Kennon Green and Company

For the first, I understand what Buffett and Munger mean when they say there is "no master plan". If you follow attractive values, and focus on opportunity cost, you end up in places you never expected. I have no idea what the firm will look like 10 years from now, only that we will focus on generating the highest risk-adjusted real return on capital.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the ultimate form the partnership or the holding company is going to take when I consolidate everything I own – all of my private businesses, stocks, bonds, real estate, and other assets, along with my parents, family, and friends, under a single investment vehicle (I explained this in We’ve Finally Settled on a Course of Action).  This has been occupying and increasingly large percentage of my time, mostly because I think the best thing to do is to simply raise capital, take a percentage of the profits, and then invest the money in the best risk-adjusted opportunities.  Which opportunities present themselves and which time is beyond our control, so there’s really no way to predict, ahead of time, what our holdings will be.

I do know, however, that there are a few areas that interest me.  I’ve been breaking them up in an organizational matrix so I can think about how to put together the various “pieces” when the time comes.  This is probably 5+ years in the future.

Here’s the plan …

(more…)

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We Launched the Just Baby Gifts Site

Just Baby Gifts launched on July 1st, 2009 and will serve as a superstore for baby gifts and baby bedding.  As a matter of corporate policy, 5% of operating profits will be donated to the company's charitable foundation.

Just Baby Gifts launched on July 1st, 2009 and will serve as a superstore for baby gifts and baby bedding. As a matter of corporate policy, 5% of operating profits will be donated to the company's charitable foundation.

Our newest company, Cherrywood Capital Group, launched its first ecommerce site on July 1st.  The business will specialize in baby gifts and baby bedding, among other things.  It has a different ownership structure than the existing sites, thus the need for a new legal formation.

The baby site has a lot of work left before it’s really up to our standards.  Only about 1 in 20 of the total product offerings are coded and available, the graphics are still kind of rough, and we need to optimize all of the product pages for search.  Even with that, we are really excited about the long-term prospects.  The problem we have now is time and resource allocation because there are so many opportunities and finite hours in the day.

The most unique thing about the baby gift site is that we have made a decision to donate 5% of operating profits to the Just Baby Gifts foundation, a charitable gift fund we will establish at Fidelity. We wanted to do more than just make money on this new site, we wanted to a vehicle to support causes that we believe will make the world a better place.  I’m really excited to see how it goes.

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