Keiretsu Backs 314 Companies in 2020 - Most Active Early Stage Globally

Keiretsu Forum is pleased to announce today that despite the impact of the global pandemic, its global membership of investors increased its deal activity level by 16% to a record 314 companies receiving funding in 2020. The breakdown of deals funded includes 80% in North America, 15% in Europe and 5% in Asia Pacific region. Life Science, Medical Devices, Environmentally-Sensitive/Aware, and solution-driven Technologies attracted the most capital.

Stone Ridge 2020 Shareholder Letter

Stone Ridge 2020 Shareholder Letter

Dear Fellow Shareholder,

Shortly before the genius David Foster Wallace died, he delivered a college commencement speech that opens with a beautiful critique of our “default setting.”

“There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says ‘Morning, boys. How’s the water?’ And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over and the other and says,‘What’s water?’”

Wallace goes on to teach us that sometimes “the most obvious, most important realities are the ones that are hardest to see.” For Americans alive today, one of our ‘What’s water?’ questions is ‘What’s money?’. While Wallace asked the graduating seniors that day to think about fish and their relationship with water, I’ll ask you to think with me about our own relationships with money and, as Wallace also asked, “bracket for just a few minutes your skepticism of the totally obvious” and reconsider “what is real and essential, hidden in plain sight all around us all the time.”

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Howard Marks on Intrinsic Value: Something of Value

After Warren Buffet, the world's leading proponent of Benjamin Graham (and Dodds) must be Howard Marks of Oaktree Capital. He is probably the greatest investor in distressed and undervalued companies in the US (World?). We love Howard - our oldest son Max is in his special situations team down in Los Angeles. Howard was just locked up for most of 2020 with his son Andrew amongst others and had to focus on something he has not really focused on. The issue of how intrinsic value, and the value vs growth debate works in long term technology investing. His thoughts are profound shared in a new white paper called Something of Value. It's not an easy read, but click the link at the bottom of this posting to see that it's not just Alison and Matthew questioning this paradigm of thinking that drives investing today.

Something of Value

If asked about possible silver linings to this pandemic, I would list first the chance to spend more time with family. Our son Andrew and his wife and son moved in with Nancy and me in Los Angeles at the beginning of the pandemic, as they were renovating their house when Covid-19 hit, and we lived together for the next ten weeks. There’s nothing like getting to spend months at a time building relationships with grandchildren, something we were privileged to do in 2020. I’m sure the impact will literally last lifetimes.

As I’ve previously reported, Andrew is a professional investor who focuses on making long-term investments in what the world calls “growth companies,” and especially technology companies. He’s had a great 2020, and it’s hard to argue with success. Our living together led me to talk with him and think a great deal about subjects on which I hadn’t previously spent much time, contributing a lot to what I’ll cover in this memo.

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