The Most Valuable Thing I Do
The Curious Mind Brain Trust
Three years ago I started the Curious Mind Brain Trust thanks to a reader’s suggestion. I wasn’t sure what I could deliver, but the promise was to bring together people I found genuinely curious.
I want to tell you what happened since and, for the first time, open membership publicly.
What It Is
Today the Brain Trust is 74 hand picked members across eight regions — from New York and London to Zurich, Singapore, Riyadh and São Paulo. Around the table: CIOs of multi-billion-dollar family offices and pension funds, founders and senior partners of hedge funds and venture firms across macro, credit, equity, venture and crypto, entrepreneurs who built companies from a garage and sold them for billions, and principals who allocate some of the most thoughtful capital in the world.
What they have in common isn’t wealth — it’s that they’re curious, kind and original, and they were tired of rooms that optimise for status instead of thinking.
One key variable we have focused on is to focus on real cognitive diversity. This means there are 74 unique perspectives not 74 of the same ones. My goal was to build a room with the top people in each field interacting with each other in a high trust environment. The reason why it works is because the top people in any field are naturally curious and original thinkers, and they want to be surrounded by others like them.
What Does It Look Like In Practice
Member-led IRL and virtual sessions and conversations with outside thinkers and builders every month. Dinners in key cities. A small set of focused WhatsApp groups on markets and macro, science and technology, research and reading which are active 24/7. A private directory members use to solve concrete problems — hiring, capital, specialist expertise. And an annual summit that brings the community together in person — the highlight of the year for most members.
But the description undersells it.
In three years, members have caught major investment themes months before they went mainstream, raised LP capital from people they met in the room, and — more than anything — made friends they now count among their best.
Members renew at over 95%. Several have told me it’s the highest-leverage subscription they have — a single place to compress research, expand opportunity flow and stay sane while playing long-term games. I used to find that flattering. Now I understand it’s just accurate: when 74 principals share what they’re actually seeing — confidentially, with no audience to perform for — everyone in the room compounds faster.
What’s Changing
For years I ran this on the side. As of this year, it’s my main work.
That means more of my attention on the things that make the room valuable: curating who joins, connecting members who should know each other, and keeping the signal high. It also means being honest about what this is worth.
Two things worth noting:
Membership is hard capped at 100. We’re at 74. The cap isn’t marketing — the entire value of the room depends on knowing exactly who’s in it. When we reach 100, the only way in is the waitlist.
Membership is $7,500 per year. For the people this is built for, one good idea a year covers it many times over. If the price gives you pause, this probably isn’t the right room. That’s part of the point.
If This Is For You
I’m opening 5 seats in a single cohort. Applications close on August 30, I review every one personally alongside the membership committee.
What we are looking for hasn’t changed since day one: people responsible for real capital or a real P&L, who value curiosity and generosity as much as intelligence, and who want a confidential space to think aloud with serious peers.
If that’s you, just reply to the email (or write to me at ahmed.husain@thecuriousmind.org) with a few lines on: who you are and what you do, what capital or P&L you’re responsible for, what you’d bring to the room, what you hope to get from it, and how you found your way here.
If it’s not — nothing changes. The Curious Mind continues every week, exactly as it always has. Writing is still how I clarify my own thinking, and you reading it is still why any of this exists.
- Ahmed
