I sold my business to a PE firm as the “platform,” meaning they’d acquire other companies in the future and “bolt-on” to ours.
We ended up selling to the most founder-friendly, culture-is-important PE firm we could find and, to their credit, they gave us every chance to keep running the business our way, while giving resources we wouldn’t have access to.
As soon as we missed a target the screws were tightened, they began injecting “experts” to run portions of the business, and pushed out our most experienced folks throughout all levels of the business.
From there, performance fell, and the screws were tightened further.
What I’ve been impressed by: everyone at the PE firm and the people they introduce are very experienced and very smart
What’s been disappointing: no one is trying to innovate. Everyone is trying to follow a framework of what has been done before, copied ad nauseum.
The idea of doing things even remotely different from the “big players” in the space is shut down, and we essentially try to emulate them instead of leaning into what made us successful, and attractive to PE firms in the first place.
The conditions of the deal were fair, we sold >60% of the company, with a majority of the proceeds being paid in cash up front l, some tied to near term performance, some tied to longer term.
PE is very much a mixed bag. If you play their game, they’ll love you. If you’re contrarian or challenge their thinking, they don’t love it.
Ai is overstated in my opinion but to hand wave the reality of them having created something that investors were happy to value at $1T is pretty unfair
When I joined the army as an infantryman back in the early 2000s there were kids who couldn’t start basic training because they weren’t capable of doing 6 pushups. 6.
I believe at the time they were allowing 38 year olds to join for the first time which seemed crazy to me. Now that I’m in my early 40s I can’t imagine going back in
One of my friends was an elite athlete a couple of decades back(eg. won a national champion in a solo track and field event as well as a gold medal in the world championships)
He’s mentioned before how he’s always had bad teeth. He chalks it up to growing up around bad water, I assumed it was because he eats bagels and other carbohydrates almost exclusively, but maybe this is why!
I spent my childhood in a rural town but learning Spanish from various teachers from 4th grade through high school. I always did well but focused too much on the process of Spanish such as getting very good at conjugating verbs without knowing what the meant
After several years away from Spanish I picked it back up in college and began traveling and living off and on in Latin America
I remember the first times I started dreaming in Spanish, or the first time I had a screaming match with someone trying to steal money from me. I would unconsciously think of a phrase in English and constantly be trying to convert it to Spanish all day long. It was the most fluent I’ve ever felt
A few months ago I went on a trip to Central America and was worried my Spanish would have been lost after over a decade away. Turns out that quite a bit is still there
Folks regularly compliment me on my pronunciation(which is hugely important and shows that you’re trying, folks give you so much grace if you don’t know the words but are trying)
I also find that I can speak far better than I can listen. I regularly have to ask people to repeat themselves or slow down, which is frustrating to me but what can you expect after not staying sharp?
Last thing: I’ll echo another commenter who said to listen to music. My high school Spanish teacher had us listening and singing shakira. She’d print off the lyrics and we’d sing along. This was hugely valuable for pronunciation and flow. Also, old Shakira stuff is great
Nothing beats the pressure of using a language all day in a place where they don’t speak your language.
I remember meeting a backpacker from another country who spoke English but would only speak Spanish to when we traveled and would pull out her dictionary regularly and make notes in her notebook. I learned that Germans are crazy disciplined and that that discipline pays off. Her Spanish was amazing after only a few months in the country
I wish this article shared more about how this tomb was discovered. Was it buried under mountain of dirt? Under a jungle canopy no one explored? Has it been there all along at an existing ruins site but was hidden in some way? Give us details man!
I’d be open to a version of social media that is not banned and the version looks like this:
- a straight linear feed with three tabs, 1) people close to me(default), 2) brands and influencers I choose follow and 3) everything else the algorithm wants me to see(this could be curated and not a linear feed)
My ex and I have an agreement in our separation agreement that our children can’t have social media until they’re 16. This is the version of it I’d want for them, if they choose(or feel pressured) to use it
This summer I went camping and at the campground next to me was a middle manager at Amazon. I’ve been out of the workforce for about a year, so I asked him how much of an impact AI was having in his role.
He told me that he had worked to develop a tool that would replace effectively all of the middle management function that he was responsible for: gathering information from folks below him, distilling it down and reporting that to people above him.
His hope was that he would be retained to maintain the system that he built, knowing that every other manager at his level was going to be terminated.
