61–70 of 72 posts
Here is the entire article compressed from 21k characters to 176: It’s easier to get away with large margins and not spawn competitors if nobody scrutinizes you, and it’s easier not to get scrutinized if you are small or the domain is boring. Not a knock on the article. It’s nice to double-click on a concept and explore it with examples and from many angles. But for me, it would have been easier to start with that fr…
There's a whole genre of YouTube cartoon videos about this. Dry cleaners.[1] Parking lots.[2] 7 boring businesses.[3] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_B0cASirKyE [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=La4SAUvmKz4 [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebaiF97mCtM&pp=ugUEEgJlbg%3D...
If only all of these weren't AI slop :(
Here is the entire article compressed from 21k characters to 176: It’s easier to get away with large margins and not spawn competitors if nobody scrutinizes you, and it’s easier not to get scrutinized if you are small or the domain is boring. Not a knock on the article. It’s nice to double-click on a concept and explore it with examples and from many angles. But for me, it would have been easier to start with that fr…
I cofounded a company that ultimately got rolled up (Matasano, into NCC Group US) and think this is not a really good summary of the article. Rollup strategy is interesting!
I reread listened to the article now and looked up some research due to the things that bugged me.
The summary I made is what’s uniquely interesting about such firms. But from a rollup perspective it’s just one of potential mechanism for a firm to be on the cheap. And even if you think that is a usefull angle on the topic, it’s still covering just a the subset of such firms that are invisible AND has good margins AND the owner is willing to sell on the cheap due to ignorance of lack of buyers so they can’t get good offerings.
I could have expanded the summary with: “ and because nobody’s bidding, they’re cheap to buy up and consolidate, which is where rollups make their money.“
The problem with that is that it a claim, and it’s at best not well founded and maybe even wrong. There are many failures in the same industries the article celebrates. Loewen Group rolled up funeral homes and went bankrupt in 1999, the 1990s physician-practice rollups collapsed, Waste Management itself restated years of earnings in 1998 in one of the largest accounting scandals of its era. None of that is in the article.
And many of the article’s examples (marina software, niche aircraft parts) are markets too small to support a second firm at efficient scale. If so, nobody enters not because they didn’t look but because they looked and correctly declined.
So yea, the article is a bit scatterbrained and much more speculative than it pretends.
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
> That worked out very, very well for him Amazing. [The Amidi family through] its various holdings and brands, currently owns and manages more than 1 million square feet of real estate space along with assets under management exceeding $2 billion. https://amidigroup.com/about-amidi-group / https://archive.vn/0LEOp
This guy was really good at picking winners.
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.
Usually I find out by noticing symptoms of worsening quality, costs increasing more than I might expect, ramp up in aggressive cross selling of services and subscriptions, shifting to call services that are clearly not local and know nothing of our area, etc.
In some cases I'll get an employee that knows the situation and let's spill the PE sale and then I need to find a new service provider.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
All of those are clearly AI-generated. You shouldn’t trust any “edutainment” videos made that way, chances are there has been zero fact-checking and that the creator hasn’t even watched the result of their slop. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Gnrp_caPvo
This is a great topic. Lets say for a second the information is factual, then are these AI videos good? Sometimes I see these AI videos that tackle more obscure topics that are still interesting. These topics may have been monetarily prohibitive to do. Maybe too risky or getting all the animation and content too costly for the payout. But now with AI, all the data can be easily gathered. Now lets talk about factualit…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I recall going to a carpet/tapestry shop in Turkey where, as we enjoyed the ever-present sales-pitch tea, the owner showed us his wares. After the 5 grand mark, he just stopped listing prices. For the final assortment, he brought out some exquisite silk tapestries about the size of welcome mats. He joking clarified that these were tapestries, to be hung on walls. If you bought one without having a wall to hang one on…
My family is Persian and I grew up in Turkey. You definitely develop an appreciation for carpets, and it's sooooooo heartbreaking to see people use art as an entryway rug, simply because they don't know :(
If you own or work for an invisible company, upvote this comment
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
> That worked out very, very well for him Amazing. [The Amidi family through] its various holdings and brands, currently owns and manages more than 1 million square feet of real estate space along with assets under management exceeding $2 billion. https://amidigroup.com/about-amidi-group / https://archive.vn/0LEOp
> Rahim co-founded the Amidi Group in 1980, a conglomerate of privately-held business enterprises consisting of several domestic and international entities with significant manufacturing, distribution, trading, retail, and real estate holdings