Evan Ferl’s Post

Is there anything more liberating than cancelling video streaming services? Let's check it out >> Somewhere along the way we diverged from the "good timeline" for video streaming tech. Video streaming was initially thought to free us from the grip of cable packages, sitting through endless commercials for laundry detergent, and reduce our spend while narrowing our viewing to only the content that mattered to us. Now? We sit in front of a tv paying for 6-7 streaming services, all of which pump out terabytes of throwaway content and have slowly and quietly raised their prices at or above the cost that we used to pay for a single cable subscription. Where is the future where I can just pay for Lakers games, college football on saturdays, and old reruns of pawnstars? Who is building this?

ZIRP M&A is (hopefully) dead. Let's check it out >> Having seen both buy and sell side ZIRP deals, I am hopeful that we've seen the last of "doing deals just to do deals". As much as us lawyers, corp dev, finance-type folk love "doing deals", just saw way too many "what if we miss the boat" deals get thrown together and then left on the shelf after-purchase. Because why not? You're company is "worth" 40x ARR, and you're acquiring a company at 20x ARR, that's arbitrage...right? And although these deals make founders, execs, and (preferred) share holders lots of cash (cool?) they can end up hurting existing teams in integration and post-deal swirl, and hurt acquired teams (emotionally, professionally, etc.) if the right resources, time, and thought isn't put into the product that everyone was so excited about leading up to close. Now luckily, I've also been a part of some really important and company-defining M&A, so - it wasn't all bad during ZIRP - but lets hope the good starts to thoughtfully outweigh the bad as we become smarter about capital deployment. At Altumare Capital - the businesses we acquire are all put through the same diligence, review, and discussion around capital allocation, synergies to existing businesses, and a full and unanimous commitment to post-deal/integration success. Well, (i) because we can't afford to miss at this stage as an emerging fund, but (ii) these are not just investors dollars, they're really peoples lives behind each of these deals (employees AND customers alike) How are you handling M&A post-ZIRP?

The importance of remembering just how far you've come... Let's check it out >> yesterday, my good friend and fellow University of Florida alumni Dr. Heshan "Grasshopper" Illangkoon PhD sent me this photo of us during his visit to the old Hired offices on 2nd street in SF. then he reminded me it was taken SIX YEARS AGO. Feels like yesterday. The day we met (almost to twenty years ago now)? Feels like the day before that. but what hides behind my currently unfolding existential crisis regarding my own mortality is an appreciation for just how far we've both come in our careers - since we met - and especially since this picture. we tend to remember and reflect on our personal lives regularly - but why not our professional lives? this picture allowed me the time to sit back and appreciate who these guys were (two young professionals just hitting their stride, and with incredible hair), to who they've become now (innovators, founders, entrepreneurs - still with incredible hair btw). and i'm pretty proud of them both. so today i encourage everyone to take a moment and reflect on just how far you've come. just how far we've all come. it's pretty cool.

Before I was a (semi-serious) in-house counsel, I was a (less-serious) professional stand up comedian. And I attribute almost 100% of my career trajectory to it. Despite my parents assuredness it would ruin my professional life, it actually ended up being the catalyst for it. Spending close to a decade traveling across the country, performing at venues (of varying levels of floor stickiness), to crowds (of varying levels of intoxication) taught me a lot about how to talk to, and connect with, people of all different professional and personal backgrounds. A super important skill for those of us in-house attorneys. And one that landed me my first gig (which came down to a final interview where the chief counsel ended up discovering my Youtube channel...could have easily gone the other way on that one). I found that comedy ended up shaping both my verbal, as well as written communication. Years of legal training, learning how to speak and write "perfectly" (according to law schools), quickly melted away as I instead learned that connecting with people is more important than formatting a citation correctly (at least for me it was). Once I started talking, and writing, like me - and not an old dusty book - I started really being able to connect - to make an impact. Long story short? You don't need to be a stand up comedian to learn this lesson - you just gotta be you. And appreciate other people and who they are too. (Plus I don't think I was ever really that good at citations anyways.)

"You put people in the right place and you give people the right tools, they're going to succeed" Last week I had the opportunity to join my good friend and colleague Antoine Valentone, MSML on his podcast "iBme/ uBu", where we talked about IPOs, the essence of the technology industry as a whole, and the importance of letting your children run through puddles, among other things. Antoine was one of the first people in my career that I felt truly believed in me, and what I could accomplish (as did many people that I worked with at SumTotal Systems, LLC) and I credit much of my success today to those supporters in my early days. They put in me in positions that there were (very certainly) better people "on paper" for the job, but instead - trusted me to step up and rise to the occasion. I hope I am continuing to do so, and now, am able to do the same for others. I'll be posting a few of my favorite clips from the podcast over the next couple days, and link to the full video in the comments below!

"is your company profitable?" i feel like that's a question every person at a company should know the answer to. not necessarily because everyone needs to be solely fixated on the P&L (that's why we have a finance team, right?) or because every company needs to be profitable at every moment in time. but because transparency and context as to business performance should shape every decision the business makes. example: i'm sure we've all been at companies where software and services are bought at random (3 different project management tools in one org?), headcount is requested ahead of or without actual need, etc. (a by product of building through ZIRP) and each of those moves is just another papercut at the expense of, and usually without the context of, its impact to the business at large. there are of course different philosophies, some believe if they're transparent about (particularly poor) biz performance it will cause attrition, others believe the opposite will be true during the good times (resting and vesting) but i like to believe that if you build the right team, transparency is always a force for good - and contextualizing decisions can only lead to better results. in the early days here at Altumare Capital - it certainly has. am i wrong? is radical transparency around company performance a net-positive or net-negative?

To all in-house attorneys: challenge yourself to be (actual) operators. Not just business partners. Operators. I think all in-house attorneys should try and take on real, actual, operational roles within the companies they represent. Ideally, small aspects of the business they directly support. If nothing else, businesses should give bandwidth to their in-house teams to rotate into these business teams and learn what its actually like to (1) sign a commercial deal from cultivation to close, (2) scope, build, and release product, (3) design and launch a marketing campaign, etc. When we hire our first attorney at Altumare Capital (no, not me), they're going to do just that, I can assure you. As legal partners to the business, we can do all we can to appreciate how the sausage is made, but we won't truly understand until we actually make the sausage ourselves. Go out there and operate. You'll be a better attorney for it.

…And it’s official! Altumare Capital has closed its first acquisition and is welcoming its second founding member, Mark Doody! Mark joins Altumare Capital from owning and operating one of the fastest growing home services businesses in Southern California (yes, the very one Altumare just acquired!) Having worked with Mark in a prior life, I’m absolutely thrilled to get to do it again, this time in our shared capacity as founding members here at Altumare Capital. In a short period of time, Mark has proven you can take a patchwork of a company - with a P&L written mostly on the back of receipts and scattered across iphone notes - and turn it into an operationally efficient, high margin, cash flowing business. Huge first milestone to what is already turning into an amazing portfolio with more updates around fund I, other targets, and future deals to follow. Welcome Mark - let’s build something awesome, together! www.altumarecapital.com

Is there a better recent example of diminishing marginal utility than CLEAR? Started out as a super elite "pay for precheck...then pay for us too!" service with a small user base and one key defining feature (skip to the front of the line) - but now literally every CLEAR line i've seen is longer than not only pre-check, but even regular boarding. A mass of people paying $200 a year to wait longer than if they hadn't paid anything at all. After extensive scientific testing (namely, me watching the lines move in numerous domestic airports), I can see no better example of this in action. Paying more does not always yield more.