Matthew Giampetroni

You can’t charge a premium price for giving people what they expect, and you won’t ever have break-out products that way—the kinds of products that people line up around the block for.

M&A is by far the largest source of redistribution of corporate resources among the capital allocation alternatives. M&A deals in 2021 totaled nearly $2.6 trillion, or 13.5 percent of sales. The chart shows that M&A tends to be cyclical. Early movers tend to do better than companies that buy later in the cycle.

Great capital allocators always have a sense of the difference between price and value in all of their businesses. And, as important, they are willing to act to build value when those gaps become large enough to overcome frictions such as taxes and fees.

“What is the right amount of capital (and the right number of people) to have in this business in order to support the strategy that will create the most wealth?”182 The answer is based on the future and does not rule out reducing net investment when appropriate.

Debt can also scare off growth equity funds, who don’t like not being the most senior money in the pref stack.

you demonstrated excellent curation ability,  and that’s a high-status thing to have