We'd rather build

Most investors only ever choose from what already exists. They wait for the deck, weigh the options in front of them, and pick. It is a perfectly good way to invest. It is just not the only one.

When we look at a market and the company we want to own is not there, our first instinct is not to wait for someone else to build it. It is to consider building it ourselves. Some of our strongest positions are ones we started rather than bought.

Building changes how you invest in everything else. Once you have tried to hire the first ten people, win the first customer and survive the first thing that goes wrong, you read a founder's pitch differently. You know which problems are genuinely hard and which are only talked about as if they were. You become harder to impress and easier to help.

It also keeps you honest. It is one thing to have opinions about how businesses should be run. It is another to be responsible for one at two in the morning. We prefer to keep a foot in both: the patience of an owner and the scars of a builder.