Tom Hardin

So, yeah, so now in the mid-2000s, I know what's going on.

I know my competition is doing it.

I never felt I'd be in the position to get that information because usually you had to have contacts inside these Silicon Valley companies, these tech stocks who were leaking information.

And so what some hedge funds do, who had it as their business model, was they would hire a stock analyst from a Yahoo or a Microsoft or a Cisco agency.

who could call back to their contacts at the company and say, hey, either what companies are you going to buy?

Because we'll buy those stocks.

Or here's what Wall Street is thinking you're going to have for this quarter for their earnings.

What are you actually going to do?

And so I didn't have those connections.

I was just really good with Excel, valuing companies, picking my Google and my Yellow Page ideas.

But that was going to be long term.

At my second firm, we lost money the first quarter of investing, which shouldn't have mattered because we were investing over a one to three year horizon.

Now, one of the pivotal moments is my boss came into my office after that first quarter.

He said, I know we're investing longer term, Tom, but we just lost money in the first quarter.

We're a small startup.

You know, he's sweating.

He's like, we got to start looking for opportunities to make money every month or we may not survive.

Now, when any goal in any business goes from one to three years to monthly, the opportunity to start.

cutting corners certainly increases.

And I'd also say for a lot of industries, it's like that ambiguous message from the boss, just do what it takes.