Graham Weaver
speaker
351 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2025
last heard May 2025
Graham Weaver’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
We had a lot of deals that just didn't go well, but probably the worst deal we did was this slot machine business that we owned. It was the worst deal. It wasn't economically the worst deal, but it just was so consuming. So we put money in the slot machine business. Made them manufactured?
They made basically software that went into slot machines, and then they assembled the slot machines somewhere else and put them in casinos. They put them in a rev share, so we'd give away the machine for quote free, and then we'd get 20% of the win. So it had a recurring revenue element to it. It was on paper a good business. We sold to Native American tribes, which was exploding at the time.
This was probably the early 2000s. Native American tribes were just growing their gaming presence. So all those fundamentals... or the reason we did it. But there was just something, and I'm sorry, I'm going to probably offend a lot of people here, but there's just something about that industry where there was still an undercurrent of some people that weren't playing by the rules.
A few things were tough about that. Number one is we just had way too much money in it. We had... co-invest in the deal. We were in a $68 million fund at the time, and we had $170 million in the business, including co-invest. So it was just like too big to fail. So we had to make it work. I became CEO of the business. One of my partners was basically the CFO.
We had technology, we had customer concentration, we had CapEx. We had product obsolescence. It was a very hard business to run. And then there was just, again, this element of like, you're competing with some people that don't follow the rules or the law. It was just this undercurrent. It just didn't feel right a lot of the time.
And I still remember this one time, someone would ask me about it and I'd say, oh, you know, it's just entertainment and the median income of people who play slots is actually higher and they can afford it. And I'd have all those things I'd say. And then I remember this one time I walked, we had these like local casinos. I remember one time walking in and there was this,
five-year-old girl sitting outside with a coloring book and her mom was in there blowing her paycheck. I just was like, I don't want to be in this business. It consumed a lot of our time. That was probably the worst deal we ever did. It set us back quite a bit.
How did you work it out? What was the end of the story?
We saved the deal because we read that Illinois was going to open up and put slot machines in bars. And Illinois is like the fifth or sixth most populous state in the US. We were like, oh my God, this is going to happen. It was going to happen in like a year, then it was two years and three years. But in the meantime, we went around Illinois and made deals with all the bars.
They had no money coming in. These bars weren't making any money. So we'd pay them X dollars to have the rights to put slots in their bars. And we were like three years ahead of time, ahead of people. So then- When the, thankfully, the law finally passed and the games came out, we were the largest or second largest supplier in that market.
And then we were able to sell the business on the back of that. Did you earn a return on the equity, on the 170? Initial equity was about a 3X. And then some of the late equity was like a 1X. Everybody, the banks got paid back. Every one of our investors made their money. Plus we had some preferred equity. They got all paid.
So it was like, we did escape, but yeah, we'd never want to bet our business on one.
So in addition to the concentration lesson is the other key lesson. Just don't back businesses where you're not a fan of the core product or service.
Yeah. For us, you know, I want to think that we're having a... I mean, it sounds cheesy, but we're having a positive impact. The world's a little better because we're building this company. And if I'm being honest, I don't think that was true in that business. What are you most afraid of today?
I told you this when we talked the other day, but my two boys went off to college and it was like the end of a chapter that was really one of the first times I felt like I needed to start facing my mortality. And I think that's the thing I'm the most afraid of is... How long do I have? And like, am I going to be able to do all the things that I want to do in this lifetime?
And this is the only one that I know that we have. And am I doing that right now? Or am I going to look back and have any kind of regrets? That's probably the thing I'm the most afraid of. What have you done about that? I'm in the process of it, honestly.
Like, I think one of the things I've done about it is I try to, whatever I'm in at the moment, just be 100% fully on and fully present and just be all in with a thousand percent of my energy, each thing, and actually ironically not overthink it. And I think that's been the thing that I guess has allowed me to feel the best about the mortality.
Is there anything I think of like pillars supporting the ability to do that day in, day out as like a human biological thing that has limited energy or whatever? This could be anything, what you eat, what you do, whatever the pillars are. What are those pillars for you that let you do that?
I think one of the pillars is that you have spent the time being intentional and spent the time getting in touch with your intuition so that you just know the things you're working on are the things and you don't have to be hedged at all. You're not spending your time, am I in the right job? Am I in the right relationship? Am I living in the right place?
You've already answered those questions, so you can just kind of relax into those things. So a lot of the work that I do on that has allowed me to relax in those things. I think the physical part is massive. I think the most highly correlated thing to having a good day is if I feel good physically. That starts with sleeping well.
Showing 281–300 of 351 · page 15 of 18
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