SPAC Dynamics: An interesting turn in SPACs are those SPACs being raised by Venture Funds, Growth Funds or Crossover funds in the hopes of working with an existing portfolio company.
There are a lot of interesting turns that may play out here:
In some private company boards, politics can be intense with "Alpha" Directors and "Beta" Directors.
Also is the issue that the earliest investors are oftentimes the largest owners versus later stage investors who usually own less but have invested a lot more capital
Success of the startup typically amplifies the dynamics of both of these trends.
Now consider when one of the Directors approaches the CEO and the rest of the board with a SPAC:
1. Is it the Alpha Director or one of the other Beta Directors? How will that drive reactions?
2. How will the rest of the board react to Sponsor economics benefitting an existing investor over themselves?
3. What happens if two Directors have a SPAC?
4. What if a PIPE or Sponsor economics flips ownership dynamics amongst existing Directors?
Over time, the easiest way to navigate these issues may be to have a stand-down agreement amongst existing investors that says that the IPO should be taken by a new partner vs someone already on the cap table.
Otherwise, these issues will likely get messy over the coming years.
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Running a company in 2020 is hard. It's no longer just about employees and shareholders. It's now also about stakeholders of which there are many:
Regulators, employees, partners, existing users
But the most important, imo, are mass market potential new users (MMPNU).
MMPNUs are critical because they are the only way of achieving a massive outcome. You can build a very good/big company without MMPNUs, but not necessarily world-changing.
If you want to maximize MMPNU demand, you need to understand their psychology.
MMPNUs are not picking features and functionality - that's what early adopters do.
MMPNUs are initially triggered by virality but their choices are cemented by a sensation that the product is aligned with who they are.
When it is, they adopt. When it's not, they churn.
Investing 101: Risk management is poorly understood and even more poorly applied.
Here’s a simple framework I use to manage risk.
Imagine a barbell - weights at either end with a thin bar in the middle. In my opinion, risk is best managed in this way.
For me, early stage risk is at one end of the barbell and liquid, public market risk is at the other. In the middle are growth rounds, converts, PIPEs etc. ie anything that isn’t the other two.
For every $100, I divide it into a 45/10/45 allocation in the barbell.
Now here is the hard part...in the early stage bucket, I divide the $45 into 10 years because that’s how long it takes for an early stage deal to get liquid. I also need to hold back 1/3 for reserves (investing your pro rata in future rounds).
Investing 101: Successful investing is all about behavior and psychology.
You can have the best model or analysis in the world but if you panic, you lose.
Said differently, everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.
Let's begin...
The most important thing you can do to maximize the odds of success is figure out what, if any, behavioral advantages you have or can create for yourself.
What rules can you live by that will prevent you from doing something stupid especially when everyone is losing their mind?
Here are my behavioral decisions:
1. I don't trade stocks. I buy companies.
Buying a company is like hiring a great CEO to work for you and your family. You can rest well knowing that Bezos, Musk etc. are on the job. That's not true for all CEOs so decide accordingly.
When people have periods of peak nostalgia, it’s often because things around them are changing really fast.
The mind subconsciously uses “remembering oldness” to anchor themselves. It helps to be less insecure and adjust to “newness”.
So what?
Well, if you think honestly about yourself, you’ve probably done it, your friends and colleagues do it. We all do it because it’s a completely normal coping strategy.
And some of us do it much more than others because it applies not just to life but also business and markets.
I’ve made a habit of observing which of my friends, colleagues, Twitter people I follow have a sensitivity to nostalgia as they process information.
I pay close attention to them and have learned a lot in these moments - all through their communication.
Some people scratch their heads when they see valuations of stocks justified by 2024E or 2025E numbers. Their instinctive reaction is to be dismissive but that’s lazy thinking.
Here’s a secret hiding in plain sight...
Everything in the public markets are valued against a “risk free rate”. This risk-free rate is the safest way to make money and is what the government pays you via US bonds or other securities that have “zero default risk”. This is in quotes for a reason...
When you buy something (a stock, a bond, a house) you are implicitly or explicitly deciding to sign up for the return that it will give you vs the risk free rate which you could otherwise get.