TDM Growth Partners

“We're now at 1.5, and we think we can keep compounding at the same rate for another 10 years. And over that time, the 1.5 turns into fifteen billion and still be able to invest Exactly the same way we've been investing the past 16 years.”

“Where the portfolio is skewed to at the moment is very much private companies where we can genuinely own those businesses for at least 10 years. We've got one or two board seats. We're really involved in supporting those companies, trying to add value and help…”

“In the next gen business, we've got a company like Guzman and Gomez, which we think is the McDonald's of the next generation. It's a great Australian Mexican food retail business that we think can be a fifty billion dollar business down the track.”

“We basically didn't make any money out of TDM for years, like seven, eight years.”

“Well, the biggest investment mistake we made was David's Tea. It was a US listed business, a Canadian tea retailer, where we lost a hell of a lot of money.”

“Throughout the 16 or 17 year journey of TDM, we've never owned more than 15 businesses at any one point in time. And usually it's more like eight or 10.”

“We never wanted to have a lockup with clients. We only want clients that want to be here. Having said that, we've never had a client that's pulled their money.”

“We think around 10 people is probably the maximum number we can have to effectively execute that decision-making capability.”

“We've got four pillars. One is growth opportunity. The second is competitive advantage, where we lean heavily on Hamilton Helmer's Seven Powers. People and culture is the third pillar, and valuation is the fourth.”

“An Australia-based investment firm that manages a billion and a half dollars in growth companies ranging from early stage privates to publicly listed companies on behalf of just 20 individuals.”

“So we manage money in a very different way to most in that we have individually managed accounts for every single client. We don't have A fund where everyone is pulled together. In the 15 years, we haven't been able to find a software platform that can run tho…”

“If you think like a long-term business owner, and especially with that one where we own 10 or 15% of the business, it may as well have been a private investment, like you are in a marriage. There was no way out. If we got that wrong, there was no easy way out.…”

“You can't produce great returns for a long period of time by making easy consensus decisions, and so that usually means one or two things, that when we're making an investment decision in the business, there's usually something in the business that other inves…”

“Take a couple of the companies we own at the moment, a Spotify or a Square, which we think can continue to grow revenue at 20, 30% plus for the next 10 years.”

“Each time we're deploying capital, we're thinking, well, at least this money is deployed for five years, but ideally we're trying to deploy money for 10 years in a business and make 10, 15 times our money.”

“Probably half of the investing we've done is in US-based businesses. The other half is in Australian businesses, and there's been a little bit in Canada, done a very small number of investments in Europe.”

“So we've made around 65 investments over the course of TDM's life, and we've lost money three times, and we've lost material money two out of those three times.”

“And on average, we've held about 20% of the portfolio in cash.”