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Invisible Companies

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Re: Invisible Companies

#21

Post by WarmWash »

PaulRobinson wrote: post #3

I have thought about this a lot over the years and tried to spot these companies - many of them are the type of business that Berkshire Hathaway would love to find. Some of them are a little more visible simply because they’ve scaled and developed a moat - logistics, particularly trucking in the UK, and international cargo shipping, stand out here for me. But also social care, floristry and grocery wholesaling, weird…

>make and sell touchscreen tills/cash registers

Probably 2 or 3, all based in China, that will happily print your company logo on the machines.

Re: Invisible Companies

#22

Post by neilv »

KellyCriterion wrote: post #9
skinfaxi wrote: post #6

There are many opportunities to start the your own invisible company. I once started a small business ($33k/year) that sold exactly one product to one company for a few years. One thing the article glosses over in the Steven Ross discussion is that this guy was clearly entrepreneurial: he was able to see the gaps and find or build solutions to fill them. You can in fact build a business around solving a "simple" prob…

every large XLS-file/table in any large/mega Corp is basicly crying to get "re-invented" as a SaaS service and being sold to them (-:

Possibly, but straight anecdote...

Our startup noticed our first major-brand customer had a high-stakes B2B process depend on a spreadsheet that looked handmade and perhaps error-prone.

There was a moment of thinking This could be one of those startup pivot points, when what you thought was the incidental to your exciting technology solution, is actually the simple CRUD app/integration SaaS that customers need even more.

Then there was a moment of thinking We don't want to be the communication middleperson on that high-stakes communication, if there was ever a dispute.

Also, either it wasn't a perceived pain point of the customer, or they intended their ongoing CRM-ish conversion to address it eventually.

So we listened to the customer on what problems they (or at least the stakeholder executives' KPIs) actually wanted us to solve, and we continued to consume that spreadsheet in a manual and "zero-impedence" way, for the little bit we could use that info.

(A management consulting firm or YOLO/fly-by-night startup might do that one, though.)

Re: Invisible Companies

#24

Post by noir_lord »

npilk wrote: post #12

My impression is that these companies are less invisible than ever thanks to the massive growth in private equity since Ross' era (the 50s-80s). I keep hearing stories about pest control businesses and HVAC companies that get inundated with messages from search funds.

Indeed, a good example Private Equity is (in the UK) buying out all the small vet practices or small groups of practices.

With the expected outcome when those vampires touch anything.

Re: Invisible Companies

#26

Post by danielmarkbruce »

If you spend any time trying to find such companies you'll see that for every invisible profitable company you'll find 20 invisible unprofitable disaster companies.

Search funds have existed for a long time now, and it's hard work.

Re: Invisible Companies

#27

Post by bensyverson »

> Economists aren’t naive, so they don’t really believe these things entirely. But they assume they are mostly correct over the medium to long term.

Spoiler alert from the article: turns out economists are wrong. This will sound inflammatory, but has the field of Economics produced anything of value to society? It seems to be a social "science" based on incorrect generalizations about human psychology and studies that don't replicate. At the end of his long career, Alan Greenspan (their Michael Jordan) basically said "whoops, I was wrong that people would behave rationally."

What does humanity get from the field of economics that justifies the amount of attention and status we give economists?

Re: Invisible Companies

#28

Post by skywal_l »

bensyverson wrote: post #27

> Economists aren’t naive, so they don’t really believe these things entirely. But they assume they are mostly correct over the medium to long term. Spoiler alert from the article: turns out economists are wrong. This will sound inflammatory, but has the field of Economics produced anything of value to society? It seems to be a social "science" based on incorrect generalizations about human psychology and studies tha…

Economy is at the stage where medecine was in the 18th century. It's more of an alchemy than a science.

Re: Invisible Companies

#29

Post by PaulHoule » 

   ...and stigma could be overcome for a price
the lesson of history (Heian Japan, Wilhelmine Germany) is that people with status can control the definition of status and make it apply exclusively to themselves. It doesn't end well, but it doesn't stop people from trying.

Re: Invisible Companies

#30

Post by PaulHoule »

jyounker wrote: post #10
Animats wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to think that all those Persian carpet stores on University Avenue in Palo Alto were a way to get immigrants jobs in the US. But no. Turns out the carpet store guy had been renting upstairs office space to startups in exchange for an equity stake. That worked out very, very well for him. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/165_University_Avenue

Oriental carpet stores are interesting businesses. I always wondered how they stayed open until I met someone whose family has been in the business for several generations. Individual sales are in the thousands, so they operate more like high-end jewelry stores than a "normal" business. One sale a day is minimum 250K/year. The store itself seems to be more of just a show room. There are other sales routes too. Sellin…

I had a phase when we bought several rugs at the price point you're talking about and also found some "subprime" sources of rugs that were authentic but not so go good and much more affordable.

Then I had a house full of oriental rugs and haven't needed a new one ever since.

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