Year in Review: 2024
A frustrating year: Not much success but lots of new ideas. In the past most of my work has been in the public domain (so no need to record) but I wanted to write a year in review, so I don’t forget.
What I did in 2024:
Investigated IP recycling strategy:
- Looked for niches where old IP could be reused/repackaged/updated and resold to modern audience. Settled on two niches; old video games and productivity tools (notepads, calendars etc). There is a certain combination of attributes I focused on; these appear to indicate IP is a good fit for repurposing.
- Spoke with five IP owners and together with a colleague at a large family office, made offers on one which was declined.
- Productivity apps have mostly been subsumed by larger suites/microsoft/google etc. There are niches but I couldn’t find a program that met all of my criteria. Video games were a stronger prospect and already seeing some success (e.g. Nightdive) on larger titles using the same strategy.
- Sellers in the niche were personal sellers (e.g. solo/small group devs) not corporates which adds a wrinkle. Feasible multiples (3-5x revenue) appeared too small to be attractive to that type of seller.
- I received offers to sell a white-labelled copy with an unlimited license for my own use, but that was not attractive.
- I got an idea of some metrics from the seller, and learned publicly available indicators (e.g. # of reviews) can be used to accurately approximate revenue. My estimate of annual revenue on this 19-year-old program was accurate within 10%, and the number is larger than you’d think.
- While unsuccessful, this strategy I think is viable, the market is there and it’s too small at the bottom end for large players to compete.
- To execute properly likely needs an edge; something like an estate sale, forced seller, corporate divesting non-core assets to pay down debt/finance future projects, that type of thing.
- Released two mods for old video games
- In parallel with the above idea, I created & released two mods for old video games, testing the hypothesis that iterative development combo’d with true fans would be attractive.
- I think this was borne out with over 3000 total downloads – not bad for two weeks work and 17 total updates on a 7-year-old and a 23-year-old game.
- The numbers in this biz are small (single digit hundreds of thousands $) but that is why the opportunity exists; the pool is too shallow for a lot of capital.
- Incidentally I also made $5 in ad revenue, which is the smallest amount of money I have ever made on anything but was absurdly satisfying to generate, I am very proud of this $5.
- Important overlap here was it helped me keep tech skills/thought processes active and also helped me get better at going 0-1 (more on this below)
Refined my thoughts on management:
- Twitter followers know good management is a huge interest of mine – and also a lot of fun – and I need to keep my eye in the game / keep getting reps in.
- Published my manifesto on what good management is and where it comes from and circulated it. Feedback was strongly positive and I received a meaningful amount of inbound, but this is just a starting point.
- Crystallised wins in 3 management turnaround stories (CDPR, UBI, MTRO).
- CDPR is a founder-led business whose org practices have not scaled to meet the scale of the organisation, leading to the disastrous CP2077 launch. This is one of the best investments I have ever made; I was long from 360 to 700 and then called the short down to 80. Bought more at 80 and doubled my money.
- MTRO was a management turnaround story that didn’t quite work out. I published the thesis here. Ultimately, it didn’t work out, and I made around +30% in 3 years which is not bad for riding the stock down 75% into an emergency recap. I think this an excellent example of buying high uncertainty where there is a crystal clear, defined path to low uncertainty. I would make this trade again & am actively watching for more high-to-low uncertainty situations.
- UBI is a mismanaged video game studio and I have 3x in a row bought puts and calls either side of its then-current price and sold them at 30-50% profits. Yves Guillemot is flailing, and I don’t think he is likely to figure it out; but if he does the stock is worth multiples. It’s either worth >40 or <10 and I simply don’t know which, but I keep an eye on it.
- For new followers, I don’t do stocks anymore so don’t follow me for this, but I do keep an eye on mismanaged companies and try to call the outcome as this helps me get reps in / keep my eye in the game.
Getting better at going 0-1.
I am very good at seeing things which are not working and fixing them. I am less good at going 0-1 and want to get better. I pursued a couple of initiatives; the video game mods above were an easy way to start with 0 investment (as all of the assets, framework, and distribution already exist). I also:
- Started & abandoned MVP LinkedIn/personal Rolodex. LinkedBin is a dogshit app which encourages you to collect connections like Pokemon. I wanted something closer to a personal CRM for building & maintaining genuine, authentic relationships as I am reaching the upper limits of what I can feasibly maintain without tooling. There are products like this out there I reviewed, but they don’t quite scratch the itch for me. Pursuing this further was likely to require much more effort than was feasible.
- Launched CareerRehearsal.
- A recurring theme is finding a good way to keep getting management reps in and this is a great way for me to keep up my hiring skills while not hiring.
- Early days but so far, we are consistently delivering the “oh wow” moment – although it’s usually a “oh shit, I am really unprepared to interview, I’m glad I did this first”, time will tell whether people really want to pay for that.
- Customer acquisition is hard.
- This will grow into some sort of management training/consulting offering but that is a work in progress.
Spent 3 months meeting with VCs/FOs to find struggling business to help out with.
- Those of you that follow me on Twitter know I am big on fixing stuff to enable orgs to run better.
- I think this was a flawed approach. Meetings were interesting but ultimately unsuccessful for couple reasons:
- By time a startup is struggling, investors usually turned down funding rounds, so relationships are frayed/ there isn’t really a mechanism for an introduction. Some investors had really hostile views towards these portfolio company CEOs and in several memorable cases seemed “glad” to see them fail.
- When the pie is a fixed size and people are arguing over how to divide it up, better pay close fucking attention to who you have in your cap stack.
- Also, I think there are some credibility concerns / PMF issues on my part, didn’t niche down the offering narrow enough so it was hard to create a clear fit / clear ask. My fault & a learning experience.
- By time a startup is struggling, investors usually turned down funding rounds, so relationships are frayed/ there isn’t really a mechanism for an introduction. Some investors had really hostile views towards these portfolio company CEOs and in several memorable cases seemed “glad” to see them fail.
- Parallel to this initiative I also met with several companies looking for leadership talent to help overcome blockers in their core biz.
- This is an ongoing interest and my time will come.
- Thanks to Mark Tanner who gave me the right idea at the right time, which unlocked a lot of doors for me.
- It is true that you can reflexively will doors into existence, and then open them.
Miscellaneous side quests:
- Lost 9 kilos. Bout time I got rid of that Covid weight.
- Deepened relationship with the love of my life. Learned to Salsa. God is good.
- Investigated the Magic cards market after I started playing with my gf (<<LINK)(Couldn’t help myself).
- The game has changed, they are no longer a true collectible imo. The retailer is naturally optimising for retail sales and not the secondary market; these are now mere playing cards with a short shelf life.
- However, I did identify two possible edges/arbitrages and put $500 behind each with a view to doubling money (edge 1) and +30-50%ing (edge 2). Time will tell.
Thank you for reading, and a special thanks to Tom Aouad, Nathan Clark, Dan Nolan, Mark Tanner, and a dozen or so Twitter anons who opened doors and/or helped me out on various occasions. You know who you are.
Currently, I am looking to meet with companies <$10m revenue and <50 staff. I am a data PM with leadership skills looking to build and grow data products.
At time of publication, the author owned shares in CD Projekt Red and call options on Ubisoft. Updates may not be provided in relation to future trades in any company. This is a disclosure and not a recommendation.
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