Have been lucky to meet with or study hundreds of companies in 2021.

Here's an ongoing list of company attributes that I find interesting...

1. Operations Focus

“Amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics.” A grand vision is great, but the best companies are often focused on challenging but tangible near term goals. If a founder can’t move from vision to on the ground details quickly...bad sign

2. Life’s work

To borrow a concept from @nikiscevak, it is thrilling to find someone doing their “life’s work.” When someone's personal path lines and formative experiences line up with the problem a company is solving, I get excited. "Life's work" is a source of perseverance

3. Synchronized team

Well managed internal communication is a huge advantage.

This is often evident

1) in internal routines, words and phrases with unique meaning

and

2) consistent answers to questions about the company’s plans from a variety of different insiders

4. Jobs as a product

I like when management teams view jobs inside their business as a product to be built, designed, and sold like any other product.

Everyone is struggling to hire great talent, so a differentiated strategy in hiring matters as much as anything.

(1/8) The best, most succinct, description of network effects in SaaS that I’ve ever heard:

Good companies only have one vector on which to monetize, which is selling software.

Generational companies have two vectors. Software contracts and net-new users added to the network.

(2/8) The dirty little secret of SaaS is that software is rapidly becoming commoditized. It’s too easy to build

Network effects are how you build a defensible moat around your business

Marketplaces are how you monetize those network effects.

Let’s look at $ADBE as an example

(3/8) To my count $ADBE has five marketplaces:
- Software: Integrations + Apps built for $ADBE ecosystem
- Services: Onboarding, training etc
- Talent: Hiring people who know Adobe
- Assets: Buy and sell creative assets
- Education: Resources to Teach with Adobe

(4/8) Software Marketplace: App Exchange.

$ADBE has 3 Clouds - Creative, Experience, Document.

2 types of activity. Integration of existing apps, but also apps built specifically for $ADBE. Rev split is 90/10.

$ADBE is stickier the more it integrates w/ everything else.

(5/8) Adobe Solutions Partners

$ADBE offers services by thousands of Partners in every region of the world. Everything from training, onboarding to integrations and more.

1) It’s not feasible for $ADBE to deliver these in house
2) Customers get regional, specialized support

Volume expansion in tasty bites will be due to new product additions, new geographical expansions due to Mars supply chain and distribution network and volume expansion in all those geographies.With current low turnover base growth could be huge in next 8-10 years.

There is big optionality of contract manufacturing for other Mars products or other big brands also built into this business.They have recently started contract mfg for keventers agro foods. They are also doing contract manufacturing for a big TV chef based out of UK.

The management of tasty bites has impeccable track record of execution and have a mega capex in process where they have already spent 30Cr and and additional 150 Cr they are going to spend. This should be sufficient to atleast triple their topline with my conservative estimates.

Mars group- The current promoters of Tasty Bites has an annual turnover of approximately 3 Lakh crores annually and is privately owned. It is amongst the top 10 richest families in the world.
They have a knack of building superb brands and scaling businesses.

Few of the top notch world famous brands owned by Mars.