Examples: GEICO was way ahead of its time for going direct, and direct continue to have decades to run; BHE consistently rank top in customer satisfaction, holds prices, shift to renewables; Kevin Clayton "try a lot, keep what works"; Jacob Harpaz ISCAR "“important to think
outside the box, to look further, try not to think of obvious things. We’re always developing new products no been on market before like new carbide grades or new chipbreaker. Also looking for industry bottlenecks. We have developed products that were not suitable for
existing machine tools but we work closely with tool builders who adjust machine and software accordingly", “As soon as we introduce newest tooling families, another team in R&D focuses on designing tools that will compete with these latest tools”; Lubrizol "Innovate around new
products, 40% of lubricant/fuel additives sales are generated from products launched over last 5 years, Developing thermal management fluids for EV adoption that enable battery cooling/rapid recharging. Building out full suite of EV specific solutions around axle oil,
Studying culture at $BRK portfolio companies. ISCAR is an interesting one. Thread ⬇️ 1. Located in Migdal, far from hip Tel Aviv it is the second largest employer in the region. Workers are reportedly utterly devoted to the company. Iscar offers near total job security, not
2. snobbish about who it hires, taking in engineers from local schools, promote internally, rather than seeking to employ from overseas prestigious schools. >1k workers are of Arab origin out of 3.5k employees which is very high ratio of non-Jewish workers. “When a company
3. like Iscar gives an opportunity to a local resident, including a car, fancy meals and professional interest, he is willing to give his soul [in return]. People arrive at 5 AM and leave at 11 at night. They know they won’t get such an opportunity anywhere else. For the
Culture is a fascinating topic to study and where better to start than $nflx. No rules rules is a great book, some thoughts upfront and I will share more in future threads.⬇️ 1. Many have looked at netflix culture deck and some firms have tried emulating. But few have done so
2. Successfully because it is often easier to copy the form than substance. Take 360 feedback for example, many firms adopt it, but it is hardly as useful as the transparent feedback culture NFLX developed. You can take each of NFLX's policy and apply to your company, but not
3. understanding the nuance and issues of the application could lead to very unsatisfactory results. For example, companies adopting the no vacation policy without leader modelling behavior can find that it leads to "no vacation" and burnt out employees. without truly believing
Founder led firms with vision and purpose have a super power others don't. Here's what Dee Hock of Visa wrote:
1. Healthy organizations are a mental concept of relationship to which people are drawn by hope, vision, values, and meaning, along with liberty to cooperatively
2. pursue them. Healthy organizations educe behavior. Educed behavior is inherently constructive. Unhealthy organizations are no less a mental concept of relationship, but one to which people are compelled by accident of birth, necessity, or force. Unhealthy organizations compel
3. behavior. Compelled behavior is inherently destructive. Since the strength and reality of every organization lies in the sense of community of the people who have been attracted to it, its success has enormously more to do with clarity of a shared purpose, common principles,
A thread on price 1. I've found the rule of not allowing people to say a company is cheap/expensive based on multiples is useful in removing our bias in conflating valuation with multiples. It is key that we must remain agnostic about multiples because multiples don't determine
2. if something is cheap or expensive. It is expected future cash flow generated discounted to the present that determines cheap/expensive. So something is not expensive just because it has 100x pe. Something is expensive when it's expected future cashflow generation is
3. going to be below what 100x pe is implying. I'm sure most of you know that already, but the latent bias built from the graham days PB quantitative investment style is hard to rid. The rule helps.
Similarly, the historical price movement does not determine cheap vs expensive
So I've tried to kill $par over the last couple weeks but haven't succeeded. There is something abt a potential outsider CEO in Savneet tt keep me coming back. Still some concerns below. Keen to hear your thoughts @GavinSBaker@LSValue@web_prolific
1. TAM smaller than marketed? 300k QSR, but pizza segment seem to require custom solutions, bigger logos run their own customs aka Subway, true TAM prob closer to 200k? An expert suggested 100k 2. Yes they can go down market, but SMB and enterprise selling is pretty different..
they will need to invest in a much bigger sales force vs. likes of Toast that already has a big sales force with strong mindshare in the SMB segment 3. Yes they can cross-sell new modules, but again enterprise prefer to take best-in-class solutions. SMB players making money by
1. I'm so impressed by the collison brothers that I think it makes sense to track the company ahead of ipo. Will share more as I learn in this thread. The first on difference vs adyen.
2. "Stripe seems interested in everything but the payment processing component. Adyen is solely focused on the payment processing experience. Stripe talks a lot about “growing the GDP of the internet” and is focused on offering a broad suite of services to wrap around the core
3. payment experience. Stripe Atlas is a great example of how they extend well beyond payments in terms of working with new businesses. When Stripe talks about the future with prospective customers, they touch upon all of the activities beyond the actual processing that they're