Escape velocity out of a small base: management describes the business compounding at a rate its own size cannot absorb
The model's full reasoning — Q4 2016 call → NOThe question asks whether management describes the company as being at a point where the rate of accumulation has become the dominant fact, with management using multiples/repeated doublings of its own recent past, and treating the company as still small against what it's already doing. Let me analyze the transcript for evidence of both conditions. Condition 1: Management repeatedly frames real, already-occurring activity as multiples of what it was. Looking at the transcript: - Leon Black: "the funds we manage together with co-investment partnerships invested $16 billion in aggregate during the year, more capital in a calendar period than ever before in our history" - this is a superlative, not a multiple. - "we were particularly active in private equity were the funds we managed deployed nearly $10 billion in 2016 well in excess of $4 billion to $5 billion per year historical average" - this is roughly 2x, but framed as "well in excess of" historical average. - "the average creation multiple on investments made by Fund VIII during the year was approximately five turns, meaningful below the industry average of some 10.5 times" - this is about purchase multiples, not about the company's own growth. - Josh Harris: "Only 27 billion or one-third of our Carry eligible AUM was generating Carry at the end of 2015. At present, the pool of Carry-Generating asset has more than doubled to 56 billion, representing nearly two-thirds of our total Carry eligible assets." - This is a doubling, but it's about carry-generating assets, which is a real activity. - "FRE is a metric that has grown from less than $0.50 per share in 2011 to $1.30 in 2016, which represents nearly a threefold increase over the past five years." - This is a threefold increase, but over five years, not a recent period. - "Athene, which represents $71 billion of Apollo's AUM was created just eight years ago" - this is about growth over eight years. - "In aggregate, these and other non-traditional asset management structures currently represent approximately $100 billion in aggregate or just over 50% of our total AUM, which is a significant increase from just eight years ago, when these types of vehicles amounted to only $3 billion or less than 10% of our total AUM at the time." - This is a 33x increase, but over eight years.
| Ticker | Company | Call | Date | Call grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DASH | DoorDash, Inc. | Q3 2023 | 2023-11-01 | C+ |
| SYM | Symbotic Inc. | Q3 2022 | 2022-08-01 | B+ |
| SNOW | Snowflake Inc. | Q3 2022 | 2021-12-01 | A |
SNOW · Q3 2022 → YESThe question is about whether management describes the company as accumulating at a rate that's the dominant fact, using multiples or repeated doublings of its recent past, and treating the base as st...YES Frank Slootman repeatedly frames the current state in terms of multiples of the recent past: product revenue “growing 110% year-on-year” (more than doubling), EMEA “up 174%” and Asia-Pacific “219%”, BUILD Summit registrations “three times last year’s”, Snow Day “ 23,000 registrations”, Data Marketplace “grew 41%”, stable edges “more than 130% annual increase”, Powered By Snowflake partners “growing 137% quarter-on-quarter” and product revenue from them “173% year-on-year”.
DASH · Q3 2023 → YESThe question is whether management describes the company as accumulating at a rate that's the dominant fact, using multiples or repeated doublings of its recent past, and treating the base as still sm...YES The transcript shows management repeatedly framing the business in terms of multiples of its recent past: non-restaurant selection "going from 0 nearly 3 years ago to a multibillion-dollar business that's at scale now growing fast"; grocery GOV "has doubled year-on-year"; international growth "at multiples of what we see around the world"; and new verticals accelerating from the prior quarter.
SYM · Q3 2022 → YESThe question is about whether management describes the company as accumulating at a rate that's the dominant fact, using multiples or repeated doublings of its recent past, and treating the base as st...YES Management repeatedly frames the current state using multiples of recent past activity: backlog more than doubled (from $5.2B to $11.