Jess Larsen started his finance career on a mergers and acquisitions team with Citi. Later he founded several businesses; the three companies he currently co-owns are Graystoke Investments, Graystoke Advisors, and Graystoke Media.
Jess was previously the Director of Special Operations and Intelligence Agencies practice for the management consulting firm the Arbinger Institute.
Ten years ago, he co-founded a charity called Child Rescue Association that combats child trafficking through prevention campaigns, aftercare support, and undercover rescue missions.
You can listen to him regularly on his podcast, Innovation & Leadership with Jess Larsen.
“Cash flow is king.”
Jess Larsen
When Jess was in his twenties, he left Southern California and went back home to Canada, where he started an energy-focused private equity fund. Then some friends got him and his small group of friends into a deal with a billionaire. They co-invested in a company with exclusive rights to bring renewable energy technology for small hydro from Europe. The company had big deals tied up with guaranteed investment contracts from the Ontario government.
Jess, his brother, and his partner did their due diligence, and everything was smelling like roses. The group decided to invest two and a half million dollars into the company.
One thing that Jess and the other investors failed to do was to verify what sort of a person the CEO was. They also did not have controls in place to determine how the CEO should use money from investors. They optimistically just assumed the guy would do what he said he would do.
Instead of using the money to install the first unit, which could make the business cash flow positive, he started 12 other projects just to claim he had a good portfolio going. He thought this would make his portfolio more attractive for fundraising. So while the CEO was chasing other projects, he ran the business out of money.
Interestingly, somehow the CEO got a $50 billion public company to co-invest with the company. Jess tried to warn the new co-investors about how the CEO was running the company, but they chose to trust the CEO and invested $4 million. True to Jess’s prediction, the CEO squandered $4 million into useless projects that were not part of what he had promised his investors.
Do not get too excited about the upside that you forget to think and prepare for a downside. Think about a scenario where your investment goes sideways. What if you need to remove the CEO or minority shareholder? What is the process to follow? Factor in such essential details before you sign on the dotted line.
When you are cash flow positive, you have a runway to make mistakes, experiment, and still survive, and have another swing at...