This year was crazy. I visited seven countries and eleven cities and experienced all kinds of weather: humid Singapore, the chilly breeze of Melbourne, wet London, pleasant Seoul, the gorgeous summer of Helsinki, snowy Helsinki, and sunny but pleasant Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Nothing went according to this year's plan, but everything still aligns with the long-term plan. I thought I would stay in Singapore for most of the years, but it did not work out that way. I was not expecting to go to Helsinki. I not only found my Kotona, but I also found home & family.
I had many thoughts I wanted to write down this year, but I couldn’t, primarily because of the travel and my laziness. I am unsure if I was lazy or unable to sit quietly and write. Helsinki provided ample space and silence, but I could not tap into it most of the time as I rushed from one meeting to another.
In 2024, I touched base with a few ideas via this substack: First Followers, whose sole purpose is to mobilize capital to build a conscious world. I see myself as a first follower of impact fund managers, venture builders, serial acquirers, and talent of tomorrow. If you are wondering what a first follower is and who a first follower is, Read this short piece.
I started the year with a pretty heavy & controversial topic of how I feel like a delusional VC. I see most of my peers in the industry as people following the hype and selling ponzies with very little substance.
I am cautious about how I look at companies, and I even feel skeptical of going to just VC events where all the VCs hang out to sell their Ponzi schemes to each other.
I found my love affair with Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett, and other quality (plus value) investors. Part of the reason is I see frugality as a virtue. Hence, I wrote a piece on why over-diversification might lead to mediocre returns.
"An idiot could diversify their portfolio." - Charlie Munger.
My love affair with solitude, silence, and singlehood to explore my inner self, and I have been developing a thesis around lone wolves for years. If done right, it can be a pretty satisfying experience for some (like me), and we could generate outsize returns & create impact.
By April 2024, I started getting obsessed with one & only one thing: capital allocation, which was coming from an interest (borderline obsession) with portfolio construction, and no, I don’t think portfolio construction is purely about mathematical modeling, especially in private markets, up to a large extent in public markets also, it is about art than science. I started loving investing from a different lens when I started reading about Constellation Software, Mark Leonard, Henry Singleton, etc.
While serial acquirers share some similarities with private equity, they distinguish themselves through their decentralized approach and long-term hold strategy. Where PE firms centralize and restructure, serial acquirers embrace autonomy, believing quality SMEs can flourish under their leadership with the right capital support.
Then, in the following two pieces, I talked from the lens of Beyond Impact about how climate investing totally misses the point. Most of the climate investing money goes into energy transition, which is decoupling our dependence on fossil fuels, and we, as Beyond Impact, focus on beyond energy transition, which is decoupling our dependence on abusing nature and animals, which is the premise of our impact & investment thesis.
We don’t JUST need energy transition; we need consumption and production transition.
I don’t hear much about the potential role of biomaterials, including plastics, textiles, building materials, pharmaceuticals, and others, in curbing climate change.
Then, I was in Bombay, India, attending a conference, and something hit me that I had been thinking about for years, especially regarding my interest in century-old Japanese businesses called Shinise.
There is beauty in keeping the business family-owned and focusing on prudent cash flow management. These small businesses can serve fresh oat milk / plant-based milk to several 1000s to millions of people in a district to a city (to their local community) - an alternative to a dairy farm. They don’t need to set up a retail brand.
In August, I took a pause and posted nothing except this filler article.
Go spend time in Nature!
Then, I wrote a piece on capital allocation that I am most proud of and enjoyed writing.
For a long time, I saw the primary role of a CEO, management team, and founders as resource allocators. To go further on this, the resource allocator in terms of doing capital allocation and human resource allocation. The capital allocation piece of the puzzle is exceptionally critical in understanding the role of a founder or a CEO, which is not just to run operations but also to allocate capital.
Finland made me think about trust as an infrastructure and how society and community exist on the fundamental pillar of trust. Hence, I extrapolated to the world of finance, investment, and business, and I wrote »
To me, the impact is not ESG reporting; impact is not an asset class; impact is a good quality value business that can exist now and after 100 years. It evolves, it takes care of people who work for that business, it contracts, it scales, it divests, its spin-offs, it acquires, but at its core, it creates trust between the employees, stakeholders, and shareholders.
The capital allocation article and reading the book The Outsiders made me wonder, can we extend this idea of capital allocation to impact also ,and is there a way we look at things from a long-term mindset, i.e., how we compound wealth, can we compound impact?
Two characteristics that immediately stand out when we think about compounding impact returns are a) Patience and b) Commitment.
Thank you for reading, subscribing, and sharing my articles. I feel blessed that so many of you read it. I am planning several things for 2025, but most importantly, I will be focused on mobilizing capital to impact venture studios, funds, serial acquirers, and tomorrow's talent. Stay tuned, and if you can, please support the newsletter with as little as 5 dollars.
Sign-off for humanity,
ST
Mail me at » sagar@firstfollowers.co / sagar@beyondimpact.vc
Stay humble, stay curious 🌟🌟🌟!
Note: These are my personal opinion.