Going to run an experiment...What's the top thing you learned this year that you can't share publicly?
DM me and I'll anonymously post the best.
DM me and I'll anonymously post the best.
Here we go...
"Much of the investment industry, especially consultants/co-investment funds that sit on the LP side of the table, exists to extract value rather than to help create it."
"Much of the investment industry, especially consultants/co-investment funds that sit on the LP side of the table, exists to extract value rather than to help create it."
"Corporate governance (I.e. assessing from multiple angles if the founder is a crook / corrupt / thief / fraud or not) is the #1 thing to focus on while investing in small / mid cap public companies and virtually all private companies."
"Indian / Asian founders (and I assume it’s true for broader emerging markets) are masters of financial shenanigans. And you can’t go and complain to the police or security exchange or the govt or the courts since they are all part of the gravy train in some form or the other."
"After going through the fund raising process, I learned that not all angel investors are logical!"
"There are way more bad, unethical guys with Ivy League degrees in the Real Estate industry than in the Hedge Fund and PE industries combined."
"You can make a smoke grenade from a ping pong ball and tinfoil."
"Don't cheat on your wife."
"After 13 years of it, CRE investment brokerage is a waste of time."
"Big companies do surprisingly little due diligence when making $100mm+ acquisitions. They often regret mere weeks after the acquisition closes when they realize they can’t reuse any of the software, the biz is a lot less solid than it seemed, and the talent a lot less talented."
"What I learned this year - Shark Tank deals can turn out to be very scammy and not at all how they appear on TV."
"Most journalists have no idea how the industries they're covering actually work - the number of articles I've read about my industry that are totally off base has been increasing over time."
"One thing I learned this year: Many small to mid-market companies would improve if the CEO quit showing up to work."
"Most startups completely fuck their early stage employees over - they hire people that don't understand how equity works and then make it seem like it's a lottery ticket that justifies paying a low salary or they don't explain things like dilution, preference stacks, etc."
@APompliano "Things can't share publically: Most community banks are dead and waiting to be purchased versus lending in the community."
@APompliano "Unlike IRR, MOIC can not be manipulated."
@APompliano "Publicly sharing your fund/strategy letters and performance is very toxic and has turned into a giant comparison circle jerk."
@APompliano "What I learned this year - I still have a hard time differentiating between 'throwing good money after bad' and 'patience/persistence/long hall is the way to win.'"
@APompliano "This year I learned from my mother that Kim Kardashian used to be my baby sitter. In the early 2000s my mom used to be a singer and was friends with a guy named Damon Thomas (who was married to Kim). We would go to their house and Kim would be responsible for watching me."
@APompliano "Incentives matter. Even the people with the highest integrity aren't immune to perverse incentives. The key takeaway I learned this year is to not take it personally."
@APompliano "What I learned this year: the majority of people that seek public attention through money/power/fame are incredibly insecure & that all the money/power/fame won't make them any happier."
@APompliano "No one knows anything, but everyone seems to have an opinion."
@APompliano "I learned Epstein didnt kill himself, pizza-gate has a lot of merrit(more than a lot), world is most likely run by a bunch of blackmailed pedos."
@APompliano "What I learned this year and since Nov 2016: moderate Repubs and Dems are better people and better leaders than passionate liberals or conservatives."
@APompliano "Started a business this year. For a 2-3 month stretch, we saw very little happening. We started praying every night (maybe 2-3 minutes) for the business. Over the next month, we got a new lead almost every day. For a small fee-only RIA, that's about 6-12 months worth of leads."
@APompliano "Most people who claim to be interested and/or active in investing in private companies are completely unprepared/unwilling to handle the reality of private company transactions."
@APompliano "Most businesses (like 80-90%) are wasting their money on Facebook Ads. And I run a Facebook Ads agency. Everyone’s looking for an easy way to grow, but there’s no shortcut for solid business principles."
@APompliano "Much of the investment industry, both buy and sellside, especially in the middle and lower middle market, are not nearly as smart as the world (and they themselves) thinks they are."
