Ron Shaich

You know, being right isn't enough unless you can get it done.

And I guess what I'm trying to argue for is not micromanaging, not getting into the detail, because that's the only place you know how to operate, but being able to use the detail to extract and learn.

Like, I'll tell you a story, Shane.

I go to visit restaurants we own all the time,

I'm not going to check out the people who work there.

They all think I am.

But I'm not going to catch somebody doing something wrong.

I'm actually going to check out myself and our senior management and how are we doing in projecting a vision of how we compete and then delivering that down through an organization and a group of people to actually get it done.

What we're trying to do is build the next generation of great companies.

And we're doing that based on an understanding that building better competitive alternatives is everything.

And we want to enable and help companies become the best competitive alternative in categories that have extraordinary power.

We have a couple of principles.

Number one, we believe in founder-friendly capital.

So when we go in, we hope it's the last investment capital that gets taken before an IPO.

Generally, we will come in as common stock, not preferred, same place as the management team.

And we will typically take a right of first refusal on all follow-on rounds of capital, have never turned it down, and essentially have enabled our founding teams to feel confident that they have unlimited capital behind them.

Secondly, we practice what we call Sherpa management, not venture capital.

When we're in the boardroom, we're not looking at the next liquidity event.

When we're in the boardroom, we're actually in there helping solve real problems.

Typically, and most often, we're saying you need to put more overhead here, not there.