Bussin’
I was bewildered to discover that Gen Z views the thumbs up as “actively hostile” and an unsettling “passive aggressive dig.” What’s more, this came not long after I read that Gen Alpha considers something “weird, cringey or random” Ohio (though my daughter tells me that no one uses that term any longer). So imagine my delight when I saw Hyundai’s new Internet Dad spot.
In it, a middle-aged man asks his daughters how they are feeling about the pancakes he’s griddled only to be told that they’re “pretty mid” (which is what kids these days call something that’s not good). He responds by breaking out a litany of modern slang (aura…flex…bussin’) to his daughters’ horror and dismay.
Somewhat related, one of the most important parts of our diligence process is getting to understand the specific terminology a business uses to describe itself. This is because, without that knowledge, it’s often impossible to understand what a business is doing, why, or how well. For example, lots of businesses “nurture qualified leads,” but what makes a lead qualified and how it is nurtured can vary widely from company to company. But even more so than that, just like Hyundai’s Internet Dad, people can also often use words in weird ways.
See, back when our managing editor SarahGW was working to make our comprehensive diligence checklist fit for public consumption, one of the observations she made was that it seemed like we were often asking the same question over and over. For example, when it comes to risk assessment, among other things, we’d like to know:
What debt do you have?
What do you owe to someone else?
Do you have any obligations to repay someone in the future?
Have you promised to give anyone money in the future in any way?
And yes, these do all sound like pretty much the same question. But if you were to ask our very thorough chief legal officer Taylor why we do this he would tell you that it’s because if we don’t get very, very specific, we’re likely to miss something. Because here are some real things we’ve heard in response to those aforementioned questions:
“That’s not debt. That’s just a loan I gave the company.”
“Oh, I only have to pay that if I ever have the money.”
“I mean, I told them that they’d get a bonus if I ever sold the company, but they’re not expecting anything.”
Bussin’. See you Friday.
– Tim
