Opinion
Wilkinson: Too many venture-backed startups buy unsustainable growth for funding
“However, if it's one dollar turning into 30 cents over two years, I really don't think that's a good use of capital, and I see way too many venture-backed Buying 30 cent dollars to show growth and get their next round of funding.”
Insight
Wilkinson argues school and MBAs are wasteful for tech entrepreneurs
“I think school is often a waste of time, especially if you're in tech. My number one piece of feedback to people is, Get experience. If you want to be in business, start a business. Don't do an MBA.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Wilkinson: Tiny Capital targets $10M to $100M opportunities in sleepy markets
“We don't want to be in a situation where we're buying a company where billions of dollars are going to flow into competing with it tomorrow. We just think that's too difficult. So that's why we like to choose industries that are sleepy, where nobody really car…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Wilkinson: Tiny expects soft returns rather than total write-offs
“In terms of loss ratios, I'm not counting on having losses. We occasionally will, and we will have business failures, but they'll more look like softness and bad returns. I doubt we're going to have zeros. It's just not like a venture game. These are generally…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Wilkinson: Tiny allows portfolio CEOs to make reversible mistakes
“In the businesses that we own, I'm never going to let a CEO make a sink the boat decision, right? But if it's a two-way door, if it's something where, look, I think this business model idea is hokey, but they've got it in their head as the greatest idea ever. …”
Insight
Wilkinson: Agencies are usually terrible, low-margin businesses
“Agencies are usually terrible businesses. They don't really make very much money.”
Opinion
Wilkinson: Most tech acquirers flip companies within two to four years
“Our focus is on buying wonderful businesses that'll be profitable, and being able to really have them be sustainable and exist in 10 years, whereas most other acquirers have a thesis around slamming them into another company, or they're gonna flip them in two …”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Wilkinson: Almost all Tiny businesses grow top and bottom lines 30-40% annually
“And, you know, regardless of our focus on profitability, almost all of our businesses are growing their top line and their bottom line at 30 or 40% a year and doing it profitably.”
Disclosure
Wilkinson: Tiny's remote job board is a feature vulnerable to LinkedIn
“We also own the remote job board business. I have no idea how long that'll exist because LinkedIn can easily come along and start adding remote jobs as a feature. And at the end of the day, our business is kind of a feature, not a product.”
Insight
Wilkinson: Board members are not there to be the CEO's friend
“Well, I think the biggest thing to remember is that you're not the CEO's friend, that you're not there to be a buddy. You're there to actually ask probing questions. And to rub their nose in the consequences of what could go wrong.”
Insight
Wilkinson: Boards cannot dictate execution, only whether to keep the CEO
“One of the things I've also learned is that on a board, even when you own the entire company, you can't dictate what they need to do. You can only guide and you can set guide rails. And so at the end of the day, you're ultimately deciding, is this the right pe…”
Insight
Wilkinson: Hiring executive candidates for unproven potential always fails
“Whereas if you hire somebody for potential, which is what I used to do, I'd meet somebody and go, I love this person's moxie. They're really sharp. They move really fast. They seem to kind of understand marketing. I think they can be a good CMO. We'll grow the…”
Insight
Wilkinson: Long-term business planning is just guessing
“I haven't had a lot of success with long-term planning. I find it's just kind of guessing.”
Assertion Supported
Wilkinson: MetaLab designed Slack and worked with Shopify, Coinbase, and Pinterest
“Also worked with a lot of startups really early on, Shopify, Tumblr, Coinbase, Pinterest. We designed Slack.”
Assertion Contradicted
Wilkinson: No tech holding company had truly copied Berkshire Hathaway's decentralized model
“Anyone that's done this for tech had built kind of a synergized conglomerate like GE, where everything's interdependent, but nobody had truly copied the Berkshire model of running all these distributed businesses and leaving them to do their thing.”
Insight
Wilkinson: Direct customer relationships eliminate Google and Facebook platform risk
“In a technology business, there's no middleman, so there's no Google or Facebook risk. There's no algorithm between Us and the community or the customer.”
Insight
Wilkinson: Tiny Capital prices acquisitions on 5-to-10-year earnings and risk
“What we do is we basically pay a fair price based on where the business is at. And that's typically based on what earnings are expected to come out of the business over the next five to 10 years. And then the other way we think about price is just risk. So yes…”
Disclosure
Wilkinson: Tiny Capital exclusively buys or immediately pivots to profitable businesses
“Because that's so part of our DNA, we really exclusively buy profitable businesses or at the very least businesses that can be immediately pivoted to profitability.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Wilkinson: Tiny would raise VC if a portfolio company needed $100M burn
“So I would say that if we had a business that was obviously in need of a large amount of capital, And we needed somebody at the table who was willing to take a big risk where we knew that in order to grow it into a billion dollar business, we'd need to burn a …”
Disclosure
Wilkinson: Tiny Capital considered buying Meetup.com but passed
“You think about meetup.com, for example, which is a business that we looked at buying, and we just couldn't wrap our heads around it, because ultimately, when it comes to social networks, usually the largest network always wins.”
Assertion Supported
Wilkinson: Google Maps blew Yelp out of the water using Android
“Turns out with Google, having Android and Google Maps, they can just ask every single person on earth how the restaurant was that they went to last night, because they know that they'd visited it via Google Maps, and suddenly Google Maps has better data and bl…”
Disclosure
Wilkinson spent only four hours total launching multiple companies via delegation
“Over the last couple of months, I've started multiple companies and I've spent probably four hours in total on them coming up with a high level idea and then delegating everything.”
Assertion Supported
Wilkinson: Hundreds of thousands of designers visit Dribbble directly daily
“Every single day, hundreds of thousands of designers wake up Every morning, and they punch Dribbble into the URL bar. You know, we don't need to go out and buy customers. They just naturally organically appear, and because Dribbble is the largest network is ge…”
Insight
Wilkinson: Use 'anti-goals' to design your life around avoiding worst-case days
“Just doing things I want to do, and I have a system that I call anti-goals, where every year my business partner and I sit down and we say, what does our worst possible day look like, and how do we design our day to avoid that?”
