Tag Archives: Investment Strategy

Kissing a Lot of Frogs: Smaller Companies Must Work to Find Investment Financing

Competitive advantages can both increase and decrease as a business gets larger.  One thing that gets easier for larger companies is attracting business investment and financing.  The chart below from John Paglia at the Pepperdine Business School demonstrates the shortage in capital and investment sources… Continue reading

You Are What You Eat (or Where You Get Your Investment)

“Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are,” said French lawyer and epicure Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin.  Similarly, tell me where you got the investment for your business and I will tell you what is in store for your business. Each… Continue reading

Business Management So You Can Surf

I love the story that the founder of Patagonia, Yvon Choinard, built Patagonia in a way that he could leave at any moment to surf.  He said that surfing was the best thing that ever happened to him because it motivated him to create systems… Continue reading

Company Culture Key to Growing A Business

Every day in a small business I know, 100,000 interactions happen among employees, customers, and external parties — the only way I know to align all of those interactions is through a strong company culture.  So, company culture is key to growing a business and… Continue reading

Long-term Investment Value the Clif Bar Way

On a plane last week, I read the book Raising the Bar by the founder of Clif Bar, Gary Erickson.  Great book — particularly good at ideas around long-term investment. Erickson wanted to manage his company in a way that was not aligned with traditional… Continue reading

Honey, I Shrunk the Definition of “Long-Term Investing”

Defining Long Term Investing Three years is “long-term investing” according to a discussion I attended last week.  The discussion was among a handful of family office investors who help manage money for Haim Saban (participated in sale of Fox Family to Walt Disney), Eric Schmidt… Continue reading

Buying a Business: Raise Money for the Search or Not?

Search Funds Last week I had a nice conversation with a mid-career person looking to buy a business.  He was contemplating using the “search fund” model to find and buy a business.  As a brief background, a search fund is a model where an entrepreneur… Continue reading

“Strategy Follows Structure” — John Bogle on Investment Funds

Investment Fund Structures “You are what you eat” is the common phrase about nutrition.  With investing, I think a corollary should be “you are where & how you get your capital”.  This is particularly true with any type of investment fund as John Bogle, the… Continue reading

Elusive Moats of Competitive Advantage — Definition by Morningstar

Moats of Competitive Advantage Investors look for “moats” or competitive advantages that create more certainty and more growth in revenue and margins.  In managing or investing in businesses, it is helpful to understand what moats other companies have been able to build and why.  This… Continue reading

Asset Sale Versus Stock Sale (Purchase & Sale Agreements – a series)

Asset Sale = LLC and S Corporation If you are a business owner considering the sale of your business, please put yourself in a position for an asset sale rather than a stock sale by holding your business in a Limited Liability Company (LLC) or… Continue reading