Jay Hoag

And the way to generate returns could be through the facile use of leverage.

It could be through cost cutting.

It could be through lots of different acquisitions and consolidations.

And the best of those firms also generate good returns.

But I think much more through financial measures than otherwise.

And in a world where rates went down for decades,

10 years, 15 years, that was a huge tailwind.

I'm not a forecaster of interest rates, so I can't say whether that'll be a headwind or not.

But I think that was a huge tailwind.

Growth sits in between.

And the original virtues were investing after the technology risk has been eliminated.

So a product or service is available.

Consumers are touching it or enterprises are touching it or small businesses are touching it.

And our job then is to evaluate the rate of market adoption and then help grow those companies.

The benefit of growth is you're typically investing in a decent sized business that hopefully means a hopefully senior in the structure.

Your risk of principal loss is quite low.

And then if you're fortunate to stumble into the Expedia or Netflix or Spotify or Revolut in Europe or others, you're generating returns from very rapid growth.

Ends up about half our businesses were profitable at the time we invest, half are not.

But the compound effect of top line growth and very high incremental operating margins means ultimately earnings are growing a lot faster.

And that's how we generate our growth.