TIP790: Wealth Beyond Money w/ Thomas Mueller-Borja

What It Covers

Thomas Borja, global co-head of real estate at BlackRock managing $25 billion, discusses his journey from raising capital with zero assets in 2015 to building a global investment business. He explores the intersection of ethical investing, personal values, leadership principles, and maintaining flow states while managing institutional capital across continents and time zones.

Key Questions Answered

• •Fundraising mechanics: Raising $2 billion requires identifying 200 prospects with a 20% conversion rate to secure 40 investors at €50 million average tickets. The process demands structured pipeline management, global outreach from Australia to South America, and convincing internal distribution teams first before approaching external clients. First-time fund managers face the highest rejection rates requiring sustained optimism over months or years.
• •Investment committee design: BlackRock redesigned their IC process using behavioral science principles including anonymous voting through independent risk teams to prevent groupthink and peer pressure. They introduced a designated challenger role who acts as devil's advocate to champion pre-mortems and identify failure paths. This governance structure protects dissenting opinions and reduces cognitive biases in approval decisions for billion-dollar acquisitions.
• •Sleep optimization for performance: Using temperature-regulating technology like Sleep Eight increased deep and REM sleep by 25% from three to four hours nightly over two years. Maintaining consistent sleep schedules while traveling across time zones requires staying on home timezone when possible, scheduling meetings at 2-3 AM when necessary, and prioritizing seven hours minimum. Sleep quality directly impacts ability to enter flow states and make sound investment decisions.
• •Flow state timing: Peak cognitive performance occurs at specific daily windows, typically 11:15 AM and 4:00-4:30 PM for some individuals. Achieving flow requires meeting prerequisites including adequate sleep, proper nutrition, physical exercise, and meditation practice. Travel disrupts these routines significantly, making it harder to access optimal mental states when meeting new investors or making critical decisions, requiring deliberate scheduling around peak performance windows.
• •Sovereign debt positioning: Real estate cap rates correlate with four to ten year sovereign yields, not front-end rates. Countries with lower debt-to-GDP ratios like Sweden at 35% or Germany at 85% offer better opportunities for cap rate compression and capital appreciation. High sovereign indebtedness prevents yield curves from declining when central banks cut rates due to increased term premiums, limiting upside potential in markets like France or UK.
• •Honesty versus kindness framework: Honesty serves as the foundational principle because maintaining parallel truths creates future conflicts when timelines converge. However, kindness operates as the higher-order value that can override strict honesty when serving greater compassion. Truth itself remains perception-based, with multiple valid versions existing simultaneously depending on individual perspectives and contexts, requiring judgment about which principle takes precedence in specific situations.