Thank you.
Naming names
Praise by name, criticize by category.
- Warren Buffett
There is a longer list of people who’ve helped me this year but who are anonymous — both buyside PMs and donors happy to avoid attention. So a thanks to the unnamed friends who have quietly offered ideas and resources. Now I’ll name names.
First and foremost: thank you to my friend and colleague Andrew Walker for the brilliant ideas, research, and conversations this year. I face each podcast worried that I’ll have nothing to add then finish each one wondering how an hour flies by so quickly. 2024 is poised to be our greatest year yet. Or worst! But we certainly have some strong views that will play out in the months ahead.
· Thank you Jeremy Raper for your contribution — I sometimes overlap on ideas but I always learn something from you. They might not feel this way but the targets of your activist letters are so lucky to have you. They’d have to pay a fortune to a management consultant for lower quality advice on how to maximize the value of their equity.
· Thank you to Lionel Hutz for your profound thoughts and deeply researched legal analysis. I don’t want to pollute my enthusiasm for your work with “resulting” — sure there have been some huge winners that you were largely responsible for, but the high caliber of your work preceded that (still winning makes it more fun). I can’t wait for more to come.
It will surprise no one that I think Jeremy and Lionel made two of the biggest contributions to Yet Another Value Podcast this year. I can’t wait to see more of them on YAVP in 2024. Other particularly valuable contributions came from Brian Albrecht and Mike Cohen. There’s no substitute for knowing what you’re talking about. Brian’s economic analysis and Mike’s legal analysis are unmatched. Finally, YAVP is a perfect venue for the managements of our portfolio companies. I’m not saying that it is because of their YAVP appearance that Tidewater’s (TDW) stock doubled, but other CEOs might take note of what happens, so please accept any invitations you get.
I’m delighted that my year-end fundraiser surpassed its goal. It succeeded because of generous donors including Linda Lebrun, Paul Romig, John Ord, Neil Shah, William Ware, Vipul Shah, Jeffrey Sammis, Marshall Grossack, Marc Brown, David Pratt, Barinder Sangha, Rob Gutman, Greg Valenza, Angelo Guerriero, Kyler Hasson, Guido Neethling, Bruce Henley, Sanuel Buckley, Henry McHenry, Carl Onuchovsky, and others who gave anonymously or through their donor advised funds (thankful but not naming names without knowing that their gifts were intended to be public).
A special thanks to three donors who are also old friends in real life or “IRL” as the kids say: Liz Speck who has been a constant friend since freshman orientation, Tom Isenberg who has been with me since my first taste of crispy beef from Shun Lee Palace, and Jonathan Shafter, a trusted friend and ally since the deepest depths of the financial crisis. Liz, Tom, and Jonathan have always been there for me in ways great and small. Friends like that make me want to be at my best. I hope I can be there for them the way they’ve been there for me.
Finally, thanks to Mackinnon Engen for making Watsi such a strong force for good in the world. You are exactly the right person to lead this mission. You have a heart for the patients we serve. You make the process run smoothly. You get the best out of people because your encouragement is so genuine. Every time I have a new idea or make a new donation, your reaction makes me want to offer more. 482 patients in 13 countries is just the start. I enjoyed every minute of our collaboration on the special 3x donation match that we invented and funded. May we build on that to reach more patients!
