Timing Matters
findthemoat I re-watched this short TED presentation given by Bill Gross (not the fixed income guy, but the Venture Capitalist): Fitting neatly into this, Sequoia Capital’s biggest question for entrepreneurs is…
Micro disruptions
A key benefit of being the co-owner of an operating business is that sometimes you get very interesting investing insights from the coal face. The service my company provides is…
Shorting the institutional imperative
The last couple of months have seen a number of spectacular share price collapses on the ASX involving recently listed companies. Prior to this, almost all of these companies (and…
Chinese Billionaires and Rags-to-Riches Stories
This was a really good article about Chinese billionaires and their rags-to-riches stories: Living the Chinese dream The article concludes with: But one thing seems certain. Like many of history’s…
Adding up MYOB’s numbers (Part 2 of 2)
In this post, we’ll look at MYOB’s competitive landscape to ascertain what its future may look like. MYOB’s core SME offering Account Right Live is a hybrid “desktop + cloud”…
Adding up MYOB’s numbers (Part 1 of 2)
MYOB was taken private by Archer Capital and Harbourvest Partners for AUD$487m in October 2008. It was then on-sold to Bain Capital for AUD$1.2bn in August 2011 and re-listed on…
Rent Seeking Vs. Moat Creation
I’m currently reading How Asia Works by James Studwell – a sequel of sorts to Asian Godfathers (another brilliant book). It was listed by Bill Gates as one of his…
Charlie Munger on identifying moats
At the Daily Journal Corporation shareholder meeting, Charlie Munger was asked this question – “What is the least talked about or most misunderstood moat?” Charlie’s response was: “You basically want…
Following the new money
I was going through the BRW Young Rich List from 2014. It’s very useful as a rough proxy as to how new money is made these days versus old money…
The narrative fallacy in how to be successful
I’ve been doing a LOT of reading over the past 18 months and I have to say, binge consuming business biographies really gets you to thinking about them critically (here’s…