used to be in a rush.

I wanted to complete projects quickly. And I wanted to get rich fast.

When I started my first business, my plan was to run the business for 5 years, sell it, get rich, and move on.

I raised some venture capital and was encouraged by my investors to grow as fast as I could.

I was young and naive. So I did as they told me, and I spent all of the money I raised to bring more users to our business.

VC investors often invest in companies based on how much and how fast you grow. Speed is a key metric.

The emphasis on speed distracted me from developing a good business.

I lost sight of the underlying unit economics. It was a big mistake.

Before I raised money, it was a nice small business. A profitable business that I could have scaled slowly and methodically to something that was meaningful for me and my business partner.

But I was drunk on the idea of being on the front page of TechCrunch (​we did​). Having fancy VCs back us. And growing something quickly that a lot of people would recognize.

But none of those things pay the bills.

By the time I realized my mistake, I had sold a big piece of my company and spent a lot of money on acquiring customers that were not very profitable to us. A major mistake.

I jokingly tell people I’m recovering from the tech world (there’s some truth to every joke). It’s less that I’m recovering from tech, and more that I’m recovering from short-term thinking.

Because short-term thinking is a disease. And our society is deeply afflicted with this disease.

When my business partner approached me with the idea of starting a company, he proposed we build something that we would run the rest of my life. It immediately resonated with me.

I realized that this was the mission I was looking for.

I have a love for building. And a love for old businesses. I light up when I hear that a company has been around for 100+ years.

But if you look around you, the opposite is celebrated. Hustle culture is everywhere. Most businesses report performance in a cadence of weeks, months and quarters.

When a public company CEO misses their quarterly performance, they may get fired by the board.

But beautiful things don’t grow in weeks, months or quarters.

Everything we celebrate takes a long time.

Nature is a good example of this.

1.2 Million people a year visit the General Sherman Tree in Kings Canyon National Park. It took 2,500 years to become the largest tree in the world.

Apple Inc is one of the most celebrated and loved companies in the world. They didn’t get there quickly.

Steve Jobs started Apple in 1976. He was ousted from his company. And didn’t return until 1997.

He released the iPhone in 2007.

It took 30 years for them to release their first true blockbuster product.

Let’s look at one more company.

Standard Oil was started by John D. Rockefeller in 1870. By 1900 it controlled 90% of the US oil production.

In 2006 it was broken up by the Sherman antitrust act into a few different companies. Those companies today are ones you recognize including Chevron, Exxon Mobile, Marathon Oil. Together they make-up nearly $1 Trillion of market cap value.

These two dominant businesses took 30+ years to grow. And they're still thriving today.

What if we all had a long-term term mindset?

If each of us took a 30 year outlook on our mission, how would we shape the world with our policies and enterprises?

I think the world would be a better place.

Unfortunately, many of our society’s incentives are designed to reward short-term thinking.

Some examples:

Quarterly Financials - CEO’s are measured by the public markets on a quarterly basis. So they design their employee incentives around weeks and months.

Media Celebrates Speed - when you read of funding or acquisition announcements, you’ll notice the media celebrates short duration outcomes (ex: “acquired in less than 36 months”)

Short Term Political seats - Two years for Congressional seats means they have 1 year to do the work, and 1 year to rally for new votes

Private Equity management fees and carry - General Partners of Private Equity funds make money when their companies exit. The main metric used is IRR (internal rate of return). Which is driven by a time component. The faster you sell the business, the higher your IRR, and therefore the richer you get.

We can’t fix the world’s incentives today. But we can fix ourselves. We can fix how we think. How we plan our family. How we incentivize and speak in our workplace.

Challenge your co-workers to think long term about themselves, and about their careers.

The mere act of talking about this will change how you think.

Here’s a question to ask at your next dinner party:

“if you had to work on something for 20 years, what would it be?”

Watch people puzzle and delight in this crazy idea. They may hear themselves say something they didn’t expect.

For your investing strategies, I encourage you to put on your long term thinking cap.

