Musings and rantings of Andrew Finn
Robert Smith of Vista Equity Partners famously said, “Software companies taste like chicken. They’re selling different products, but 80% of what they do is pretty much the same.” Service businesses are no different. You buy someone’s labor, mark it up, resell it, and spend opex to operate the business. You also spend money on capex Continue reading "The Secret Sauce of Valuable Service Businesses"
The best reason to start a company is to solve a problem that you genuinely, to your core, care about, and you can’t see another way to do it. People who find this are truly blessed. And then there are the rest of us, and we are complicated. Here is my take. The motivations for Continue reading "Entrepreneurial Motivations: Light and Shadow Forces"
If your long-term goal is to move from labor to capital, then you need to build your business into an asset that you can personally exit , not a high paying job. Assets can be sold or held once you have exited, but they do not require your day-to-day participation. Assets give you free time and Continue reading "Build Your Company to Exit"
Wake up every day, consumed by “You, Inc”.
Businesses that are two-sided marketplaces, built around network effects and transaction fees (Uber, Lyft, eBay, Airbnb), will be especially vulnerable to disruption from businesses built around crypto tokens.
I thought long and hard about what would most help a Bootstrapped Service Business ("BSB") like ours grow faster and create more jobs, and it all comes down to improving access to meaningful investment capital - not small changes to tax rates, increasing deductions, payroll tax holidays, or tweaking regulations
Tim (from Wait But Why) did a very funny thing to one of our oldest and best friends, and I felt compelled to post it (names and brands have been changed). Tim (emailing to me and three of our high school friends, not including our friend Peter): “I did a very fun thing today. Peter Continue reading "The Best Fake Reference Email Ever"
America does not have an income inequality problem so much as it has a wealth inequality problem. The top 1% make about the same total income as the bottom 40% combined, which is significant, but it is nothing compared to the wealth gap. The top 1% have 139x as much wealth as the bottom 40%. Continue reading "Liquid Net Worth may be a Better Basis than Income for Income Tax Rates"
Ever since sharing economy companies burst on to the scene, there have been disputes between governments, like the State of California, and companies, like Uber, about the employee/contractor classification of its workers. Some companies surrendered (Instacart), a few are still fighting (Uber), and some had to shut their doors because of the changes (Homejoy). None of Continue reading "Government…
I was fortunate enough to trek to Everest Base Camp this month, and I wrote this up about my experience. It was mainly for friends and family and isn t my tightest piece of writing, but I thought I d post it on Finn s Cave, because fck it, if you re procrastinating so hard that you re reading Finn s Continue reading "Everest Base Camp, Type 2 Fun, and Apocolypse Draft"