Founder of Greenlea Lane Capital — a little-known, solo value investor built around very long holding periods.
Life story
Public sources say little about Josh Tarasoff's birth year, family or childhood. He graduated from Duke University in philosophy in 2001, worked at Goldman Sachs and earned an MBA from Columbia Business School.
How they got started
In 2006 he founded Greenlea Lane Capital Partners, a private investment partnership in New York. According to an Excelsior Capital write-up, the fund started with about $2.3M and grew to over $450M; Tarasoff runs it alone with no formal office. The same source cites roughly 17.3% annual net returns since 2006 (a figure we could not independently verify).
Investment style
Tarasoff believes in playing your own game: instead of high turnover, he wants a "self-driving" portfolio of a few companies held for years. He looks for end-game scenarios backed by near-undeniable logic and favors businesses with self-reinforcing loops such as network effects and economies of scale.
He draws on Nassim Taleb's "Antifragile": time is a friend and ballast in turbulent markets, not an enemy.
Best decisions
Amazon
Based on the thesis that retail would move online and consolidate around a few players, he invested early in Amazon and held it for many years.
Biggest mistakes
Slow to understand AWS
Tarasoff has said he was initially hesitant about Amazon Web Services and only gained conviction around 2013 after talking to experts.
Today
Greenlea Lane remains a small, closed partnership run solely by Tarasoff. Little is public about it — he communicates mainly through letters to partners.
What to learn from following the portfolio
- The portfolio changes very rarely — a new position is uncommon and therefore worth noticing.
- The network-effect tech and internet companies he favors are more likely to be halal, but he has also looked at insurers such as Markel. See each position's halal status on the Portfolio tab.
- A small fund's 13F is concentrated — one stock can be a large share; copying those weights is risky.
- 13F filings lag by 45 days and show only long US equities.
An introduction based on public sources — not investment advice. Spotted an error? Let us know.