Why it works.

The evidence for our approach keeps growing, but we expect our views to stay unconventional. Any tactic loses its edge once it's widely adopted, so we have to keep replacing ours. By design, we'll always be out of step with the industry.

We accept that because we believe that over the long term, this is the most effective way to do business. We also believe that it's Right, according to our Christian principles.

If we succeed, let it be evidence not of luck, but of sound business principles and God's providence. If we don't, maybe there's a lesson in hubris.

Our approach.

E-commerce works because brands that sell direct don't give away margin to retailers, so they can spend far more on advertising. But most businesses get stuck squeezing more out of each advertising dollar. Meanwhile, their cost base keeps the break-even return high. They should focus on cost efficiency instead, so they can grow profitably even at average returns.

We make full use of this. We replace large parts of your opex (marketing, finance, tech) at a fraction of the cost. Every dollar we save lowers the bar for profitability, and a lower bar means you can spend more on advertising. This is a perfect example of the Berkshirean principle of stepping over one-foot hurdles and leaving the seven-footers to the competition.

That doesn't mean we never try hard. It means we're comfortable keeping many things at a minimum standard, because we know the next dollar is better spent elsewhere. This is further compounded by the fact that using AI it's extremely cheap to achieve a minimum acceptable standard. We take liberal advantage of this fact.

Because we're all owners ourselves, we have no sentimental attachment to any one part of the business. There are no finance guys believing the purpose of the company is to close the books quickly, and no developers thinking beautiful code holds intrinsic value. The goal is building valuable companies, nothing else. We're pragmatic about it.

Our multi-disciplinary backgrounds and lack of sentimentality also help once a specific tactic loses effectiveness and needs to be fully replaced. We're not a firm that does X and has to make ever bolder claims about X while its real effectiveness fades for structural reasons. (We're looking at you, "Print Is Not Dead.")

Inherent to our approach is taking resource allocation extremely seriously: a dollar should be spent where it has the best marginal return. That makes for very boring plans: double down on what works. Long-term owners who understand what uninterrupted compounding does for returns like us for it. Most people don't want to work this way, so most companies don't want to work with us.

Our approach is also built on a small team that can deploy large amounts of capital. Even if we wanted a big team, we're very particular about everyone sharing the same values. And we have no interest in managing big teams.

We want to do great work with great companies. Ultimately, we want long-term ownership in the companies we work with.