Ron Shaich

Death.

Our challenge is why go up and try to build a nationally dominant company without somebody who's been there before, has done that route three, four, five times.

And we basically practice what we call Sherpa management.

When we're in the boardroom,

We don't have financial people.

We're not ever worrying about the liquidity event.

We're in the business of building companies, not selling them.

And we're not looking at the balance sheet.

We're not looking at the numbers so much as really trying to help that management team know what's going to hit them and how to protect them.

I would say, for example, we at Act Three believe that financing, which is at the core of so many companies, should not be seen as a lifecycle event.

You know, so many companies are raising money in an annual or more frequent basis as if...

You know, it should be done every birthday.

Our view is running a company is hard enough work without having to continually be out there selling.

And so when we invest in a company, we're going to put an investment in it.

And then we're going to agree and take a right of first refusal.

on all follow-on rounds of capital at a pre-agreed to multiple.

So we're all in alignment.

It's an easy thing.

And the truth is we have yet to ever turn down a follow-on round of capital up to an IPO.

And for our companies, they've never, ever worried about capital.