⁠Capital Employed
38 ‘fresh-off-the-press’ stock pitches we’ve enjoyed reading in the past two weeks 👇

https://t.co/3XUaCb1nU6 https://t.co/1j56z3WYaK
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⁠InsideArbitrage
RT @JusticeATR: Justice Department Sues to Block Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s Proposed $14 Billion Acquisition of Rival Wireless Networking Technology Provider Juniper Networks

https://t.co/sN1iQ3MBnq
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⁠Stock Analysis Compilation
Symmetry on CTT $CTT PL

Thesis: CTT is poised for significant growth, with a strong transition from mail delivery to a leading Express & Parcel operator in Iberia, underpinned by favorable market conditions, high barriers to entry, recent transformative M&A deals, and a projected 250% upside in stock value within three years.

(Extract from their report)
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⁠Startup Archive
Peter Thiel on what he doesn’t like about the Lean Startup

Thiel believes there are merits to the Lean Startup, but he thinks founders today may have over-indexed on it:

“I do think we tend to be dominated by a somewhat nihilistic bias where we claim not to know anything. And when you don’t know anything, you end up defaulting too much to the experimental search, A/B testing approach of ‘Let’s ask the customers.’ And I would say the problem with that is that the search space is simply way too big.”

In practice, Thiel argues for a more definite view of the future: “This is an important problem that needs to be solved, and this is the set of things we have to combine in just this way to do it.”

To be fair, Steve Blank—who pioneered the Lean Startup methodology—isn’t necessarily against this approach. Blank just recommends treating your assumptions as “a series of untested hypotheses.”

But there’s clearly a balance between having a definite view of the future and rigorously trying to disprove your assumptions.

As Thiel explains, many of the PayPal founding team’s initial assumptions were wrong:

“At PayPal, our original business plan was to have payments on Palm Pilots, then it was wireless payments, then it was payments linked to email. So we had a few fairly big pivots in the first year. I’m not sure there’s anything especially virtuous about that — if you have a dumb idea, it’s important to change it — but it’s not virtuous to have a really bad idea in the first place.”

Video source: @OxfordSBS (2015)
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⁠Startup Archive
RT @ArthurMacwaters: Super helpful framework

1) treat your company as a set of hypotheses and test them empirically + through user interviews

2) have a definite view of what the world will look like

Peter Thiel on what he doesn’t like about the Lean Startup

Thiel believes there are merits to the Lean Startup, but he thinks founders today may have over-indexed on it:

“I do think we tend to be dominated by a somewhat nihilistic bias where we claim not to know anything. And when you don’t know anything, you end up defaulting too much to the experimental search, A/B testing approach of ‘Let’s ask the customers.’ And I would say the problem with that is that the search space is simply way too big.”

In practice, Thiel argues for a more definite view of the future: “This is an important problem that needs to be solved, and this is the set of things we have to combine in just this way to do it.”

To be fair, Steve Blank—who pioneered the Lean Startup methodology—isn’t necessarily against this approach. Blank just recommends treating your assumptions as “a series of untested hypotheses.”

But there’s clearly a balance between having a definite view of the future and rigorously trying to disprove your assumptions.

As Thiel explains, many of the PayPal founding team’s initial assumptions were wrong:

“At PayPal, our original business plan was to have payments on Palm Pilots, then it was wireless payments, then it was payments linked to email. So we had a few fairly big pivots in the first year. I’m not sure there’s anything especially virtuous about that — if you have a dumb idea, it’s important to change it — but it’s not virtuous to have a really bad idea in the first place.”

Video source: @OxfordSBS (2015) - Startup Archive
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⁠Startup Archive
RT @JacquesThibs: Agree with Thiel, we’ve over-indexed on the ‘lean startup’ and downplayed founder taste and vision too much.

Also related to the “Compound Startups” (aka companies with a multi-product portfolio rather than a point solution) coined by Rippling founder Parker Conrad.

Peter Thiel on what he doesn’t like about the Lean Startup

Thiel believes there are merits to the Lean Startup, but he thinks founders today may have over-indexed on it:

“I do think we tend to be dominated by a somewhat nihilistic bias where we claim not to know anything. And when you don’t know anything, you end up defaulting too much to the experimental search, A/B testing approach of ‘Let’s ask the customers.’ And I would say the problem with that is that the search space is simply way too big.”

In practice, Thiel argues for a more definite view of the future: “This is an important problem that needs to be solved, and this is the set of things we have to combine in just this way to do it.”

To be fair, Steve Blank—who pioneered the Lean Startup methodology—isn’t necessarily against this approach. Blank just recommends treating your assumptions as “a series of untested hypotheses.”

But there’s clearly a balance between having a definite view of the future and rigorously trying to disprove your assumptions.

