Professionally, I focus on creating social benefit startups. In my Saturday morning emails I share what I’m learning and thinking. Topics range from better living and parenting to business and philosophy.
Software Eats Buyout: Software is famously eating the world. Now software is upgrading corporate buyout. Something is going on when a payment processing software company Metropolis buys one of its biggest customers SP Plus for $1.5Bil and now owns parking garages. Slow VC calls it a “growth buyout” and argues it is a new playbook distinct from rollups or traditional LBOs. If your software truly makes a bottom line impact for customers, perhaps the best way to capture that value is to own the customer - particularly in industries that are slow to adopt new technologies. I’m wondering if there is precedent from earlier technological waves? (If you’re making a list of “new” tech business patterns, add growth buyout to Silicon Valley Small Business.)
PadSplit. I recently told a friend that the paths to cheaper housing are regulation reform, construction robots and/or increased immigration. I should have mentioned that sharing existing houses could play a role, too. But does that require regulation change to scale? For example, I’m a small investor in PadSplit which enables existing houses to be rented by the room by the week. When I was considering the investment, I wasn’t sure if renting rooms like this was legal in all jurisdictions. Then I remembered what a more experienced investor once told me about regulatory risk. Is the company on the side of beauty and truth? Then take the risk and invest. (While it may sound like a Baz Luhrmann movie quote, he was serious.) Now Nicholas Kristof agrees that the PadSplit model should be part of the solution. “All this is a reminder that we used to have solutions to homelessness — like S.R.O.s — that we mostly eliminated half a century ago. This was a catastrophe of good intentions: We aimed to improve housing and neighborhoods and instead we got people sleeping in cars and on sidewalks.” What do you think?
Effortless Stoicism. Should you seek happiness and embrace joy where you can find it? Or should you seek equanimity regardless of your circumstances. I’ve read other stoic philosophy but James Pierce offers a new (to me) blend of Stoicism and Buddist insight on suffering. Do you agree with these quotes?
“To be stoic is not to be emotionless, but to remain unaffected by your emotions”
“Effortless stoicism will come when you have dismantled everything in your mind that produces reactions. Your reactions come from the way you understand the world. Change your understanding, and the reactions will change of their own accord. A simple, but powerful, heuristic: illusions result in emotion, truth results in equanimity. Rid yourself of illusions, and you will rid yourself of all unwanted emotions.“
“By allowing the events of your life to make you happy, you give them the power to make you miserable as well. “
Until next time,
Miles