And you are 100% entitled to that opinion. As is anyone else reaching the same conclusion. Saul himself seems to lean that way, which I find a feature of this board rather than a bug. I can only provide the thinking behind what I do with my portfolio and have no intention of telling anyone else what to do with theirs. That’s the same for any member of this forum. Anyone who’s been here a while already knows that (as I know you do Silvio), but any newbies should probably read that twice.
Also true. And I am ALWAYS responsible for whether I believe what happens in the business deserves our investment dollars. I kept our ENPH shares after the big haircut but dumped NET. My criteria, my responsibility, my consequences. I can live with that.
Good for you. It sounds like your experience has created different criteria for what you look for in a leader. I’d expect nothing less since each of us is heavily influenced by our past. I have no private equity background but considerable experience making large-dollar business decisions as both a professional and an investor. In this case, I’ve decided I’m simply not comfortable letting Matthew Prince keep our money while trying to lead Cloudflare out of the very same ditch it drove into on his watch. I personally find it borderline disingenuous to brag about his bold macro vision at the same time he was apparently blindsided by an underperforming sales apparatus right under his own nose. That makes me question whether his “vision” was trained on the right spots especially since it was obvious customer adds and NRR trends had been lagging for multiple quarters. Kudos to the analyst who basically called him out with the same observation. You, of course, are entirely welcome to a different interpretation.
In the end, I’m glad we’re having this discussion. This board often gets accused of groupthink when in reality it is a collection of independent thinkers who just happen to practice a similar investment style. I simply articulated my criteria and how I apply them to my decision making process. Everyone else should do the same.
For the sake of education @silviocast, would you mind giving us your view of NET’s overall performance this quarter through your private equity influenced lens? I would sincerely like to hear it if you’ll share. This could potentially lead to a very good discussion of Cloudflare’s quarter and its prospects going forward. In my opinion, those types of discussions is when this board is at its best.