Friday Live Rounds – Fascinating M&A deal today, even more than Fox buying Roku, – NYT’s hush-hush deal acquiring ‘Letterboxd’, a community of Cinephiles, sharing stories on movies.
Lesson: Letterboxd driving S on 7s is style, cool and collective (community).
Style Sells: NYT’s locked them down in exclusive negotiations – price is set at $300 million or 20x earnings.
Communities highly sought after in M&A deals because conversion theory – sell captive customers other stuff.
And it never works post deal. Lots of communities in M&A grave yard.
But buyers buy it in due diligence in a pretty pro forma.
Bar Stool readers had a 2% conversion rather than 45% projected. Buyers sell more of these community deals back to original seller for pennies on dollar or in Bar Stool’s case $1.
More Live Rounds – first, I’m not as smart as I think – losing my ass on this shrimp boat venture. Nostalgia and friends are two hurdles to wealth accumulation. We fall to pieces.
Atlanta restaurants are not buying $14.35 pound wild shrimp vs $2.35 Bangladesh farm shrimp – shouldn’t there be law against letting these creatures in. Let the people in, not shrimp.
Sitting on boat I see shark teeth in nets and shark line on reels.
New Plan: Diversify – Shark tooth necklace with shark fish line with sinker leads (technical shrimp talk). COGs 35 cents, price $12.95. Text me.
Tougher than the Rest. Emmy Lou Harris.
After Iran war started, I rotated stocks and lost a 6% gain. Spears came in.
Rotated stocks morning day of election – so far in tech portfolio I’ve saved 17% loss.
Sitting in cash for a crash. Fake shark teeth?
Unsung Heroes. These American founders were absolutely brilliant in how they set us up to keep democracy – face voters every two years.
Looking at 252 years later 2028 – my guess best for country – Sane Republican President and Democratic Congress. We got half.
Most frequent question this week – why did Trump lose. I compiled list.
– The gas prices.
– The war.
– The corruption.
– The data centers.
– The tariffs.
– Playing nice with Russia.
– The cruelty.
– The overly aggressive deportations.
– The accidental arrests of American citizens who were Hispanic.
– The ballroom.
– The reflecting pool that doesn’t reflect.
– The Qatari 747.
– The threats against our allies.
By the way, I’m scratching the tip of the iceberg.
Namecalling.
Gerrymandering.
Bubble gum shrimp, etc.
The latest odds on Kalshi, the prediction market, that Anthropic will go public before Dec. 1 have fallen sharply in the past week.
I’m betting no.
I am asked if I will start publishing my Kalshi trades. Dude, I did like 5pm Tuesday before election.
