Lessons in investing from David Rubenstein

David Rubenstein | Photo: Shutterstock.

David Rubenstein is the cofounder of The Carlyle Group, one of the world’s largest private-equity firms, which makes him one of the country’s premier investors.

Rubenstein provided some of his investment wisdom this week in a wide-ranging interview with his daughter Ellie Rubenstein at the ICR Conference in Orlando this week. Here are some of his more notable comments from that interview. 

‘It turns out that people in Asia love chicken’

Carlyle didn’t do too poorly with its investment in McDonald’s China. The private-equity firm acquired a stake in the business in 2017 and sold it again in 2023. “We made about six and a half times our money,” Rubenstein said. 

Unsurprisingly, Carlyle has gone back for more. And this time they’re targeting chicken, something the firm learned with its McDonald’s China investment. “As it turns out in China people don’t like beef as much as they like chicken, so we actually sold more chicken than we sold beef,” Rubenstein said. 

Carlyle has since invested in KFC Japan and KFC Korea. “It turns out that people in Asia love chicken,” he said. 

‘You can’t make too many contacts’

One of the more underrated keys to Carlyle’s success? Kindness. Rubenstein noted that deals can come from anywhere, which makes friend-making crucial. 

 “They typically come from an investment banker,” he said. “But also, people who are entrepreneurs might come to you. Friends might come to know. You never know where deals can come from, and therefore you can be nice to everybody, because you never know who might or might not give you a deal. Our best deals have come from people that I didn’t really know about, but they either admired my firm or they admired me.” 

‘I made a lot of mistakes’

Rubenstein described several moments when he had an opportunity to invest early in some deals that would have netted billions. 

For instance, he had the opportunity to meet Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg when he was at Harvard and declined. At the time, the site was described as a “dating service for people at Harvard” but was in expansion mode. “I said look, dating services and college don’t make money,” Rubenstein said. “So I didn’t put in the $30,000. The guy who did, who put in his bar mitzvah money, now I think he has got $51 billion in Facebook stock.” 

He also had an opportunity to take an early stake in Amazon. He also had an opportunity to invest in the early Internet web browser Netscape, which would later sell to America Online for $48 billion. “I make a lot of mistakes,” Rubenstein said. 

‘What’s a prostate?’

Rubenstein bought the Baltimore Orioles Major League Baseball team in 2024 and has had to learn how to deal with baseball players, all of whom are young. 

He was once asked to make a speech at the stadium about prostate cancer. “Some of our young players are 21, 22, 23 and they said, ‘What are you doing here?’” Rubenstein said. “I said, ‘I’m here to make a speech on prostate cancer. And they said, ‘What’s a prostate?’

“You’ll find out eventually.”

He said owning the team has been fun. “I don’t really add much value to it, because I don’t really have to pick or draft the players. I took the team from first place to last place, which is hard to do.”

“What would make your children proud?”

Rubenstein was a deputy policy advisor under President Jimmy Carter in the 1970s. “My political career wasn’t so good,” he said. “I worked in the Carter White House and managed to get inflation at 19%.”

He then predicted that Carter would win reelection because of Ronald Reagan’s age. When Reagan won, Rubenstein lost his position in government. By 1987, however, he cofounded Carlyle, which would ultimately thrived, helping him to make more money than he had ever thought. So he made a commitment to give back.

“I decided to try to give back to the country and get involved in philanthropy,” Rubenstein said. “I just encourage everybody to think about this: What would make your parents proud? What would make your children proud? When you leave, what can you do more for this country, your state, your community?”