Michael B. Gilroy
@MBGilroy
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Co-Founder @MarathonMP
Joined November 2013
Today we launch @MarathonMP. You will not hear much from us on the fund now, or ever. We believe that the center of our ecosystem are the founders that are building all of the enterprise value — they are the only ones that should be making news. The mission at @MarathonMP is to
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The highest human act is to inspire. TMC.
Frances Tiafoe in press "I had a little kid's parents come up to me like 'Yo you saved my kid's life’” "They see themselves in me. We're not just playing tennis. We're inspiring people. Nipsey Hussle says it best. The highest human act is to inspire” 🥹
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THE BARRELS AXIOM The number of meaningful initiatives a company can pursue in parallel is less than or equal to the number of barrels at the company.
1. Barrels and ammunition I didn’t overlap with @KeithRabois at @Square, but when I joined, his precepts were (and still are) all over the company. One of the most powerful metaphors - not least because of the vivid imagery - was that of barrels and ammunition.
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“Always keep going. The storm eventually ends.” - Kobe Bryant
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When Kendrick Lamar narrated a Nike tribute to the late Kobe Bryant Chills. Happy Birthday Bean 🐍🕊
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One of the most interesting things about Shop is that they have hammered the software story so much, they are generally covered by the software pod on the public buyside. This is a business that derives 76% of its revs and 59% of its GP from "merchant solutions" (payments,
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ZYX / Block (22.5x 26 earnings) has mentioned "lending" 18 times over the same time period, or 78% across total mentions of the peer group. This is a little bit unfair bc they are the OGs of Sq Capital and this mixes SMB and Consumer, but point still stands.
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https://t.co/d3QyBgeqA1 (20x 26 earnings) has used the term "interchange" 13 times since Q4 '23 during earnings - 62% of the total mentions across this entire peer group. SHOP and TOST have mentioned it a grand total of zero times over that period.
bill.com
The AP, AR, and spend & expense solution that lets you create and pay bills, manage expenses, control budgets, and get the credit your business/firm needs to grow.
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The language that we use matters. The way we tell the story matters. There will be an analyst in the mentions that points to the fact that the businesses growing ~50% slower are trading ~50% lower. My counter would be that these are all massive markets, TAM penetration is not yet
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MELI is one of my favorite companies in the world (team Brazil payments). One of the early consumer brands to integrate payments and trades at 43x 26 earnings growing 30% (fastest in compset). They currently have a $9.5B loan book and have mentioned "lending" 3 times in 7
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Next in line with the most software mentions is TOST which is trading at 42x 26 earnings. They also happen to be 2nd most of Payments and AI mentions. They accounted for 39% of the Capital mentions (note only 4/6 companies lend in compset) with nearly $3B of loans originated
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Other than https://t.co/d3QyBgeqA1 which started as a pure software business pre Divvy acq, Shopify mentions software on earnings more than anyone else in the compset.
bill.com
The AP, AR, and spend & expense solution that lets you create and pay bills, manage expenses, control budgets, and get the credit your business/firm needs to grow.
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One of the most interesting things about Shop is that they have hammered the software story so much, they are generally covered by the software pod on the public buyside. This is a business that derives 76% of its revs and 59% of its GP from "merchant solutions" (payments,
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Now let's talk about our 80x earnings friend, @Shopify. This is one of the best companies on the planet, and it trades that way. They have mentioned AI 115 times since Q4 '23, or 50% (!) of the total mentions across this peer group. It peeked at 33 mentions in Q1 of 25.
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ZYX / Block (22.5x 26 earnings) has mentioned "lending" 18 times over the same time period, or 78% across total mentions of the peer group. This is a little bit unfair bc they are the OGs of Sq Capital and this mixes SMB and Consumer, but point still stands.
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https://t.co/d3QyBgeqA1 (20x 26 earnings) has used the term "interchange" 13 times since Q4 '23 during earnings - 62% of the total mentions across this entire peer group. SHOP and TOST have mentioned it a grand total of zero times over that period.
bill.com
The AP, AR, and spend & expense solution that lets you create and pay bills, manage expenses, control budgets, and get the credit your business/firm needs to grow.
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In valuation / business model land... Good words = software, recurring, payments, AI. Bad words = Lending and Interchange (confusing jargon). The best story tellers will use "Capital" instead of lending. "Merchant Solutions" instead of financial products etc.
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Internal story telling doesn't stop with investors, it seeps into customers convos with S&M materials and product teams. We are not in the room for Brex / Ramp pitches so don't have this data, but I pulled it for a handful of public comps. Can we attribute some of the continued
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I again started thinking about it in this context and wondered how these stories have evolved over time, & within fintech as a whole. Valuations are obv not JUST a function of story telling, but we do know that it could make a meaningful difference in how the market views the
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I get asked about the @tryramp / @brexHQ valuation disconnect more than anything else in our business. I got a call on it in NYC a few weeks ago on my way to see The Outsiders (10/10 btw). At the end of the show the writers came on and talked at length about the importance of
The valuation gap between @tryramp and @brexHQ is a sobering reminder that execution is all that matters. And the job is never finished.
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