This podcast features the second installment of our LinkedIn Live series on how economic profit drives long-term value creation. Fortuna partners Greg Milano and Marwaan Karame discuss how Residual Cash Earnings (RCE) improves upon earlier economic profit models—most notably EVA. Greg shares how his experience with EVA, and later with Credit Suisse’s HOLT framework, led him to identify a key flaw: depreciation was distorting performance, encouraging companies to “sweat assets” and underinvest. RCE treats depreciation differently, restoring the incentive to invest appropriately. Importantly, RCE is also simpler to use and implement, requiring far fewer adjustments than EVA. Research shows that these improvements lead to RCE tracking better with shareholder returns, which means a stronger alignment between the interests of management and long-term investors.

Valuation virtuoso, Michael Mauboussin, joins us to explore the core drivers of long-term value creation. We explore how valuation multiples are often misleading, why the rise of intangible assets requires new valuation frameworks, and how investors and corporate managers alike can better evaluate strategy and competitive advantage. We cover practical frameworks on capital allocation, sustainable competitive advantage, and why truly understanding economic fundamentals is key to avoiding “value traps.” This episode is a must-listen for finance professionals, executives, and serious investors. Michael is Head of Consilient Research at Counterpoint Global, a Morgan Stanley Investment Management fund and a finance professor at Columbia Business School.

Joe Milam, founder of AngelSpan and The Legacy Funds, joins the podcast to discuss how behavioral finance principles improve decision-making for corporate managers and investors alike. Milam critiques the current chaotic, informal funding environment for startups and introduces his Venture TAMP platform, which applies disciplined public-market strategies—like the Kelly Criterion and standardized reporting—to early-stage investing. He emphasizes reducing bias, improving transparency, and optimizing capital allocation to support innovation. The conversation spans topics like barriers to corporate innovation, portfolio theory, and how data-driven decision-making often outperforms human intuition in venture and public markets alike.