ZIC

Don't mind me, I'm just a spectator.

[ZIC @Z_ICC]

@sweatystartup Bro, are you like the Cramer of real estate?

[ZIC @Z_ICC]

@yannaarose_ Arm full of tattoos and you look stiff. They’ll pass on you almost every time…

[Just Matt. @obatunse]

This chapter discusses how college-educated Black males in the workforce are essentially genocide survivors among their peers. There is so much institutional investment in preventing Black males from becoming leaders in their communities and society, generally.

[Chris | Venture X Media @thecoachchris_]

Stuff like this is impossible to think about when I'm in some of the rooms I'm in now, working in venture capital, being around millions of dollars, high-level professionals, and a lot of opportunity. I can't help but think about all the guys I grew up with, even some of my brothers, who quite literally are not alive at this point. It's surreal, bro.

[ZIC @Z_ICC]

@LoZabransky Look at those calluses. I didn’t know you were a gym broette!

[ZIC @Z_ICC]

@mitchellcmorris And then they bitch and moan about the price and then they bitch and moan about the service staff and then they bitch and moan about how long it took for them to make the order

[Rebecca Driscoll, CPA @RDriscollCPA]

"Afraid they'll leave" isn't a pricing strategy. We need to price for the firm we want, not the fear we have.

[ZIC @Z_ICC]

@ROLCapital @institLPGP @ebitdaddy90 “ Hey you analyst, review all the meta-data and build me a crystal ball in Excel” says the ass hat boss

[ZIC @Z_ICC]

@ROLCapital @institLPGP @ebitdaddy90 This is a non-valued add almost busy work like idiotic task. What the flying fuck would a decision-maker do with this data? This seems like a dumb person‘s take on what a smart person would do.

[Daave “3 and 30” Tepper @institLPGP]

@TheBubbleForum @ebitdaddy90 whining and thinking are different? the delta is grit

[ZIC @Z_ICC]

@cordes_tax It’s not easy out there to just jump to another tax Bro. story of the story on this app about people turning away prospects

[ZIC @Z_ICC]

This. Absolutely this.

[Fixed Income Guy (top 0.1% on bloomberg) @FICMBondTrader]

I'll explain why state school kids always outperform Ivy kids:

99% of Ivy kids/applications I see:
-never worked a job pre-18
-they do not NEED the money. Rich parents/ trust fund to bail them out.
-they have optionality for job outlook, either through parents paid pedigree, their social circle, or relatives

1% state school kid:
-NEEDs the money, no trust fund, no back up
-has ZERO optionality, its this job or the oil rig
-knows what work is, most have been working since age of 14 to put food on the table
-has more to lose. They fail? Back to Ohio with you! No bailout.

Both are equally dumb when they come in, no college teaches niche high level finance.

Starving dogs always work harder

[Fixed Income Guy (top 0.1% on bloomberg) @FICMBondTrader]

I'll explain why state school kids always outperform Ivy kids:

99% of Ivy kids/applications I see:
-never worked a job pre-18
-they do not NEED the money. Rich parents/ trust fund to bail them out.
-they have optionality for job outlook, either through parents paid pedigree, their social circle, or relatives

1% state school kid:
-NEEDs the money, no trust fund, no back up
-has ZERO optionality, its this job or the oil rig
-knows what work is, most have been working since age of 14 to put food on the table
-has more to lose. They fail? Back to Ohio with you! No bailout.

Both are equally dumb when they come in, no college teaches niche high level finance.

Starving dogs always work harder

[ZIC @Z_ICC]

@YREvxde @yegormethod Mostly second hand watches…

[ZIC @Z_ICC]

@skylarromines @Aella_Girl Skylar, aren’t you an unwed single mom? It seems like you did it for way less… why 50 million versus 5 million?

[Murray Hill Guy @MurrayHillGuy1]

Sometimes I wish I lived in the south… is it that easy?

[Steve Wiesner @SteveWiesnerSMB]

Ah, the PE is bad vs. PE does no wrong debate. Surprised I'm late to this one.

I started covering PE firms when there were SIXTEEN with more than $1 bn of AUM. I also spent some years working directly in middle market private equity, and saw the way it worked from the inside as well.

To say "All PE bad!!!" is beyond ridiculous. It's now a multi-trillion-dollar asset class because an unfathomable amount of value has been created over the decades. And much of that value has accrued to pension funds, endowments, universities, and the retirement funds of people who work and live on Main Street. PE has saved companies, grown companies, enabled new products, services, and therefore jobs.

Now, on the flip side, "PE only makes money when they make a company more valuable" is demonstrably not accurate. The history of the industry is full of dividend recaps that moved money to LPs / partners but ultimately led to the business blowing up (with everything bad that entailed). That's just a fact.

On multiple arbitrage, when I was running buy-side models back in the day we would get yelled at - appropriately - if we baked in ANY multiple arbitrage to the exit. If the deal didn't work w/o multiple expansion, you wouldn't do it. I don't disagree with John - build a better business, get a better multiple - but over the long run macro has a huge impact on where multiples settle at any given point in time. That's out of our control. Plenty of mediocre deals with modest improvement in the underlying business still ended up doing well because the market (and multiples) continued to go up and to the right. Bain, McKinsey, etc. have always tried to quantify how much of overall returns has been driven by mult expansion. I don't know how accurate their numbers are, but it's certainly had a meaningfully positive impact (in the public markets as well, of course).

In terms of time horizon, I'm not sure I fully see where @HighyieldHarry is going with that one: "There’s an inherent mismatch where medium term profit maximization results in things that are actually bad for the consumer experience and ultimately the business long term." You could make the argument that ANY profit maximization can lead to the exact same result independent of time horizon - and that applies to PE, pubcos, or founder-backed businesses. I'm a small business owner, and I'm always thinking about short-term profit - because I have to. I, and most business owners regardless of size, don't really have the luxury of thinking about 20 year time horizons. We are constantly striking a balance between profitability and customer experience, and I think that applies to all businesses - large, small, public, private, PE-owned (VC-backed may be an exception and worthy of another discussion). I do get the point that a PE firm who's long-in-the-tooth on a deal is incentivized to rein in / defer spending to goose EBITDA and therefore EV - that of course happens. But cut those costs / defer that spend too aggressively, and any new buyer will see right through it and factor those dollars into their offer.

I think we can appropriately see both sides here. PE is not evil and it has added tremendous value. PE has also caused a lot of damage over the years - bad decisions, bad capital structures, bad outcomes that have negatively / severely impacted employees, lenders, investors, and other stakeholders. When trillions of dollars have been invested, of course there will be a very substantial number of deals gone bad. These deals get a ton of coverage and cause real pain to those involved - deservedly so.

Like everything else on Twitter, the world wants this to be binary. Good v bad, and no in-between. Lots of people have gotten rich from PE - including employees - and plenty have been wiped out.

I didn't enjoy my time in the industry at all - for lots of different reasons - and I'm very happy to have turned the page to running my own business. I'm not a blind advocate of PE, by any means.

But I'm also willing to give credit where credit is due, and there are many brilliant PE folks who are completely dedicated to building great businesses - and when they do, it benefits us all.

There's a reason the industry has gone from a few handfuls of billions of AUM to trillions today.

[Chris Pate @patefortworth]

Lost in the “how PE adds value” convo is that the PE industry isn’t really about investing. It’s the primarily business of raising and deploying capital for a fee.

Would guess that ~50% of PE principals are not good investors. 10+ yrs of ZIRP covered that up. Now the shakeout…