It felt like watching someone who is about to be executed be responsible for building the gallows. He should’ve been so aware that his job was going to be the first one cut, and he was responsible for building a tool to cut his own job. But he was optimistic that the cuts wouldn’t come for him
Damn. There are some things here that resonated with me and some that don’t. I had a time of my life where I just felt like I didn’t vibe with my ex’s friends. We’d go to parties and these people would feel so shallow. Having grown up poor around a bunch of perpetually rich people made me feel different.
You also said that the world is burning, and it is to some defree. But it’s also filled with so many kind and amazing people making an impact where they are. Sure, maybe the gal serving coffee isn’t fixing climate change but she’s making the person she’s talking to that day feel special. That’s important too. Same goes down the soccer coach who’s helping kids find passion in something.
The world is full of contradictions and imperfections. It’s also full of kindness and generosity everywhere you go, if you’re looking for it. If you’re looking for ways to validate that the world is burning, your gonna find those too
Social media blows, I hate it too. I’m not entirely sure society is moving in the right direction, but I’m just an atom in the ocean. I can affect those around me and hopefully those people affect more. My hope is that my joy spreads through other people, and if it doesn’t, that’s ok too.
I’m bummed you’re hurting, and with a job and a million responsibilities it can be hard to lift your gaze to see the forest for the trees
It’s easy to find reasons to talk yourself out of action. Maybe you’ll get burned out, maybe you won’t. But if you never try you’ll never know. And you’ll definitely miss out on something special
People are willing value art with their attention more so than their wallet
So while it seems we have more arists/creators than ever, the work seems more hollow and less inspired than ever because the artistic expression is tailored for a digital audience(often) and that digital consumption art feels shallower
For example, I was watching a stand up act on Netflix last night with my family. We were rolling in laughter but today we won’t talk about the show at all. Had we gone and seen the act live it would have been a “family moment” that we carried with us
This easy come/easy go commodification of our art and entertainment means that so little lasts with us. Same goes for music(I’ll discover a new song to fall in love with tomorrow)
I’m obviously not the first to notice this, but I think there’s a bit of an inevitability around this. Barring some large societal change, the tide is pulling more and more this trend
My grandparents were children of the depression and encouraged me to invest in the vanguard 500 for as long as I could remember.
Once I joined the military and had a steady paycheck I started putting some money away each month. Fast forward twenty-something years and I’m so so so grateful to have had that influence which gives me optionally in my life.
No doubt investing with vanguard had a huge influence on their lives and I can’t imagine how many millions have been impacted.
Would the explosives in these pagers have been caught by something like TSA? I could imagine that at please *some* of the owners had to have flown with them.
I just cut out cannabis a little over two weeks ago after about two years of near-daily use.
I happened to catch a cold right around the same time and felt generally miserable. My immediate reaction was "maybe I should take a hit, then I can deal with the head cold a little better."
Before quitting I found myself thinking about getting high too much, despite being in my mid thirties with a family and a business to run. It felt like too much of a crutch.
What I had to do was to get rid of everything I had, even though it killed me to throw away a handful of pre-rolls, as long as they were around I kept finding myself in a loop of "I'll just stop tomorrow"
I'm finding that playing guitar is a little less enjoyable, I've been really lethargic(sleeping in more than normal) but also more clear-headed. My short-term memory is a bit better and I'm exercising a bit more. I'm setting more goals and knocking them off my to-do list more frequently.
I immediately dropped about 6-8 lbs(205 > 197lbs) in the first week and have leveled off. It's funny, I was hanging out with some friends last night who were partaking and am glad to see I've still got the willpower to say no.
Life has a been a bit more mundane, I'm hoping to look back at the 30 day mark to see if that changes
We ended up selling to the most founder-friendly, culture-is-important PE firm we could find and, to their credit, they gave us every chance to keep running the business our way, while giving resources we wouldn’t have access to.
As soon as we missed a target the screws were tightened, they began injecting “experts” to run portions of the business, and pushed out our most experienced folks throughout all levels of the business.
From there, performance fell, and the screws were tightened further.
What I’ve been impressed by: everyone at the PE firm and the people they introduce are very experienced and very smart
What’s been disappointing: no one is trying to innovate. Everyone is trying to follow a framework of what has been done before, copied ad nauseum.
The idea of doing things even remotely different from the “big players” in the space is shut down, and we essentially try to emulate them instead of leaning into what made us successful, and attractive to PE firms in the first place.
The conditions of the deal were fair, we sold >60% of the company, with a majority of the proceeds being paid in cash up front l, some tied to near term performance, some tied to longer term.
PE is very much a mixed bag. If you play their game, they’ll love you. If you’re contrarian or challenge their thinking, they don’t love it.