For some time now, we’ve been working with a senior retired banker from Lazard who is on our board of advisers. We essentially hired him to be our boss, in terms of helping us with strategic decisions, setting priorities, and gaining perspective on events that would help us make better decisions. Mr. P has a…

When we start discussing our heavy usage of weighted averages with customers, we sometimes get a questioning look, until we make the analysis more concrete for them. People are very familiar with using averages; equity analysts regularly look at numbers such as Days of Sales Outstanding that are composite numbers for an entire company. Very…

There is an interesting Forbes article by John Bogle in the November 17 issue. To summarize, Bogle determined that in a recent year, the “financial services” industry effectively took $620 billion off the top for a 7% fee on $9.5 trillion value of stocks, or 2% of a $30 trillion value of bonds, or 1.5%…

We are often approached by small businesses that are seeking capital in connection with strategic and operational advice. For anyone corresponding with us, or frankly for anyone starting to get a handle on an existing business, here’s a short due diligence request list. This list would also serve a new director well to become acquainted…