Founders' Five Daily Podcast

Hey everyone,

This newsletter is hosted by Substack.com which makes it super easy for non-tech oriented folks like myself. They have recently introduced a podcast function so I’m going to give a quick daily podcast a shot. I’d love to know what you think about that. You have the ability to hit unsubscribe from these podcast episodes which will allow you to continue getting the regular emails you’re used to, but not the podcasts.

Podcast format..

I’m going to call these “Founders Five”. They’ll be a quick five minute daily podcast covering anything I think is meaningful for our little collection of founder-led companies.

There is a lot of noise out there so even though this is going to be a daily podcast, I hope to bring some valuable high-quality content in little bite-sized pieces.

This may change, but for now, I’ll probably type out my own transcript below so if you’re reading via email you can stay up to date without hearing my DJ voice.

First up - China Trade Talk Fears:

Yes, they are happening, they have been for about a year and a half. The market has been hit pretty hard these last few days on news that we didn’t have a deal by our already extended deadline. I have no idea what is going to happen or when. I think eventually, we will get past this like we have gotten past so many other world events over the last 100+ years

What I do know is that we have to control what we can control. For me, that’s living below our means, only investing money I don’t need for more than three years, and staying invested in what I believe are the world’s best founder-led companies.

Second Story - Zoom Hits 98% Satisfaction at The University of Sydney

I don’t own shares of Zoom but I really want to. There’s no way on Earth to justify the current share price, but I just have this feeling we are under appreciating the quality of their team and product as well as their growth potential. I will probably start a small position (again) and look to add to it overtime.

Third Story - The Year of the Tech IPO: Exploring App Growth in the Okta Integration Network

Okta is a pretty awesome company with a very important product for their customers. It also gives them some deep insight into the inner-workings and app usage of their customers. This is great for Okta to develop their own future products, but also lets them do cool reports like this.

Takeaway from this article — Zoom is the clear winner for 2019 with Slack close behind. I don’t think I’ll invest in Slack at it’s IPO. At least not if it has anywhere near the price to sales ratio of Zoom. Slack’s revenue growth is around 60% year over year where as Zoom’s is over 100% growing off of a much larger base. Pager Duty which we also own is also featured as is another company, CloudFlare which is not public yet, but plans to IPO during the first half of 2019. We will have to keep a close watch on it.

Here’s how the four companies’ YOY customer growth looks (graph in the email)

Image Source: Okta

That’s all for today. If you’re listening to this podcast and you want to help support us or subscribe to receive our free investing newsletter head over to austin.substack.com. Note, there is an option to pay $5 a month or $50 a year if you want to help support us. This is totally optional and the free vs paid content is the same.

Thanks and see you tomorrow!

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