From $0 to $1.6 Trillion: How David Booth Built Dimensional

What happens when you apply real science to Wall Street?

That's the question David Booth answered this week at Arena Hall. The Dimensional Fund Advisors co-founder shared how he went from a small apartment in Brooklyn to managing $1.6 trillion in assets by doing something radical: following the data.

"Finance in the 1960s was like astronomy before Galileo," Booth explained, describing the shift from gut feelings to hypothesis-driven investing. Working alongside Nobel laureates at the University of Chicago, he saw an opportunity to bridge academic theory with market reality.

The result? A revolution in how we think about markets.

From convincing their first skeptical client to donating $300 million to name Chicago's business school, Booth's journey embodies what's possible when you challenge conventional wisdom. And his decision to move Dimensional to Austin speaks volumes about Texas's future as a business hub.

Most fascinating was his take on what's next: AI will make markets more efficient, but synthetic biology might be the real game-changer to watch.

Great conversations happen when remarkable people share their stories. What's yours?