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What I’m thinking a lot about right now is durability.

Not the kind of durability that makes for a great slide. The kind that survives down quarters, a leadership wobble, a competitor with a louder marketing budget, and the subtle pressure that shows up after money moves.

I’ve been around enough transactions, integrations, and turnarounds to learn a hard truth: most value loss doesn’t happen in one dramatic moment. It happens quietly. It happens when the “thesis” that got everyone excited becomes a story everyone agreed to, so the deal could close, and then the operating system inside the company never changes to support that story. Decision rights blur. Operating cadence gets invented late. Incentives drift. The product starts getting negotiated against the forecast. And in software, that’s usually the beginning of asset erosion.

This is the seed for starting Idealists Only, which exists to fight that specific transaction-transitional failure mode.

When I say “Idealists Only,” I’m not trying to be poetic. I’m describing a type of founder and a type of company I’ve seen over and over: people who built something real without the hype machine, who grew because the product earned its way forward, who treat cash like oxygen, and who want a partner that can help them scale without turning the company into a financial object with a clock on it.

So here’s what’s on my mind lately: how we normalize selection criteria and how we normalize governance, so a great founder doesn’t have to trade their intent just to access growth capital.

Durability leaves fingerprints early

Over time, I’ve learned to stop asking, “Is this a good business?” and start asking, “What has to remain true for this to stay a good business?”

That question changes everything.

It pulls you away from surface-level metrics and into the mechanics that actually hold up under pressure. In software and tech-enabled businesses, durability almost always shows up through a handful of repeatable patterns. Not every company has all of them, but the companies that compound for a long time tend to have most of them in some form.

A few examples:

The moat compounds instead of sitting still. Sometimes that’s a network effect. More often it’s switching costs in workflow, data, compliance, or habit. The key isn’t the label, it’s the behavior: retention strengthens as the product becomes more embedded, and competitors struggle to pull customers away even when they discount.

The product engine is stronger than the sales engine. I’m not anti-sales. I’m anti “sales as a substitute for product truth.” When product is the asset, the company can grow without needing to add more friction every year just to keep bookings stable. The durable companies can explain why customers stay more clearly than why customers bought.

At least one growth channel gets more efficient over time. Inbound, referral, ecosystem, product-led, expansion. Something. If every dollar of growth always costs more than the last dollar of growth, the engine is fragile.

The financial truth gets cleaner with scale. Gross margin stays durable. Cash conversion is credible. The business doesn’t require constant outside oxygen just to keep operating. Revenue quality is real, not cosmetically engineered.

Optionality exists without chaos. Multi-product expansion happens in a coherent sequence, not as a desperate scramble for a new story. Pricing and packaging are treated like product, not like negotiation.

And the big one: governance and incentives prevent drift. This is the part that rarely gets treated as a first-class underwriting variable, which is exactly why it’s a source of edge.

Our work is to turn patterns into inspection points

Idealists Only is not a volume strategy. It’s not a “spray deals and hope the best ones win” strategy. It’s closer to a craft.

That means we’re building a repeatable inspection model we can run across opportunities, without turning every deal into a bespoke philosophical debate.

Practically, we underwrite three truths in parallel:

Financial truth. Revenue quality, concentration, cash conversion, margin durability, what the business looks like when you remove the narrative.

Product and customer truth. Why customers buy, why they stay, why they leave. Cohorts. Retention. Implementation burden. Whether differentiation is real or just sold.

Leadership truth. Integrity under pressure, decision velocity with accountability, coachability without loss of identity, and the ability to build a team that scales.

If you’ve done deals before, none of that sounds radical. The difference is what we normalize around it: we turn those truths into operating agreements that stay visible after close.

Follow the real money, then protect it

One of the most underrated concepts in investing is use of proceeds. It’s also one of the easiest places for a deal to become sloppy.

Use of proceeds isn’t a paragraph in a memo. It’s the governing logic of the partnership.

When we invest, we want to be painfully clear on what the capital is for, what it is not for, what has to be true for it to work, and what we will measure to keep ourselves honest.

Product velocity? Great, what does velocity mean in the next 90 days, and what are we funding to unlock it?

Customer success to protect retention? Great, what is the churn story today, what does it cost, and what does “fixed” actually look like?

GTM efficiency? Great, which channel, which segment, and what does a healthy payback range look like?

A tuck-in acquisition? Great, what’s the integration rulebook so we don’t buy complexity faster than we can metabolize it?

This is what I mean by “follow the money.” It’s not a slogan. It’s the first control loop in a durable partnership.

What we normalize post-close

Here’s a simple example of what “normalization” looks like in practice.

I don’t want every company building a custom board deck every quarter with a fresh narrative and a new visual identity like we’re auditioning for a design award. That wastes time and it also makes it hard to compare reality across companies. Most of the time it becomes unintentional storytelling.

So we standardize the container.

We use a consistent board memo format that reads like a thoughtful operating update. Same structure, same core tables, same KPI definitions, same variance explanations, and the same section where leadership names what’s true, what’s uncertain, and what decisions need to be made.

It does two things at once.

First, it protects the executive team’s energy and capacity. You don’t have to reinvent the reporting wheel every quarter.

Second, it forces equilibrium. When the metrics are normalized, the truth is harder to hide and easier to act on. It becomes easier to see drift early, which is when drift is cheap to fix.

This is one of the quiet ways you protect founder freedom. Clarity reduces politics. When the rules are legible and the scorecard is consistent, you can move faster without burning everyone out.

A word on what we’re building and what we’re not

We’re primarily a minority, structured growth platform in founder-led software and tech-enabled businesses. That’s the core.

We can engage in three ways, depending on what a capital partner or founder needs:

Sometimes we lead: originate, diligence, structure, syndicate via an SPV.

Sometimes we partner: a capital partner leads the vehicle and economics, and I lead diligence, governance design, board-level work, and the post-close cadence.

Sometimes we join: you already own the asset or are acquiring it, and you want the operating system and governance discipline installed so the investment actually works.

Different wrapper. Same product.

The product is not capital alone. It’s capital, governance, and an operating rhythm designed to keep intent intact when pressure shows up.

If you’re a founder reading this

If this resonates, here’s a simple way to think about fit.

You’ve built something real. You care about the product. You want to scale, but you don’t want to trade your company’s soul for someone else’s timeline. You want a partner who can be clear, disciplined, and helpful without hijacking your intent.

That’s what we’re here for.

If you want to talk, send a short note with three things:

What customers would miss if your product disappeared.

What constraint you want capital to unlock.

What the right partnership would feel like.

We’ll respond quickly and directly, even if the answer is “not yet” or “not us.” The goal is to be useful.