Every week, we put together a list of our top 5 articles of the past week. Happy reading!
Making Sense of Dell + EMC + VMware a16z blog (reading time: 36 minutes)
Micheal Dell just wrote an autobiography and is doing a book tour. I listened to him on the a16z podcast and it was a great discussion. The details of the big acquisition of EMC as well as fighting off activist investor Carl Icahn were fascinating. This post details the deal which raised many eyebrows at the time.
The debt component of this deal is particularly dramatic. Because how else can the smaller python eat the much larger cow? Put in transaction terms, just how do you pull off financing a $67B deal with $4.25B in cash?
Organizing for sustainability success: Where, and how, leaders can start McKinsey (reading time: 13 minutes)
Sustainability has rightfully become an important boardroom topic. It remains a fuzzy term though, how should a leader think about the topic within their organization? This McKinsey post offers some advice on how to tackle it. My big takeaway is that it’s not just about compliance anymore, it has become a strategic and operational topic.
Operational Improvement the Private Equity Way Insead (reading time: 4 minutes)
In our line of work, our private equity partners often use our services under the moniker of value creation. We’ve written about the concept in detail and it is often reflected in operational improvements within a company. This short post shows a neat table on the impact operational improvements can have on the valuation of a company.
Why Web3 Matters Chris Dixon (reading time: 3 minutes)
The internet can be thought of in terms of epochs. Many people argue that the next epoch (Web3) is about crypto technology. Chris Dixon highlights the differences between these epochs and how the potential of Web 3 and the underlying reason why. On my end, I’m bearish in the short-term but incredibly bullish in the long term.
Tokens align network participants to work together toward a common goal — the growth of the network and the appreciation of the token.
Meet The World’s Richest 29-Year-Old: How Sam Bankman-Fried Made A Record Fortune In The Crypto Frenzy Forbes (reading time: 15 minutes)
We covered FTX a little while ago and it is one of the most fascinating companies out there today. This puff piece in Forbes expounds about the company’s young & iconic founder, Sam Bankman-Fried. It offers some insights into how the company managed to grow so quickly (currently valued at $18 billion in less than two years). There’s a big part of doing well to do good in the story yet it doesn’t feel like it yet at the moment.
