Posts from stocks

Google Finance

Google Finance and Yahoo Finance are two web services I have used daily since the early days of the Internet.

I have used Yahoo Finance since it first launched in January 1997.

But after Google Finance launched in 2006, I started using Google Finance more and eventually, it became my default finance site on the web.

Sometime in the last month or two, I can’t remember exactly when, Google revamped Google Finance.

The UI is cleaner and the service is much simpler.

But a lot of the power user features I had come to rely on in my daily work are either gone or buried so deeply that I can’t find them.

I also find it hard to search for a price quote now, which is kind of the most basic feature one would want in a service like this.

Anyway, I have switched a lot of my usage back to Yahoo Finance as a result.

But I am hoping that Google realizes that they messed some stuff up in the revamp and are working on fixing it.

Because I do prefer Google Finance. At least I did.

#stocks

Taking Money "Off The Table"

One of the hardest things in managing a venture capital portfolio is managing your big winners. A big winner can dwarf the rest of the entire portfolio and you end up sitting on enormous paper profits that you can’t get liquid on. I realize that this seems like a great problem to have, and it is, but it is still a challenging situation.

We faced it in Twitter in 2010/2011/2012, in the years before Twitter went public (which happened in the fall of 2013). We had bought 15% of Twitter for $3.75mm in the first VC round in 2007 and though we had been diluted down a bit in subsequent rounds, we had a very large position that was worth in the neighborhood of $1bn by 2011. Our entire fund was $125mm and so we were sitting on a position that was worth 8x the entire fund. It was a wonderful situation in many ways but I was nervous that macro events or a setback at Twitter could go against us and the position would go down in value, possibly significantly.

The way we managed this issue is we sold a portion of our position in two secondary transactions and in connection with those sales, I stepped off the board, making room for an independent director who would be helpful as the Company scaled and got ready to go public. We sold about 30% of our position in those two secondary transactions for about $250mm and returned 2x the entire fund to our investors.

That allowed us to “chill out” and hold the balance until the IPO, which had a customary 180 day post IPO lockup. After the lockup came off, we distributed the balance of the position, returning another ~$700mm to our investors.

Though we sold stock in the secondary transactions at lower values than the eventual IPO, I have never regretted doing that and believe that it was the right thing for us to do for many reasons.

We have done similar things in many other situations including Zynga, Lending Club, MongoDB, and a number of other investments. We typically seek to liquidate somewhere between 10% and 30% of our position in these pre-IPO liquidity transactions. Doing so allows us to hold onto the balance while de-risking the entire investment.

I was reminded of this topic when I saw the news that Benchmark, First Round, and Menlo sold between 15% and 50% of their positions in Uber to SOFTBANK. I think they all acted rationally and responsibly in doing that. It does not mean that SOFTBANK is making a mistake purchasing the shares. There are many reasons to believe that SOFTBANK made a good deal. But if you look at First Round, for example, they have a position worth $2bn or more at the $50bn valuation of the SOFTBANK tender. I don’t know the exact details, but I believe First Round’s fund that holds Uber is less than $100mm. So they returned something like 8x the entire fund and still hold the majority of their position. That was “well played” in my book. Same with Benchmark. Same with Menlo.

Taking money off the table is smart portfolio management. It is very different from selling your entire position, which could be brilliant but is equally likely to be a mistake. Selling a portion of your position, returning a multiple or two (or eight) of the fund, and holding on to the balance works out for you no matter which way the position goes in the future. If the position blows up, you got a lot out and booked a huge gain. If the position goes up significantly, you make even more money on the part of the investment you retained. If it goes sideway, you got a little bit out early. It is a win/win/win pretty much every way you look at it.

Which takes me to crypto (naturally). If you are sitting on 20x, 50x, 100x your money on a crypto investment, it would not be a mistake to sell 10%, 20% or even 30% of your position. Selling 25% of your position on an investment that is up 50x is booking a 12.5x on the entire investment, while allowing you to keep 75% of it going. I know that many crypto holders think that selling anything is a mistake. And it might be. Or it might not be. You just don’t know.

