Coatue Management

A socialist government chased his family out of France. Apple Computer rejected him five times. Tiger Management rejected him for an IT support role. Then he built a $70 billion AUM hedge fund.

Before Philippe Laffont ran one of the biggest tech investing firms on the planet, he was an MIT Computer Science grad fishing in Chile, sitting in a basement office in Spain, and reading stock tables in a newspaper to kill time.

That detour is how Coatue was born.

In this article, we explore Philippe Laffont's career and the story of Coatue Management, the leading technology hedge fund: how the firm invests in its own words, how you can get a job there, and much more.

P.S. this is a re-write of my Coatue Management deep dive, which now includes Coatue's TMT investing advice previously published as a separate article.

The Kid From France

Philippe was born in Belgium to a French family. His dad worked for an American company in France.

In 1981, France elected a socialist government. It nationalized companies. Philippe's dad decided it was time to go, and he moved the family to the United States.

Philippe was 16.

He finished high school in New York City at the Lycée Français de New York, a bilingual French school. One foot in each world.

Philippe's first passion was computers. He graduated from MIT in 1991 with a CS degree and a plan to go west and join the tech scene.

The tech scene had other plans. Apple Computer rejected him five times.

So Philippe did something most MIT grads would never do. He moved to Chile for six months. He learned Spanish and became a great fisherman.

The Accidental Investor

Next stop: Spain. In 1992, Philippe joined McKinsey's Madrid office.

There he met his future wife, Ana Isabel Diez de Rivera, who came from an influential Spanish family.

Philippe wanted to go back to the United States. Ana wanted to stay in Spain.

Their compromise: Philippe spent a year working for Ana's family business. It was not glamorous. He was put in a basement office with almost nothing to do.

Bored, he read the stock listings in the Herald Tribune. He bought Microsoft, Intel, and Dell stocks. They all went up. He made more money in stocks than McKinsey had paid him. He thought he was an investing genius.

He shared ideas with his brother, Thomas, who lived in California and became his sounding board.

To his credit, Philippe still admits luck played a big role. Those early wins came in a very friendly market.

But he was hooked. He wanted to be an investor.

Breaking In: Two Minutes With Julian Robertson

A year later, Philippe and Ana moved to America.

Now he had a new problem. He wanted a buy-side job with no connections and no finance degree.

He sent his resume to Tiger Management. Tiger saw the MIT computer science degree and thought he was looking to work in IT support. Tiger had no IT openings. Rejected again.

So he worked for free at a mutual fund for six months, learning the Wall Street lingo.

Then a friend of a friend introduced Philippe to Julian Robertson. He got two minutes, and he did not waste them.