As Thiel explains, many of the PayPal founding team’s initial assumptions were wrong:

“At PayPal, our original business plan was to have payments on Palm Pilots, then it was wireless payments, then it was payments linked to email. So we had a few fairly big pivots in the first year. I’m not sure there’s anything especially virtuous about that — if you have a dumb idea, it’s important to change it — but it’s not virtuous to have a really bad idea in the first place.”

Video source: @OxfordSBS (2015) - Startup Archive
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⁠Startup Archive
RT @martymadrid: The biggest rule is that there are no rules. Look for a VC that will break or bend their rules for you; the biggest one being ownership targets.

Bill Gurley on what he learned from his mistake of not investing in Google’s Series A

“The biggest mistake I ever made is I met Larry [Page] and Sergey [Brin] when they had 25 employees at Google and had them present to my partnership, and we didn’t follow through and try to invest.”

Bill reflects on what he learned from this:

“A lot of people talk about this in venture, but you have asymmetric returns — you can lose 1x your money, but when you miss on [a Google], you can miss out on 10,000x your money. So we had a saying internally, ‘What could go right?’ We never sweated a zero… But when we miss big winners, we talk about that frequently…. And one interesting thing about venture is it’s a complex system and there are no rules… I’ve often thought about it as: You develop a set of pattern recognition, which is enhanced if you’re working with a partnership because everybody has their own. And then you have like 10 loose rules that you apply when you see a company. But a lot of the times when you make a great investment, it’s because decide to relax one or two of those rules.”

He emphasizes that Google wasn’t an obvious winner at the time:

“Yahoo had fallen from $82 to $10 as a public company. Excite was in bankruptcy. These were the other search companies at the time. Larry and Sergey both wanted to be CEO and they were PhD students at Stanford. Co-CEO PhD students is not on the checklist. And they wanted a really high price.”

But what Bill finds most interesting is that two of the all-time great venture capitalists were able to look past these problems:

“Two of the very best venture capitalists of all time — John Doerr and Mike Moritz — did the deal. So they had a superior mental framework in that situation and broke a lot of the rules. Another thing was they split the deal at a really high price so their ownership was much lower than they traditionally get. But they knew to break that rule at the time.”

Bill gives Tesla as another example of an investment that “likely violated most people’s entire rule set” but being contrarian is what made the return so high.

Video source: @UTexasMcCombs (2025) - Startup Archive
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⁠Startup Archive
RT @mpawlo: "What could go right?" that @bgurley said below is also a key theme of @reidhoffman's new book on AI, Superagency. I think we are always very keen on explaining why an idea is wrong, but it is more rare to say why it is right. Unless, of course, it is our own ideas .-)

Bill Gurley on what he learned from his mistake of not investing in Google’s Series A

“The biggest mistake I ever made is I met Larry [Page] and Sergey [Brin] when they had 25 employees at Google and had them present to my partnership, and we didn’t follow through and try to invest.”

Bill reflects on what he learned from this:

“A lot of people talk about this in venture, but you have asymmetric returns — you can lose 1x your money, but when you miss on [a Google], you can miss out on 10,000x your money. So we had a saying internally, ‘What could go right?’ We never sweated a zero… But when we miss big winners, we talk about that frequently…. And one interesting thing about venture is it’s a complex system and there are no rules… I’ve often thought about it as: You develop a set of pattern recognition, which is enhanced if you’re working with a partnership because everybody has their own. And then you have like 10 loose rules that you apply when you see a company. But a lot of the times when you make a great investment, it’s because decide to relax one or two of those rules.”

He emphasizes that Google wasn’t an obvious winner at the time:

“Yahoo had fallen from $82 to $10 as a public company. Excite was in bankruptcy. These were the other search companies at the time. Larry and Sergey both wanted to be CEO and they were PhD students at Stanford. Co-CEO PhD students is not on the checklist. And they wanted a really high price.”

But what Bill finds most interesting is that two of the all-time great venture capitalists were able to look past these problems:

“Two of the very best venture capitalists of all time — John Doerr and Mike Moritz — did the deal. So they had a superior mental framework in that situation and broke a lot of the rules. Another thing was they split the deal at a really high price so their ownership was much lower than they traditionally get. But they knew to break that rule at the time.”

Bill gives Tesla as another example of an investment that “likely violated most people’s entire rule set” but being contrarian is what made the return so high.

Video source: @UTexasMcCombs (2025) - Startup Archive
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⁠Stock Analysis Compilation
Alluvial Capital on Zegona $ZEG LN

Thesis: Zegona is a London-listed investment company making significant progress in improving Vodafone Spain's profitability and cash flow, with plans for asset sales and potential shareholder distributions ahead.

(Extract from their Q4 letter)
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