@APompliano "There are a lot of Christians on twitter, really influential ones too. But very few have the courage to profess their faith even when its appropriate and not evangelistic. It's mostly so they don't lose followers."
@APompliano "The right time to fire your CEO is the first time you give it serious thought. This is true for almost every hard decision in business.”
@APompliano "The transaction costs of lower middle market deals is insane. Deal costs, especially if a lender is involved, routinely spiral into the $200k+ range."
@APompliano "I'm not as nice a person as I thought I was."
@APompliano "I have greater concerns about BRK’s board after he’s gone than the CEO succession. Howard is a great guy and he has some experience but I don’t see him providing oversight for someone like Abel or Jain. Luckily those two don’t need oversight, but who knows who will succeed them?
@APompliano "The vast majority of the corporate world is dictated by a chain reaction of principal-agent problems. First, study each party's incentives to understand the meta-game behind the game and rationale for their actions."
@APompliano "15 minutes a day every day on any project/habit really stacks up, never had a better year meeting my resolutions."
@APompliano "I should have just bought more $SPY than books on investing."
@APompliano "Far too many entrepreneurs/investors sign term sheets without running by legal counsel."
@APompliano "Market is not random completely. It's made to move in direction of maximum pain. Reinforcing randomness hypothesis."
@APompliano "I learned that I’m willing to be treated poorly at work (and to treat others poorly), in return for a mere doubling of my salary."
@APompliano "Every single PE firm I’ve work with is sketchy as fuck."
@APompliano "When it comes to healthcare benefits, most companies are adversarial with their employees. They make it confusing and hope you don’t enroll. They’ll also sell you junk to get commission kickbacks."
@APompliano Alright, BRB. Taking my wife on a mid-day date.
Keep 'em coming and I'll post them later this afternoon or this evening.
Keep 'em coming and I'll post them later this afternoon or this evening.
@APompliano "If your kids need your money after their 20's you didn't do your job and handing out money won't make up for it."
@APompliano “Women are better leaders than men. They are better listeners and have more empathy than men. Women want to get things right instead of being right. That is an important difference and men are usually the opposite.”
@APompliano "There’s no amount of upside worth going to jail over. For the sake of those that didn’t leave, I sincerely hope I was wrong and they end up fabulously wealthy."
@APompliano "Management consultants are very explicit within their own circles that their business is in supporting weak management teams that slowly become dependent on consultants."
@APompliano "Investors who’ve done well in their personal portfolios think they can do the same managing other people’s money. Different ballgames."
@APompliano "When the chips are down, times are tough, friends/family are God’s greatest, most gracious gift."
@APompliano "Partnerships are really hard. Keeping accountability and challenging issues of competence and performance are really hard while maintaining long term harmony."
@APompliano "High school dynamics still live large in the adult grown-up world. The jocks, the nerds, the cliques. The gossipers, the bullies, the boasters. Only now - mostly online - the traits are even more exaggerated."
@APompliano "Most venture investors aren't investors at all but are speculators (& kick ass marketers) gambling on deep out of the money options."
@APompliano "I didn’t teach my children enough about giving back. Success yes, giving back not happening enough. Hoping it is tied to age and they will practice gratitude and giving back in their 30s and beyond."
@APompliano "Twitter is mentally draining, and can totally rewire how you think."
@APompliano "Jeremiah Lowin is the hardest working person I know. I wish I had money to invest in Prefect (and that he’d let me if I did)."
@APompliano "The fortune 100 company I work for has no idea how to hire or use data analytics talent."
@APompliano "If you're a startup in flyover country, hiring leadership people from major startup markets is a recipe for disaster. Culture doesn't fit and you get the worst person that city has to offer."
@APompliano "Had a candid conversation with arguably the most prominent person in the gaming industry and while they’re happy taking fees from franchises, they don’t think franchises will ever be able to make real money in a sustainable basis and the gold rush into the space perplexes him."
@APompliano "Cyber security professionals pull the same unethical schemes that NSA employees pull on their girlfriends. Cyber security people often use their skills for financial gain and blackmail. Employees I know spend their free time hacking everyone they’ve ever met like a bad sitcom."
@APompliano "Any business less than five years old is one bad decision away from failing."
