A pretty simple game

Basketball is a pretty simple game. You hit the open man and you see the ball on defense.

    -Phil Jackson  11x NBA Champion Coach (including MJ, Kobe and Shaq)

I coach 3rd grade girls basketball.  We just lost in the semifinals.  Many tears were shed.

One of the challenges in coaching is distilling the game down to its essence.  Bad coaches overwhelm players with advice and none of it sticks.  They make a hard game complex.  

Great coaches edit and refine.  They make a hard game simple.  Winning in sports is hard.  Investing is hard.  Life is hard.  

At Opus Holdings, we invest in good companies and partner with trustworthy people who share our values.  

We were recently under LOI to make an investment that had amazing potential.  It offered high margins, recurring revenue, stickiness with customers and an attractive valuation. Good company.  

Our partner was incredibly bright and hard working, but we learned in due diligence that he didn’t demonstrate our values.  So, we walked away.  It was hard.  We were eager to ‘put points on the board’.  To show our investors and network that we were making things happen.  

But we cannot compromise the fundamentals.  

No matter what the analytics (or spreadsheets) say - whether it’s basketball or investing - you must stay true to the fundamentals.  

-Paul