s intentional. I want to go in with an independent view first — and avoid having my thinking “colored” by management’s framing.

Why written — not podcast or video? ✍️

Because written interviews optimize for what matters most to Slow Compounding:

Clarity, depth, and durability:

• Signal over entertainment: Video is engaging, but it often rewards charisma. Written Q&A rewards precision.

• Better thinking, better answers: Executives can respond thoughtfully, verify details, and articulate nuance.

• Skimmable and searchable: You can jump to the questions you care about, save highlights, and revisit them later.

• Comparable over time: A standardized written format makes it easier to spot frameworks across different CEOs and industries.

I also want to set expectations clearly: I can’t promise that every CEO will participate. Some will decline, some won’t respond, and timing won’t always work out. But when it does, the goal is to build a growing archive of decision-making frameworks — the kind that actually compounds over time.

There will be a new tab in the top menu called CEO Interviews, where all interviews will be collected in one place for easy access.

I have the first interview lined up already. Michael Kehoe from Kinsale Capital Group. Super happy about his willingness to be part of this format.