@APompliano "Middle management folks are usually right when they have a dim view of the company strategy and senior management."
@APompliano "Pay your taxes."
@APompliano "I learned taking your wife on mid-day dates has among the largest ROI possible."
@APompliano "I learned more in-depth that most of the crypto projects will fail because of the way they raised money doesn't add up when they are going to support their market afterwards."
@APompliano "There are two kinds of long only US equity firms in the institutional marketplace - those that are already dead and those that are dead but are in denial about it."
@APompliano "Most PE and commercial lenders I know can’t imagine someone would sponsor a buyout without debt."
@APompliano "Don’t trust anyone and question even yourself."
@APompliano "Things I learned in 2019: top-tier coastal cities like NY are far more racially segregated than smaller cities in the South. The neighborhoods are more integrated, and I see far more interracial families in Greensboro NC than I ever did in NYC."
@APompliano "Top thing learned this year: nearly 100% of private and small practice doctors are scamming insurance. They bill for high cost/low effort procedures, often ones that look preventative on paper but in reality are unnecessary."
@APompliano "Pride is a weed; power is its fertilizer. Find a way to cut it down, or there will be no ground left for anything else to grow"
@APompliano "People may not follow logic, but they sure will follow a good story to whatever far-flung conclusion it leads them to"
@APompliano "Investors do not want the highest possible return, nor do they want to go into risk with their eyes open. They just want you to exceed their expectations and to feel safe even if they’re not."
@APompliano "What I learned: 15000 hours of my parents negativity has been programmed into me, and now that I'm a 23 y/o, I have to feed my brain new programming."
@APompliano "I crave short term pleasures (porn, alcohol, etc) bc my life was so unstable growing up so I grabbed any pleasure possible as joy was fleeting, and now that my life is stable w/ good job I need to find joy in my long term goals instead."
@APompliano "Money and fear of failure can turn seemingly logical people in to total a-holes."
@APompliano "A privately-held operating platform, especially in this environment, is an extremely insulated and durable vehicle that is largely immune from the consequences of bad financial or operational decisions."
@APompliano "Most people in tech, when talking to them privately, think inclusivity is actually hampering our ability to have tough conversations. It's creating a culture of fear. The exact opposite of its intended effect."
@APompliano "Some CEOs have super strange social lives and it clouds my interactions with them."
@APompliano "Good relationships matter more than personal health."
@APompliano "There are peer reviewed studies of retired NFL players that indicate abnormal prevalence of migraine, dementia and bed wetting. The NFL and its media allies are exerting significant legal force to silence doctors and these studies."
@APompliano "In life and in business, it’s far better to go alone than to go with the wrong people."
@APompliano "The Big 4 Audit and Consulting firms are the definition of a Pyramid Scheme. I give them 10 years max to get with the times, but the partners are far too greedy to reinvest what is required to truly transform themselves for the digital era. Pensions are a helluva drug."
@APompliano "You would be surprised how little work / involvement in day to day stock selection or position sizing many "star managers" touted actually have...they're often just the name or brand that funds need to keep on to make clients feel secure."
@APompliano "The $6 billion / year corporation I now work for, has the same problems / issues I had with my own small business, just more of them."
@APompliano “If the job seems off in the first 48 hours - it isn’t going to get better.”
@APompliano “Write down the reasons you do something and notes to your future self. Follow that guidance.”
@APompliano "You can actually make real serious business deals via LinkedIn."
@APompliano “Life is too short to work with/for assholes. It may not be easy, but it is in fact possible to find high integrity & high achieving teams to join forces with. And when you find it, it’s magic.”
@APompliano "An investor's social media following is largely uncorrelated with how much deep, unique investing insight they have."
@APompliano "A huge component of becoming a respected investor is getting lucky in your first few years and then publicizing those early (lucky) wins as much as possible."
@APompliano "For every $1B increase in online sales, 1.25M sq ft of industrial space is needed."
@APompliano "Avoid bad management teams and poor corporate governance situations; no matter how cheap, the discount is warranted and you will likely be surprised by incremental ineptitude."