#crypto#stocks#VC & Technology

IPOs Are Back In Favor

I read this piece on Reuters claiming that the huge megafunds in venture and growth equity are “stalling IPOs.”

And while it makes sense at some level, the truth is the exact opposite.

Based on everything I am seeing, hearing, and reading, 2018 and 2019 will be bumper years for tech IPOs, assuming the markets behave.

Uber’s new CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has promised an IPO in 18-36 months. That says 2019 to me.

Hot companies like Stitch Fix are filing to go public this year.

We have a pipeline of strong mature (and increasingly profitable) companies in our portfolio that will head to the public markets in 2018 and 2019.

So when you read stuff on the Internet, don’t take it as correct.

The truth is often the exact opposite.

#stocks

Diversification (aka How To Survive A Crash)

I was emailing with my friend Harry this past week and we started talking about crypto and the inevitability of a massive crash. I am certain the big crash will happen. I don’t know when it will happen and I think it may be some time before it does. But better safe than sorry. So I’m going to write some thoughts about how to survive it.

I told Harry my personal story of having 90% of our net worth go up in smoke in the dot com bubble and crash.

The only reason it was not 100% was that we owned two significant pieces of real estate that were about 10% of our net worth before the crash and became our entire net worth after the crash.

We were not diversified. We had all of our money in venture capital and internet stocks and had ridden that wave all the way up. Before Flatiron Partners (the venture firm I co-founded at the start of the Internet boom), we had no net worth. So everything we had, we made in the 1996-2000 period. And we essentially lost it all when the bubble burst.

Had we not sold Yahoo! and other stocks to purchase the real estate and pay the taxes on the gains, we would have been wiped out completely.

You might think “you could have sold when things went south” and that is a good point. But when things blow up, your first instinct is that they will come back. They didn’t this time. The selling just continued. A few companies we owned a lot of went bankrupt. These were public stocks that went all the way to zero. So, while it is true that we could have and should gotten out when the bubble burst, we did not, and in some cases could not.

So selling when a market blows up is not the best way to protect yourself from a crash. Selling long before it blows up and diversifying your assets is a much better way. Like we did with real estate, but with a lot more than that.

I like a mix of cash (t-bills, money market funds, etc), blue chips stocks (Amazon, Google, etc), real estate (income producing with little to no leverage), and a risk bucket (venture capital, crypto, etc). I think 25% in each would be a good mix. We have more in the risk bucket but I am in the VC business professionally and have been for 30+ years. 25% in each is where I’d like to get to in time.

I have advocated many times on this blog that people should have some percentage of their net worth in crypto. I have suggested as much as 10% or even 20% for people who are young or who are true believers. I continue to believe that and advocate for that.

But we don’t have that much of our net worth in crypto. We probably have around 5% between direct holdings and indirect holdings through USV and other crypto funds. I think that’s a prudent number for a portfolio like ours.

I know a lot of people who are true believers in crypto and have made fortunes in it. They are “all in” on crypto and have much of their net worth (all in some cases) invested in this sector. I worry about them and this post is aimed at them and others like them. It is fine to be a true believer and being all in on crypto has made them a lot of money. But preservation of capital is about diversification and I think and hope that they will take some money off the table, pay the taxes, and invest it elsewhere.

That is the smart and prudent thing to do. I wish I had done it during the internet boom. I did not, but the next time we made a bunch of money, I did. I learned the hard way. I share my story so that others don’t have to.

#blockchain#stocks#VC & Technology

Numeraire Is Live

Back in February, I posted about Numeraire.

I wrote:

the Numerai team has now gone a step further and issued a crypto-token called Numeraire to incent these data scientists to work together to build the best models instead of just competing with each other

And roughy four months later, I am happy to write that the Numeraire token is live on the Ethereum blockchain.

You can read more about this here.

Well done Numerai team.

#crypto#machine learning#stocks

A Man For All Markets

I have had this book, A Man For All Markets, on my kindle for the past year. I can’t recall who recommended it, possibly my friend Jeremy, but I can’t be sure.

