Saul,
As part of your diligence, do you ever consider passion? I was thinking over great companies and how they beat bigger better financed rivals with more money, patentents, engineers and market presence.
The two that really stand out are Honda and Apple. Mr. Honda was passionate about engines, not really about motorcycles or cars, engines. Those cars and motorcycles were the things he wrapped them in.
Steve Jobs was passionate about design, not specs, not market penetration, design, building something really well.
Both seemed to have imbued thier companies with these passions.
I suspect that Amazon is in that boat also.
Can you comment?
Thanks
Qazulight
As part of your diligence, do you ever consider passion? I was thinking over great companies and how they beat bigger better financed rivals with more money, patents, engineers and market presence.
Hi Qazulight, Yes I guess I do, although not always consciously. (see my response about Tesla, just above). I did invest in both Tesla and Apple, for instance, and of course in Amazon.
In fact looking through my current positions, a surprising number are run by founders and leaders with great passion about what they are doing: Shopify, Amazon, Ubiquity, Arista, Twilio, and HubSpot. It’s not that I picked the companies consciously for the passion of the leaders, but maybe the companies that I like have passionate leaders.
Saul
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