@APompliano "SEC change in accredited investor rules will bring average Americans in as the bag holders of PE and VC bubble.
SECURE Act let’s the insurance industry foxes into the 401k henhouse."
SECURE Act let’s the insurance industry foxes into the 401k henhouse."
@APompliano "The billion dollar SaaS company I joined is a ticking time bomb of technical debt. We can barely ship anything. The CTO sugarcoats the situation to the CEO, clients and investors. If only someone thought to ask the engineers..."
@APompliano "Fraud is incredibly easy to execute without any criminal or civil liabilities. The secret is to understand accounting, assume everything you do will be reviewed by an attorney, and the fall guy will make himself at your disposal."
@APompliano "Early stage VC insecurities and ego really only come out once follow on investors get board seats in later rounds. They sense the loss of power over management, and react in interesting & varied ways."
@APompliano "Democracy is a very difficult system to maintain when you don't invest enough in educating the voting population or when wealth inequality becomes too great. (actually I learned that a long time ago, but it was just really evident this year)."
@APompliano "Losing your job can be a blessing in disguise and give you a chance to reset."
@APompliano "I became a father in 2019 to a beautiful little girl. I’ve learned the meaning of 'selfless'. I no longer work to achieve, I work to provide. It’s an incredible feeling."
@APompliano "Truth prevails over evil."
@APompliano "Sometimes you have to be self-aware enough to fire yourself and exit stage left gracefully. It’s better for everyone."
@APompliano "Major DTC mattress companies are incredibly shady, litigious, and dangerous for freelancers to work with."
@APompliano "Invest in yourself. That’s the best investment that’s going to stick long term. Rest can wait."
@APompliano "I learned how big of a factor luck is in a persons successes/failures. All we can do is make the best decisions given the information we have, the rest is up to the universe."
@APompliano "What I learned this year: your company will almost never make it far if the attitude at the top isn’t right. If the CEO is an optimist he must to ensure his team is able to see and live the optimism."
@APompliano "Re: your tweet
I learned that people will try to take advantage of you, always charge at least 30% upfront before doing any work."
I learned that people will try to take advantage of you, always charge at least 30% upfront before doing any work."
@APompliano "My best lesson learnt in 2019 is best conveyed in this *Borrowed* quote.
Never teach a pig how to sing a song. It annoys the pig and it wastes your time."
Never teach a pig how to sing a song. It annoys the pig and it wastes your time."
@APompliano "Corporate Innovation jobs are the biggest load of crap. It’s where young talent flocks and flounders OR where older execs park themselves until the company realizes their obsolescence."
@APompliano "You can think you know someone. I mean really know someone. And you don’t."
@APompliano "Most of the current crop of young investors optimise purely for CAGR at the expense of safety and robustness to different environments, and dream of being recognised as a smart young up and comer. Investing is fear and pain, and everybody has forgotten that."
@APompliano "Outperforming from cycle trough to cycle peak, or from mid cycle to late cycle is not the same thing as performing through cycle. Everybody thinks that one inexorably leads to the other."
@APompliano "I pride myself on being highly logical, systematic and data driven. Yet all my predictions driven by data & logic have been way off while my intuitive calls have been spot on. Basically I don’t know how my own mind works."
@APompliano "Top thing learned: buying the panic is generally a good idea and index funds will largely outperform traditional investments."
@APompliano "Democracy is incredibly fragile. It can be dismantled way faster than people think and most people won't react until its too late."
@APompliano "Toxic feminity exists. Often working with women, as a woman, is worse. I feel a bit downtrodden by this but will work the balance out."
@APompliano "A toxic CTO is not as important as he says, even if his team likes him. You always better off firing poisonous people."
@APompliano "There is a runaway groupthink around ESG and climate change in the investment industry. While the science is not final, huge changes are being forced on the industry, including shaming non ESG funds for investing in perfectly legal listed stock market companies."
@APompliano "ESOP programs at most companies eliminate exceptional talent."
@APompliano "Therapy can improve your performance as a leader."
@APompliano Ok, the experiment has run its course. Thanks to everyone who participated.
Happy New Year!
Happy New Year!
