When the Tide Goes Out You See Who’s Swimming Naked

Each month, “Ammirati on Innovation” episodes will look at ways that the disruptive-startup mentality is spreading beyond young entrepreneurs to big established corporations. Serial entrepreneur, venture capitalist and Carnegie Mellon B-school professor Sean Ammirati, who sits at the intersection of these high-change dynamics, provides insight.

Episode 11

In this episode, Sean says he hasn’t been on a plane for almost four weeks – and that’s unusual because he is always on a plane to somewhere. So he has been able to have dinner with his wife and kids, and it’s been incredible. He says it puts life in perspective, and that’s the most important thing.

Sean says that his roughly 30 companies are negatively impacted by COVID-19 – but he says that’s secondary to health and safety. He says everyone is working from home.

Sean says he authored a book called “The Science of Growth,” where he looked at pairs of companies and asked, why did one company take off and the other one didn’t. Why is a third of the internet running on top of WordPress? Why are people driving Teslas and not Fiskars? Why do people have a Facebook account and not a Friendster account?

Sean says he wouldn’t want to be in the hospitality business today – or the travel business. He quotes Warren Buffett as saying, “Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.” Sean says he typically uses that in board meetings when it feels like companies are swimming to close to the knife’s edge. He says it’s true of a global company, and it’s also true inside a 10 person company. He says he’s pretty proud that his portfolio companies are doing a pretty good job of making sure that they’re doing the right thing.

Sean says what some companies are doing over the last five years in terms of share buybacks to inflate their stock. He says there are companies who had really good offers to raise money three months ago and held out to try to get a 5% higher valuation.

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