OPERATIONS

Don't just invest in businesses. Learn to operate them. The best investors understand what it takes to actually run something.

Deliver a car to someone's driveway in perfect condition with no surprises. That's it. That's the whole business. Everything else is logistics.

We own our trucks. We own our warehouses. We employ our own drivers. Everyone told us to use third-party logistics. We said no. Control the experience or don't bother.

Every item on StockX is authenticated. Every single one. We built authentication centers around the world. Counterfeits are the cancer of resale. We're the chemotherapy.

We built the entire infrastructure from scratch — the photography, the pricing algorithms, the warehouses. Nobody else wanted to do the hard, unglamorous work.

Every company we buy, the first thing we do is look at the P&L and ask: where is the waste? Software companies are shockingly wasteful before PE ownership.

The value in software is not in the code. It is in the operating model you build around the code.

Vista Consulting Group is our secret weapon. We take best practices from 80 portfolio companies and deploy them across all of them. Everyone gets better.

We have done 450 carve-outs. The pattern is always the same: the parent company underinvested, the employees are demoralized, and the product is actually good. Fix the first two and the third takes care of itself.

The supply chain is not glamorous but it is the reason your iPhone arrives on time, works perfectly, and costs what it costs. Operations is the invisible moat.

Every restaurant is a small business. You can own 600 of them, but each one has to work on its own.

We don't buy companies to flip them. We buy them to fix them.

Operational improvement is more sustainable than financial engineering.

Delivery drivers are the backbone of our business. We're investing in their wellbeing because it's right and because it's smart.

The concept is simple: access over ownership. The execution is dry cleaning 200,000 items per week.

The best fund managers are builders first and investors second.

The leveraged buyout is not about leverage. It's about operational improvement.

Financial engineering cannot substitute for operational excellence. I learned that the hard way.

Operational experience at a company like Stripe provides pattern recognition that pure financial investors can't match.

20,000 products delivered next day across India. That's not an app — that's supply chain mastery.

The last mile is the hardest mile. Anyone can build an app. Building the logistics to get food from point A to point B in 30 minutes — that's the real product.

Every carve-out is a turnaround in disguise. The parent company starved it. We feed it.

I delivered food on my bicycle for eight months. If you don't understand your own product at the ground level, you will fail.

We do not buy companies to collect them. We buy them to make them the best-run companies in their industry.

A franchise is not just a brand. It is a system, and the system is what you are really buying. If you maintain the system with discipline, the brand grows. If you deviate from it, you destroy what you paid for.

I walk the floors of every operation. I know the cost per tonne in every mine. You cannot run a commodity business from a boardroom.

You cannot run a business in emerging markets from a distance. You have to be there, understand the culture, and earn trust over years.

Discovery has always punched above its weight. We do more with less than anyone in this industry.

We focus on established software companies with loyal customers and strong switching costs — businesses that can be improved operationally rather than reinvented from scratch.

Speed and service. If you nail those two things in the mortgage industry, everything else follows. Brokers do not care about your brand — they care about how fast you can close.

Bureaucracy is the enemy of innovation. Every layer of management you add is a speed bump on the road to the customer.

Operations isn't just a support function. It's how you turn a good idea into something that actually survives contact with the world.

Zero-based budgeting is not about being cheap. It is about being intentional with every dollar the company spends.

We look for businesses with strong brands that are not operating at their full potential. Then we try to unlock that potential.

You cannot run a pharmacy from a spreadsheet. You run it with people. The numbers follow the people.

Build the factory before you chase the order.

I've learned this about myself, that I need things to be more efficient. It doesn't matter where I am or what I'm looking at, I have to analyze the best way, the most efficient plan forward.