Thread by @XavierHelgesen

Here it is! 2021 shareholder letter for Enduring Ventures Inc.

We are a long term holding company dedicated to building abundance for our employees and shareholders through ownership in diversified, cash-flowing businesses.

Full letter in the 🧵

Here's our progress to date:

2/ Most key of all was strict price discipline and creative deal structuring

/ We have a very differentiated model in the "business buying" business.

/ Private equity's weird incentives are problems for their investors and for those who sell to them.

3/ A long-term holding company's greatest advantage is its internal capital market.

/ Our arbitrage is the greatest in situations too operationally complex, small or long-term minded for private equity.

/ First family photo of our org structure on the Internet!

4/ Missionaries > Mercenaries

/ Our CEOs are evaluated on:
- Thrift
- Kindness
- Hustle
- Long Term Thinking
- Total Responsibility
- Innate Integrity

5/ We look for deals that are:

- Net Positive: Make people's lives better, more fun, and create value rather than extract it.

- Substance over Style: Low marketing budgets - ideally none.

- Mini Moats: Hard to replicate advantages - typically localized or niche-specific.

6/ We really, really ♥️🐬

/ Quite unusually, the sellers believed in Jeff Manno so much than they gave him part of their earn-out as a bonus to join as President.

/ 40% organic growth after acquisition. Pools in Phoenix have incredible product/market fit.

7/ @Kjer (former YC founder) has built the best turnaround team in the tech world.

/ @UpCounsel raised $3.8 Million at a 140x valuation increase to its acquisition price - primarily from its own customers.

8/ We then bought a software company that had 90% of its revenue coming from one customer.

/ One of the key strengths of the team is its truly globally distributed nature. There is no "outsourcing" for us.

/ We love vertical market software businesses! No profit required. :)

9/ Meet Rango Broadband - Better, Faster, Friendlier Internet.

/ These businesses have economics similar to SaaS but are priced on profit multiples.

/ We screwed up part of the transition here, and our customers had up to 4 days of downtime. That was NOT FUN.

10/ @mboute is an incredible CEO who I am lucky to call a friend.

/ Broadband is the new utility - turning capital (via CapEx & Acquisition) into long-term revenue streams.

/ $62 Billion in subsidies coming to help expand the kind of high-speed rural access we provide.

11/ Introducing Snowball Industries ❄️

/ Snowball is a joint venture rather than majority owned, and targets the creation of a large ESOP (employee ownership program)

/ We took $5 Million in equity investment in this platform from an incredible group of investors.

12/ We made a dumb mistake and succumbed to the temptation to "standardize best practices" when we should have known better.

/ We made a separate mistake, where we optimized taxes over alignment. As a result, @SievaKozinsky and I reinvested our personal Snowball shares into EV.

13/ Startup stuff!

{sounds of our shareholders grumbling that they didn't invest in a startup studio}

/ It is an a joy to start businesses alongside @Tomprice and @d_gershenson

/ Also proudly invested into @thirdweb_ . I would invest if @FurqanR opened a lemonade stand.

14/ Fin.

/ We use a "liquidity window" to provide liquidity while staying private and closely held.

/ We are opening up to a small group of new shareholders.

/ Happy Compounding!

Hat tips:

@SievaKozinsky - my amazing co-founder.
@ShaanVP - believing before we did.
@craigclemens - a big check early on.
@patashvili - deal magician.
@mballard83 - HVAC savant
@wolfejosh at Lux - for the format.
@awilkinson and @BrentBeshore - inspiration.

🙏🙏🙏

DM me if you are not already on our friends of EV list and would like to be.