My Investment Thesis for 2026

0:00How has your investment thesis evolved over time and what is it today? >> It is unsurprisingly obvious. Um it's like somewhere it's like sometimes I'm sure some of you guys have had something that like I said four years ago or that you said or heard from somebody else four years ago and then you're like man I ended up just doing exactly the opposite of that and now I realize why that makes sense. So Warren Buffett's like, "I used to buy terrible businesses at fabulous prices versus fabulous businesses at fair prices." And fabulous businesses at fair prices is a better deal. Um, I pretty much wanted to make sure that that was true. Um, [laughter] uh, and so the first 24 months of acquisition.com, we did 24 deals in that time period, and I pretty much gave back or lost the money that I invested in all of the deals minus three. It just wasn't worth it.

0:53And then the few and it was 8020, right? Like the few the few champions that were there are great businesses and we have great relationships with the founders and they continue to keep growing and crushing it. Um, and so that was that was that piece. I'll also mention that like if you're a really good entrepreneur, it's tough because a business that with an entrepreneur who's not necessarily as good as you are, you will constantly want to jump in and be like, "God, I'll just do it."

1:18Right? On the other hand, if you have somebody who's as good or better than you, they're not going to want to give you much. And so, that's something that was I had to realize. And so, most of the really good businesses that I've invested in have been ones where it was like at a higher valuation than I wanted and I had less equity than I wanted and I had to put up all cash for the deal. And then me helping was just assumed with the fact that I would want to get a good return on my investment rather than it being like some sort of consultingish services related um deal.

1:51So we write all checks now. That's how we like that's the the TLDDR is we just write checks. >> Just a quick followup. When you say you write all checks, you mean you're just buying out the owner entirely? >> No, not always. Not always. But like we just like you got money, we got equity. That was the deal. Everything above that is me just wanting to help out of the goodness of my heart, not because there's any expectation. Very interesting.