If you’re planning on making an investment, how would you act differently "if you’re only allowed to make a total of 10 investments in the next 20 years?"

Would you still do this investment in front of you? why or why not?

When I started Enduring Ventures we immediately committed to a 20 year journey.

I felt a rush of relief come over me.

A long journey means no individual mistake will sink you. Because no individual action matters as much. As long as we make good decisions, learn, and put in hard work over time, everything else will take care of itself.

I'm going on a journey to study long-term thinking, and I'd like to invite you to tag along.

Thinking long-term may feel alien at first. Because most of our muscles around long-term thinking have atrophied.

But we're going to practice, and study.

To start, I'm reading about entities that are fighting the disease of short-term thinking, and are pursuing structures and missions designed for the long term.

Here are four interesting groups and resources you can read about:

The Long Now Foundation - is a foundation created to foster long-term thinking. Its stated mission is to help each other become better ancestors and preserve possibilities for the future. Some of its projects include: a ​Rosetta Disk​, a long-term archive of all the worlds languages on a 3 inch disk(!); ​Long Bets​, a forum for discussion and making and executing long-term bets. And the ​10,000 year old clock​ (more on this below).

The Clock of Long Now is a clock being built by the Long Now Foundation that is designed to run for 10,000 years. It was funded in recent years by Jeff Bezos to encourage people to think long-term. I love the principles and requirements set out for the building of the project:

1. Longevity: the clock should be accurate after 10,000 years, and must not contain valuable parts that may be looted.
2. Maintainability: Future generations should be able to keep the clock working, with nothing more advanced than Bronze Age tools and materials.
3. Transparency: The clock should be understandable without stopping or disassembling it; no functionality should be opaque.
4. Evolvability: It should be possible to improve the clock over time.
5. Scalability: To ensure the final large clock will work properly, smaller prototypes must be built and tested.

If I could apply these to every company we buy - our returns would increase no doubt.

The Long-Term Stock Exchange (LTSE) - I’m a believer that capitalism is a positive driver for humanity. If you can properly align capitalism with positive outcomes for humans, it will be (and has been) an engine for growth and prosperity.

Unfortunately, the main two stock exchanges in the US, the Nasdaq and NY Stock Exchange are designed around short-term thinking and incentives as I mentioned above.

Short-term rewards (quarterly incentives) introduce volatility and bad business decisions.

The long-term stock exchange encourages shareholders, board members, and executives to make decisions based on multi-year or multi-decade outcomes.

I'm excited to see more companies go live with the LTSE (for now there are 6 companies on the LTSE).

Tugboat Institute (​link​) named for the slow and steady boats used to move giant barges. The Tugboat institute has a mission to support and cultivate evergreen companies and their leaders. Evergreen companies are built with purpose and designed to adapt and grow profitably for over 100 years.

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🔑 Come see me speak in Columbia, Missouri

I’m speaking at ​Mainstreet Summit​. It’s like Coachella for Small Business Buyers. They gave me a $500 off discount code for a few guests of mine. And I’m going to pick 10 of my readers to receive the discount code. If you want to receive the discount code, follow these instructions:

1. forward this newsletter to 10 people (send me a screenshot of your outbox as proof)
2. reply to this email tell me why you want to come

If you’re coming to the event, please reach-out. I’m likely going to host a little get together before or after my talk there for our community.

🔑 interesting read of the week

On theme for today’s newsletter, here is a writer I’ve been following for a little while. Brian Feroldi writes a weekly newsletter called Long Term Mindset.

He writes about a variety of investing topics. My favorite content from him distills the process of underwriting and understanding a company valuation ​before investing read past issues here​.

Use this link to instantly (one click) ​sign-up to his newsletter​.

Have a great week,

Sieva

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PS: I did a podcast interview on The Fort that was published last week with Chris Powers. In it, I share details on how our business is structured and how we think about aligning ourselves with our shareholder incentives. Hopefully, it’s helpful to you, or someone in your network who is on their investing journey. Listen to on ​Apple​, ​Spotify​, ​Youtube​.