The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 29 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Beshore: Using zero debt in acquisitions generates higher long-term returns
“You create higher returns over time by using little to no debt as weird as that is in the finance world.”
Beshore: Companies sold to traditional private equity permanently lose operational independence
“Once you get on that treadmill, like once you sell the private equity, traditional private equity, do a leverage buyout that, that business is forever going to be flipped to the next person. Or eventually might get sold as strategic, but it forever is relegate…”
Beshore: Debt is an amplifier of return, not a source of return
“Debt is not a source of return. It is an amplifier of return. So it makes good things Be great. It can take mediocre things and destroy them. And of course it takes bad things and nukes them.”
Beshore: A passive index of small businesses eventually trends to zero
“The reality is over a long enough period of time, that index is zero. Like it's really hard. The governance of these things is difficult. Like the norm for most small businesses is entropy is decay. Is dying a slow death and being wound down. Like that's a nor…”
Beshore: Gaining personal awareness without healing is worse than ignorance
“If you gain awareness without healing, it's way worse than not being aware.”
Beshore: Insisting on paying every dinner bill is covert social control
“In a friendship, in a real relationship, you cede control to the other person. The other person concedes control to you. It's not, you're always controlling. The whole point of a friendship is that you can trust and you can be vulnerable and you can cede contr…”
Beshore: Risks early exploitation to test new business partners' trustworthiness
“One of my favorite things to do is, is be almost opened myself up to being taken advantage of early on in a relationship. So if they do, then you're like, okay, great.”
Beshore: Short-Term Capital and Time Horizons Prevent Sound Long-Term Decisions
“There's no way
To make good long-term decisions with short-term capital with short-term time horizons.
There's no way.”
Beshore: Private equity holding a business past five years signals deep distress
“Most private equity firms now are targeting what they'd like is two to three years. So from the time we buy something till the time we sell it is two or three years. Again, maybe four or five. If you get past five, it's really distressed at that point.”
Beshore: Permanent Equity takes zero management fees or reimbursements
“We take no fees of any kind, no reimbursements of any kind. There's no cash that comes from either our LPs or the companies to us. Zero guaranteed revenue”
Beshore: Expecting to rapidly transform a 30-year-old business is hubris
“Like if you've, if the business has been operating a certain way on a certain trajectory for 30 years, it is nothing but hubris to come in and think that within a short period of time, you're going to completely change the trajectory of the business.”
Beshore: Roughly 80% of small businesses are unknowingly breaking government regulations
“My guess is 80% of the small businesses out there are either knowingly or should know that they're breaking some sort of rules.”
Beshore: Scaling a HoldCo means repeatedly reinvesting overhead, resetting cashflow to zero
“So every time on the way at the cycle up, you've got to pass through this gauntlet of over and over and over again.”
Beshore: Unsolicited 'Heroic' Help Diminishes Others by Stripping Their Agency
“Heroes create victims because you're removing all agency from them. And you are telling them that they can't help themselves, that they are helpless. And when you do that, you are creating somebody who is diminished and insulted.”
Beshore: Fear provides short-term high-octane drive but ultimately causes burnout
“That fear is like, it's higher octane almost. It's higher octane. The problem is it's got all kinds of contaminants in it and you eventually like torch yourself and the car breaks down and you go off the rails and blow yourself up, whatever analogy you want to…”
Beshore: Excess stress and cortisol nearly caused him to lose an eye
“To the degree that I almost lost my right eye as a result of excess cortisol in my system.”
Beshore: Alcohol is one of the biggest testosterone inhibitors in men
“Alcohol is one of, men, especially one of the biggest inhibitors of testosterone.”
Beshore: Scarcity mindsets are contagious, requiring active protection for abundance cultures
“As soon as, I mean, if you look at the game theory of scarcity, as soon as one person acts scarce, the fear ripples through the entire crowd and love is fragile. Care is genuinely fragile. This, either this fear mindset or this abundance mindset, love mindset,…”
Beshore: Permanent Equity has never bought a business with debt on it
“We've never seen a business that we want to purchase ever in the history of the firm that has debt on it. Like when we buy it, that has debt on it.”
Beshore: Permanent Equity prefers acquiring 51% to 70% of a business
“We don't want to buy a hundred percent of a company, right? Like if we have our choice, we're buying 51% to 70% of the business. And we want, we don't allow non strategic actors.”
Beshore: Traditional private equity beats Permanent Equity at executive accountability
“Since we're talking about comparing us to traditional private equity, I would say is one of the things that traditional private equity has gotten done better than us in some ways is, is held people accountable.”
Beshore: Executive careers often end by suicide, not homicide
“Careers often die by suicide, not by homicide.”
Beshore: Permanent Equity underwrites acquisitions assuming zero growth
“Often assuming for most of the deals we do that there is no growth. So we want the business to underwrite with no change in trajectory.”
Beshore: External-processor CEOs risk developing inappropriate boundaries with their subordinates
“If you're an external processor and you're the CEO, you have no one to externally process with, or you end up creating inappropriate relationships with people who work for you.”
Beshore: Permanent Equity has never sold an acquired portfolio company
“We've never sold anything. So, I mean, we still own everything. I shouldn't keep caveat in that. It's not like we've sold anything.”
Beshore: Permanent Equity targets $3M free cash flow for platform acquisitions
“Minimum sort of three, three million dollars of free cashflow, not a hard and fast rule. We've done some smaller deals, but on average for new platforms were, you know, three million.”
Beshore: Permanent Equity manages capital committed on 30-year time horizons
“Getting to serve the families and the institutions that give us capital, the trust with their capital for 30 years, the amount of trust that they have with us to give somebody capital for 30 years.”
Beshore: 'When Helping Hurts' is a foundational book on philanthropy
“There's a great book out there called when helping hurts. And it afterwards, actually somebody gave it to me and I read it. And I mean, you talk about being cut deeply. It's a book about when you try to help and it hurts people. It's one of the One of the best…”
Beshore: Permanent Equity waited four years between its first and second acquisitions
“From the time we bought the first business to the time I bought the second business was four years of toiling away and correcting and learning and trying to get a good foundation of capital and into position to do the next deal.”