Trident Capital

[Trident Capital @Trident_Capital]

@MadsenSouth @hfreflection Talk to current / former analysts to get their perspective on the PM, best way to assess team /culture is to ask the team members

[HF Reflections @hfreflection]

Global $450M small cap L/S, generalist firm hiring an analyst, will report to PM & Senior Analyst. Ideal candidate has <4yrs work experience, VIC member or substack author, demonstrated passion for public markets, curious, eager to learn. Please send to [email protected]

[Trident Capital @Trident_Capital]

@PsycheWizard My buddy works out every day and eats a lot of fruits and vegetables - and he never gets sick. I think that might be it.

[Trident Capital @Trident_Capital]

@BoringBiz_ Yes, but some other kid who does love doing what you don’t is going to kick your butt, get promoted quicker, and may leave you dissatisfied thinking about why you spent so much time doing something you don’t love, only to not get rewarded as expected.

[Trident Capital @Trident_Capital]

@SahilBloom Yes, but also, don’t let the small stuff stress you / overwhelm you - we’re all just particles floating in the universe

[Trident Capital @Trident_Capital]

@BoringBiz_ The moment my VP asked me to basically fudge some numbers / ask the consultants to increase TAM estimate so the biz was an easier sell to our internal IC… I Left MF PE to work at a small HF where AUM growth isn’t priority, good work / being right is.

[Trident Capital @Trident_Capital]

@MikeFritzell @Biohazard3737 Diet? Interesting. I don’t think the Indian diet is that healthy for example, but certainly upbringing matters

[Jared Sleeper @JaredSleeper]

I spent the day trying new AI-powered productivity tools to try to expand beyond ChatGPT...

The results were disappointing.

Instead, I learned a lot about the current limitations of AI. My big takeaway is that intelligence is not enough, and models getting smarter won't help all that much. The models are already smart enough to be game-changing- but they constantly suffer from a lack of access to data and context that is out of their reach, and it isn't necessarily clear how that will be solved anytime soon or that it can be solved.

Take a pretty typical aspect of VC work- finding and getting connected to exciting startups. For one, the context to attack this problem is spread across various apps- Crunchbase, Pitchbook, LinkedIn Affinity, my personal CRM, Slack, Email, etc. Behind every outbound email is a process that cuts across all of those- has a colleague reached out before? Is the startup a fit for a thesis I've been working on, etc. etc. Unless all of those vendors agree to allow API/bot access to LLMs, it's virtually impossible to replicate even part of the workflow.

Fortunately (for humans, at least), the problem extends well beyond that, because a massive share of the context is in my head (and the heads of others)! I'm probably on the bleeding edge of writing my thoughts down- I journal every day in Roam Research, I have a personal CRM, etc.- but even if all of those were stitched together, there are terabytes of critical data missing that matter for almost any actual problem:

Everything I've learned about investing through the years, which of my LinkedIn connections are actual friends, whether a person who can make an intro for me owes me a favor, whether I did work on a similar company five years ago at another employer- all of this stuff really matters to doing this (relatively simple) job well.

GPT-5 isn't going to fix this, no matter how good it is.
Companies like Glean et al are probably the best hope- maniacally attacking problems domain by domain and making sure as much relevant prop data as possible is fed into the LLM- I expect some really fascinating ones will emerge, although not without conflict with the data owners.

That said, the nature of how human institutions/society works means that (for now, at least) so much of the critical context is hidden in the minds of users and others. Until AIs learn how to access it at scale, there will be serious limitations on them getting shit done. In the meantime, companies and people with entrenched cultures of documentation should have a big advantage.

[Trident Capital @Trident_Capital]

@equities_in_atx @jonrice80 @SeaTurtleCap1 Looking forward to reading the proxy

[Trident Capital @Trident_Capital]

@jonrice80 @equities_in_atx @SeaTurtleCap1 Classic SilverLake. 3.6x ARR is a low-ball offer

[Trident Capital @Trident_Capital]

@equities_in_atx @jonrice80 @SeaTurtleCap1 Agreed re: $ZUO. Eventual dual class collapse means this thing should sell at some point (either now or post collapse). Will be interesting to see what Scalar Gauge and/or Silverlake push for here.

[Trident Capital @Trident_Capital]

@27XVII $DRVN has a solid in-house procurement business for its franchisees (and of course, Take 5 oil change, but that’s not as hidden)

[Finding Compounders @F_Compounders]

Do They Eat at Home

Guides to Choosing a Money Manager

By Seth Klarman

[Trident Capital @Trident_Capital]

Agreed - one of the most humorous things from my time in PE was seeing decks where, if you look out 5 years, every single company was projected to be one of the best companies of all time (high margins + high growth). No appreciation for normal distribution, expected everything to be a right-tail outcome.

[Trident Capital @Trident_Capital]

@27XVII How did you get comfortable with the retention profile here? 91% NRR seems pretty horrific - any sense of what GDR is?

[Trident Capital @Trident_Capital]

Does anyone know how many members Value Investors Club has? Also what do you think VIC could charge members annually for full access to the portal? I’m just fascinated by how much value is exchanged on VIC. I wonder what VIC could sell for…

[Trident Capital @Trident_Capital]

@Restructuring__ I agree with this take. It all comes down to incentives. PE principals/directors get comp’d / promoted by getting deals done, so they try to push for as many as possible. In publics, you see your results every day / generally see things play out quicker (right or wrong).

[Trident Capital @Trident_Capital]

@rich_toad Are you planning to publish a similar thread on the benefits of joining a startup fund? Not sure why so one-sided. Not mentioned: fun of working for a startup, direct mentorship/access to PM (and often LPs), exposure to all aspects of building a fund, more upside over time, etc.

[Trident Capital @Trident_Capital]

@holistic_pm @carrynointerest By negative price, do you mean the LP paid you to take the PE investment off their books? Not sure what you mean