Buy Hold Sell: Berkshire, Palantir and 3 more founder-led stocks

Since 1926, 17 of the top 20 US companies by annualised returns were founder-led at at least one point in their history, and many remain so today. 

Investors willing to back the right founders over time have been richly-rewarded, and a quick look at the list of the world's most valuable companies suggests that has never been more true than it is today. 

But what makes founder-led businesses so successful, and which founder-led or formerly-founder led companies are worth a look right now? 

In this episode of Buy Hold Sell, I'm joined by Alan Pullen from Magellan Investment Partners and Joseph Ziller from Ziller Funds Management to give their calls on three distinctive founder-led businesses, and share a founder-led stock pick of their own. 

Please note this video was filmed on 20 August 2026.

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Episode Summary

Here's a summary of all the stock calls, key verdicts and choice quotes. If you want the full transcript, you can download it via the link at the bottom of the wire.

1 - Palantir (NASDAQ: PLTR) 

Alan Pullen's rating: SELL

His verdict: Lacking visibility on competitive advantages and trading at an extreme valuation

What he said: "It's a little bit less visible than the companies we like to have. We like to take our companies apart, look at those comparative advantages, test them, challenge them. Whereas Palantir, because they do a lot of government contracts, a lot of it to do with defence, they're not as visible on what those contracts are, what makes them tick, how they win, how enduring they are."

"We would argue that the market's giving them a lot of leeway at the moment, a hundred times earnings type thing, that we don't have that margin of safety that we look for."

Joe Ziller's rating: BUY

His verdict: A high-quality business that could look a lot cheaper in a few years

What he said: "Palantir is the plumbing in an organisation that connects disparate systems, processes, assets and people in order to get real large value from AI quickly."

"The commonality here really built by the founders is a culture of trying to solve customers' hardest problems at the coalface... The result of this different culture, different approach has driven these revenue and earnings that you point out, 90% plus revenue growth. Each customer spent more than 50% year-on-year more in the last results. And we've got Microsoft-style earnings." 

"When you take those factors into account in the context of valuation, the headline PE looks high at the moment. But when you have a stock providing that much value and growing so quickly, two years out in 2028, we've got the stock on 33 times earnings and growing at 60% per annum."

2 - Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.B)

Joe Ziller's rating: HOLD

His verdict: A cash flow juggernaut but no longer offering enough growth 

What he said: "The time to own Berkshire in our view is the first half of the journey, not the second... Every business, and they're all different, has a different level of friction to growth that they start hitting. Berkshire has hit that level of friction."

"When you hit that friction, it's hard to generate an attractive return on your capital. Berkshire has a massive book, about $700 billion. And generally speaking, they can't earn a return on that above 10%. Our investment criteria, you need to be earning a return on that capital above 20% per annum." 

Alan Pullen's rating: BUY

His verdict: Enduring competitive moats and buybacks offer downside protection

What he said: "The float is the key part of why they're actually able to earn pretty attractive returns on capital. Real returns and invested capital are really strong because of the free leverage they get from the float."

"Everybody's talking about the tech companies and AI companies. If there is a downturn and the market is pretty rich right now, that buffets the downside because they're doing buybacks... So you actually get some upside here with very little downside because if something does go wrong, they're just going to do the buybacks."

3 - Mercado Libre (NYSE: MELI)

Alan Pullen's rating: HOLD

His verdict: A very good company in a tough market 

What he said: "You're getting a tax on the e-commerce businesses there. It's very competitive. Amazon is in there. You've got some Chinese players as well pushing into those markets. And MELI constantly has to get its margins impacted to respond to this."

"They're offering credit at the lower end of the credit spectrum in emerging markets. And I'm a former banks analyst. That can be a dangerous game to play. So we'd want to see them go through a few credit cycles because they're at the very early stages of that before we got confidence that they could handle the credit assessment at these pretty subprime sectors."

Joe Ziller's rating: BUY

His verdict: A thoughtfully-built business with a great track record of growth

What he said: "What you ended up getting is a really high quality, sticky flywheel of business in a relatively competitive market. But what we see is when competitors like Amazon provide e-commerce incentives, they get a bit of market share, but then they lose it after they take the incentives back. Mercado Libre doesn't lose it because of the quality of the relationship they've built with their customer."

"This is the 30th quarter of over 30% revenue growth that Mercado Libra has earned. So really impressive growth coming out of there."

4 - Roblox (NASDAQ: RBLX) - Joe's pick

Joe Ziller's rating: BUY

His verdict: A gaming platform prioritising long-term growth

What he said: "The economics of the business is much more akin to a YouTube or a Meta. And it creates this flywheel of users, content creators, developers making these games, making this social graph, which is a flywheel that's very compelling to us in terms of the value of the platform."

"Dave Baszucki, the founder of Roblox, has been doing this for 22 years, making these trade-offs for 22 years to maximise long-term growth at the expense sometimes of short-term earnings. So if you have the patience there, we think Roblox is really attractive."

5 - Intercontinental Exchange (NYSE: ICE) - Alan's pick

Alan Pullen's rating: BUY

His verdict: A diversified and innovative exchange specialist with great margins 

What he said: "They're very strong, moaty businesses because the liquidity begets liquidity. He built clearing houses off the back of them and just built an amazing business and started in exchanges, which is still the largest part of that business."

"Incredible margins, over 70% margins. So they print money. They do well when things are volatile."