Gene Munster Thanks Mom And Dad's Christmas Gift For Launching His Prolific Career

One Christmas, in the early days of Apple Inc. AAPL’s portables, Gene Munster tore the wrappings off a tiny gift and found himself the owner of a pre-fad iPod.

Munster didn’t yet own a Mac, so after work, he’d take his new device to his company publishing department to upload songs from CDs. But the process was tedious.

“The speeds to load a song were pretty slow, so you’d spend let’s say 15 minutes, and I would go there at 10 o’clock at night and I would set an alarm, download a CD, take a nap,” the managing partner of Loup Ventures told Benzinga. “I did this for a couple nights, and I realized: This isn’t working, I need to get a Mac.”

Thus, he wandered deeper into the Apple brand, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Buying In

Over time, Apple won Munster’s confidence.

“Basically, what turned us on was this powerful experience with the mobile device transforming to what ultimately would pull a troubled Mac business up,” he said.

Munster took interest in Apple’s “halo effect,” which captured consumers with one device and ultimately took them in across the brand. He began man-on-the-street interviews to gauge the impact and ultimately factored it into his long-term valuation.

“The way we kept our conviction was we would do research outside what would happen in a given quarter,” Munster said. “We spent a lot of time in Asia talking to different constituents over there and understanding how the products were evolving. We talked to consumers about what their interest level was.”

Since the iPod’s debut, Apple’s stock has risen nearly 10,600 percent, vindicating his long-term view on the company and enduring positivity.

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