Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy · Wednesday, September 16, 2026
Michael Moritz discusses how his family's history as refugees from Nazi Germany shaped his drive and grit, influencing his approach to investing and life. He contrasts his parents' experience and reactions to historical events with his own upbringing and feelings about being a minority.
“I grew up in this family of refugees from Nazi Germany and Wales. Refugees by definition are a minority. Jewish refugees in Wales during the 1960s and 1970s were a further minority. People look at me today and they think, 'Oh, here's this old white man. He's not a minority.' And I can understand that, but it's how an individual feels rather than how other people might look at you.”
“My parents, they were never in the camps. They got out of Germany in the 1930s. And they were loath to use the word survivor because they always felt the word survivor denoted somebody who actually had survived the camps, but they were refugees and in their own way had survived.”
“That motive to survive, no matter what the odds were, even though the odds that I faced growing up weren't like my parents. I think the need to survive. When you think about surviving, you're thinking about to some extent living by your wits, being very suspicious of the motives of others, wondering where and how bad things will occur and happen and guard against them.”