They Blew Up the Bridge…Again
Of all of the lessons we learned from blowing up the bridge, the one I keep thinking about is Robbie’s observation that the rebuilt thing is also not forever. Not only is he right, but God willing, you’ll get a note from me 60 years from now titled “They Blew Up the Bridge…Again” and it will really be about that (and not about the fact that they accidentally did blow up a part of the new bridge already). Because that’s the hard thing about growth. Not only does it create new problems, it also causes solved problems to become unsolved.
Take, for example, the problem of keeping track of the financial performance of Permanent Equity’s companies. When I arrived in 2018, there were basically seven businesses to keep an eye on. So I made a spreadsheet that listed the expected performance of the different metrics we wanted to track at each company and asked our financial partners to input the actual performance when they received it, and we went on our merry way. The system worked...for a while.
Now we have 17 or so businesses to keep an eye on and that spreadsheet and process have gotten unwieldy and inefficient, so Mark and Nikki are thinking about investing in some software to replace it. Am I sad to see my spreadsheet go? Yes. Am I sad I spent time building a solution that ultimately didn’t work? Absolutely not; I’m pumped that we outgrew it.
I wrote previously that one thing that’s undefeated is the ability to raise unlimited capital. Another is entropy.
If you're a homeowner, you know entropy well. It’s the thing that causes you to say “Didn’t we just pay for that?”
Like risk of loss and risk of gain, entropy and growth are kind of the same thing just reversed. Except growth causes entropy and entropy causes growth. In other words, by trying to grow, you will create problems, but solving problems will also cause you to grow. And if you think about it that way, acknowledging nothing is forever, then all of those problems unsolving themselves all of the time will become a source of delight rather than frustration.
Or not. But have a great weekend and the next time they nuke the Rocheport Bridge (not by accident, great job guys), you are all invited on the boat.
– By Tim Hanson
