We underwrite one thesis, not three
Every investment committee memo opens with a single sentence describing how the company is worth more in six years. If it takes three sentences, we have not understood it yet, and the deal does not get funded.
Strategy
One thesis, two board seats, six to eight years.
This page is the whole of our approach. It is short on purpose — a strategy that takes twelve pages to explain is usually a strategy that has been reverse-engineered from whatever the firm happened to buy.
The operating plan is written before the wire
A hundred-day plan, agreed with management, signed before completion. It names who owns each line and what happens if a line slips two quarters. It is boring and it is why our worst outcomes are mediocre rather than fatal.
Two board seats, and we show up
Eleven meetings a year, not four. Our partners sit on no more than four boards each — a rule that has cost us deals and has never once cost us a company.
We decide the exit route at entry
Strategic, sponsor or continuation — written into the memo on day one and revisited annually. A firm that discovers its exit route in year five is a firm that takes whatever the market offers in year five.
Process
From first call to funds, eleven weeks.
- Week 1First call and a two-page screen against the mandate. Most conversations end here, quickly, which is the kindest outcome when the answer is no.
- Weeks 2–3Management sessions and the single-sentence thesis. If we cannot write it, we stop.
- Weeks 4–7Commercial, financial and technical diligence, run by the people who will sit on the board.
- Week 8Investment committee. One memo, one thesis, a written downside case with a number attached.
- Weeks 9–11Documentation, the hundred-day plan signed with management, and completion.
What we do not do
The exclusions, in our own words.
- Pre-revenue companies, or anything where the product still has to be proven.
- Turnarounds. We are not good at them and have the two write-offs to prove it.
- Minority stakes without governance — we have never made money on one.
- Roll-ups built on multiple arbitrage rather than on an operating thesis.
- Anything requiring a sale within four years to work.