A couple weeks ago, I had lunch with my friend Harry and he again suggested it to me. I decided to put it at the top of my to read pile (a virtual pile) and have been reading it for the past week.

It’s a terrific book, nominally the life story of Edward Thorpe, the math professor, blackjack card counter, and hedge fund manager.

The book is a reminder that math, particularly the highly agile mathematical mind, is a very powerful thing. But it is also full of amazing insights on risk and return, from gambling to investing.

I particularly liked this observation that Edward makes after testing his “ten count” system with the the backing of some less than reputable characters:

For the second time, the Ten-Count System had shown moderately heavy losses mixed with “lucky” streaks of the most dazzling brilliance.

My person experience with investing includes plenty of moderately heavy losses and the occasional “dazzling brilliance.

I am pleased to know that pairing is common in all sorts of risk taking ventures.

If you like math, cards, and/or investing, I am sure you will enjoy this book as much as I am.

#Books#stocks

Being Public

Two former USV portfolio companies had tough earnings calls last night.

And you look at that and you might say “why would any company want to go public?”

But here is the thing. Being public is about being transparent, accountable, and owning up to the issues and dealing with them.

I think it makes companies better.

If you are losing your biggest customer, you have to tell the world and deal with the consequences.

If you are making a leadership change, you have to tell the world and deal with the consequences.

Both of those companies are great companies, in which the Gotham Gal and I are a very large shareholder, and in which we believe in totally and completely.

Nothing is always up and to the right, even though you might want it to be.

The great companies are the ones that have the guts to bare it all and keep building.

Which is why I think being public is a good thing for the companies we work with that are large enough and have unique and differentiated businesses and business models.

I think more tech companies should be going public and I have been saying that for quite a while now and last night doesn’t change my views one iota.

#stocks#VC & Technology

When The AI Comes To Your Annual Shareholders Meeting

I was looking at the top twenty shareholders of some public companies last week and saw quite a few “quant funds” on those lists.

With the news that Blackrock is going to move much of its asset management business to models and machines, I think we will see more of this in the coming years.

It’s annual meeting season for public companies and all of this made me think about when the AI shows up to your annual shareholder meeting.

Or when the AI gets your proxy and needs to vote for Directors, executive compensation, and the choice of auditors.

Governance is an important part of being a shareholder.

When the shareholders are all machines, how does governance work?

#stocks

A Direct Listing

I saw this question pop up in my Twitter feed this morning:

I don’t know anything about Spotify’s plans so I am not going to comment on that.

But the idea of doing a direct listing instead of an IPO is a super interesting to me.

Here is what I said to a friend of mine over email on this subject last week:

we don’t need IPOs to raise money anymore

the private markets work great for that now

but we do need a way to allow small investors to own the stock and we need a way to give employees, former employees, early investors, etc liquidity

So the idea of taking the fundraising function out of the going public equation is super interesting to me.

The questions that come to mind to me are; who will make a market in the stock?, who will write research on the stock?, how will companies build an understanding of their company prior to the listing?, will there be a lockup for existing investors?

The “IPO road show”, which is the roughly two week process before the IPO, is both a sales process to raise the money and a great opportunity to build excitement for the stock and understanding of the business. I guess a direct listing could include a road show as well. I think it probably should.

And the underwriters, who make a big commission on the IPO, commit to trade the stock and write research on the company in return for “being on the cover.” There needs to be some other way to get the investment banks involved in the stock to ensure that there is a market for the stock and research is done on the stock.

Finally, you wouldn’t want the entire cap table to come into the market on the first day of the direct listing. So that means there would need to be a lockup of some sort for the existing investors. But if there is no primary raise, then you would need some shares to trade, so maybe you let some of the existing cap table off of lockup on the direct listing and the rest over time.

I suppose this has been done before. If that is true, then there is a history of prior listings to look at to understand how this is done and how it worked. But as I said earlier in this post, I am super interested in this idea and I would like to see some big companies that don’t need capital but want a public stock try this.

#stocks