I do not build financial models. I use the product. If I would use it every day, and I think millions of others would too, I invest.
I invest in products I use. If I am ordering it, wearing it, or recommending it to my friends, I want to own a piece of it.
We like things where there's a lot of change and with change there's a lot of complexity, and with complexity there's an opportunity to create a dollar for fifty cents.
You've got to be able to buy it. Either you buy it through the debt, where you buy it by buying debt at a discount, or you buy it bilaterally in a process without a process.
We are in the business of trying to buy businesses at a good price. And then we are in the business of trying to improve them, sometimes even transform them operationally.
We either drive the process with a seat on the committee or exit the investment.
I wanna go do what Bain Capital, and KKR, and Blackstone did 20 years ago. Not what they're doing now, I don't like what they're doing now. I want to do what they used to do, and just copy it, because it worked.
Investment is a line, not a point. And however good is a company at the first meeting, we like to track it.
We believe in backing companies with more conviction. We would like to co-invest and bring value-add via people.
We get a lot of companies come say 'this worked in China, the US—this will work in India.' That playbook is over.
We do not invest in business plans. We invest in people.
A lot of the biggest apps looked like toys or fads when we first funded them.
We really care about founder-market fit, not just product-market fit. We care about having founders who feel for what they're building.
We are a disciplined investor, not a very prolific one. We don't do deals every week. We tend to spend time working with entrepreneurs, figuring out what issue they're trying to address and how we can help them.
If you have patentable tech, it's easier to succeed. Otherwise it's just first-mover advantage.
If we have to be too hands-on, it means we screwed up on the investment, and we shouldn't have invested.