Aiming to produce IRRs of between 25% to 40% p.a, from litigation financing, Bow Street finds and purchases litigation assets in which guilt has already been established and the outcome is no longer binary. In such cases, answering the question “how much are the damages?” is almost all upside.

In this episode, David and Akiva discuss Bow Street in detail, along with several of their investments to date.

Akiva Katz, and his business partner, Howard Shainker, became friends in 2004 at Harvard Business School. There they came up with the idea for Bow Street, named after a street in Cambridge, Massachusetts, near the restaurant where they would meet to talk about their plan. Believing that economic conditions would be setting up a momentous event-driven climate over the next several years, they wanted to create a hedge fund that would combine a research intensive approach with an event-driven mentality.

Orange Sky is the world’s first free mobile laundry service for people experiencing homelessness – an idea founded in a Brisbane garage by two 20-year-old mates, Nic Marchesi and Lucas Patchett. In recognition of their achievement in founding and leading Orange Sky, Nic and Lucas were subsequently named 2016 Young Australians of the Year and in 2020 they were each awarded an Order of Australia Medal. In this very frank and revealing conversation, Nic and Lucas talk about the magic of Orange Sky, the value of learning from your own mistakes and the importance of ‘just giving it a go’.