Humbled By Markets

Hey, it's Andrew (from xo.capital).

I haven't written in a while. There have been a lot of changes over the past 2 years but I'll be writing again here about tech, acquisitions, and the greatest game on earth ... business.

I pulled your email in from our xo blog so if you want to unsub no prob its at the bottom of this email.

If you take the whole history of Berkshire Hathaway, if you take out the 20 best transactions, our record is a joke. Our 20 best transactions over 40 some years, that's one every two years and we work at it all the time.

Life is not just bathing you unlimited opportunities, even if you work at being able to find them and seize them.

- Charlie Munger

The past 2 years have been extremely humbling. 3 years ago I sold a company for low 7 figures and felt like I finally got "on the game board". I thought I was smarter than I am. I thought I was more skilled than I was. Out of pure hubris I also foolishly decided to get my MBA (which I'm still working on).

I started XO almost 5 years ago now... eventually pulled in Danny and Henry, and together we deployed about $3.5M. I'm extremely proud of that but its been a really tough road. Frankly, over the past 2 years its been absolutely brutal. I had a business parter destroy a business doing $40k a month and start a direct competitor with someone else. We made 1 bad bet (thankfully with just our own $) at XO that took ALL our profit from the other companies we acquired.

When everything is good, everyone is good. When things are bad, people show you their true selves and it is uglier than I expected. PUT IT ALL IN THE CONTRACT.... some lessons you really have to learn on your own.

We're still doing our best to continue to grow the two assets XO capital still owns and operates. And I'm also launching new things.

In the past 2 years, AI has fundamentally changed saas. There is now a concept of disposable software. Single purpose utility tools can be vibe coded in an hour. The winners just keep winning. Distribution is harder than ever. Even the AI consumer saas hits like Rizz app etc feel cheap and non-durable...

And yet I still believe now is one of the most incredible times in history to build a business. Never before has software been able to compete with human labor for knowledge work. Now it can... and that is going to take at least a few more years to play out. Not only that, but every 3 months or so, things that once used to be hard / very hard / impossible for software to do are a $.1 api call away...

So as a kind of pre-amble for future posts, I'm not going to be able to tie this all up with a pretty bow. I'm into writing code and lifting weights. Flying planes, snowboarding, pickleball. All things business. Economic news, the stock market. Building wealth, becoming a better person, building a family. I don't have a tag line for all that yet. Maybe I never will.

I used to worry a lot about cohesion. I used to think about brand... I think there are just stories and that's what I'll attempt to do here.

I'm still going to buy stuff, I'm still going to build stuff. And I'll still try to take my most painful lessons and make them valuable to you.

Hope you stick around!