BenWerkman on Nostr: There are many new people entering the $MSTR space which is great to see, but because ...
There are many new people entering the $MSTR space which is great to see, but because of this I think it may be helpful to give a simplified example people can use and conceptualize from their personal life to understand at a high level what MSTR has been doing with their strategy.
Trigger Warning: It's long, but not as long as yesterday.
Income vs. Net Worth
These are 2 concepts that most people understand at least at a high level in their personal lives. For this example, we will consider your income to simply be the salary from your job.
Net worth is slightly more complex but is essentially what comprises your personal balance sheet (if you've never built one, please do). The formula for your net worth is quite simple, it is Assets - Liabilities = Net Worth. This is essentially saying the value of the items you own less any money you owe on those items (or in general).
The main categories that fall into the assets for most people would be things like cash, investments (401K, IRA, Brokerage, #Bitcoin, etc.), real estate, vehicles, high end jewelry and collectibles. There are many other items that are assets, but these are some of the big ones. When talking assets, it's often worthwhile to split out your "financial assets" from your other less liquid assets. This helps you to focus on categories individually when you are strategically deploying them to create more wealth (i.e. increase your net worth).
So when you are looking at your options to generate wealth, you are focusing on a combination of your income and your net worth. However, society has essentially told us that your value is tied to your salary and that this should be your sole focus. Every year when review time comes all employees stop what they are doing and look at ways to cleverly try to show their bosses their value in an attempt to get a raise. Often, those raises disappoint so people will shift their focus to opening a job search in hopes of increasing their salary that way. It's exhausting (i've done it too). Who has time for investing?
I'll give some unsolicited advice that I don't typically give. For the first decade of your career, hyper focus on your income (salary). This is where your assets will initially be acquired from. However, you have to make sure you don't allow lifestyle creep to take over and eliminate your "net" income (income left after paying your living expenses). This net income is what you can transfer to your balance sheet (through investments, acquiring assets, etc.).
The reason I say the first decade is because when you start out in your career, the most valuable asset you have to create wealth for yourself is time. Time is the magic input for compounding, and the more time your assets have to compound in value year over year the more impactful they will be to securing your freedom. So ignore everyone else buying flashy things or spending your time wondering how they could afford them (I can tell you, debt). Hyper focus on funding your retirement accounts, HSA accounts, brokerage accounts, buying Bitcoin, etc. These assets being in place early gives you a superpower that most people will not understand until they have lost the most value periods of time they have to kick starts the compounding engine.
After a decade of hyper focus on accumulation of assets, you can essentially let time take the wheel (this doesn't mean quit making money, it means that the value of your assets will start to grow without you needing to do much and hopefully eventually in increments that exceed your total salary). The compounding impact of returns will build wealth for you over time without needing to spend all your time worrying about getting a raise, getting laid off or sitting in a job you hate burning years of your life you can't get back. Your assets will ultimately buy you your freedom and time back, and that needs to be the goal. Life is finite, and the more time you have to focus on passions and not on "surviving" will help make the ride overwhelmingly more enjoyable.
Please always remember, it is very easy to look rich. It is very difficult to become rich.
Alright, enough of my own personal philosophy rambling let's get back to how this pertains to MSTR.
How does this apply to the MSTR Strategy?
MSTR has the same setup. The markets have conditioned us to look at companies and assign value based on how quickly they grow their revenue (salary in our personal example) and net income (take home pay). Markets are constantly looking for growth, but because of that most companies don't get to accumulate assets on their balance sheet from these earnings. They need to redeploy them into the company to fund expansion/sales/hiring/facilities/etc. to continue to show growth in the revenue that will indicate to the market that they are on the trajectory to being a "rich" company despite many showing thin margins.
MSTR started this way as well. For the better part of 3 decades, they focused on building their software products, deploying sales and implementation teams to get companies onboarded to their BI product, and each year had to hyper focus on squeezing every dollar out of their platforms and contracts that they could get. But once growth slowed, the markets determined there was little of value here due to the forward looking nature of valuations.
So Saylor shifted his focus. What he did do during the early periods was create a company that was providing him with steady cash flow that was accumulating on his balance sheet as an asset. They had removed meaningful liabilities, and were actually very strong from a balance sheet perspective (company net worth) and very unencumbered by debt.
Now MSTR had a decision to make. Was it a better use of their time to try to foece a 5-10% raise in their salary (revenue) every year even if it meant little in the terms of take home, or was there a different way to generate wealth?
They turned to utilizing their assets. They initially deployed there cash in to a harder, stronger asset that had a better anticipated return (infinitely better than the negative return of cash) which could generate increasing asset value on their balance sheet. If your asset growth outpaces your liability growth, your net worth is increasing. So MSTR decided their time was going to be better spent accumulating assets than spending all their time and capital on sales/growth efforts (obviously they are doing this still, but you get what I'm saying).
Think of it like this. Let's say that their revenue (salary) was $500M and their net worth after all those years of building the business was $1B (i'm making these up for illustration). Where would their efforts be better served in the long run for generating value through trying to generate a 10% return?
Well, if they increase their revenue 10% that means there is another $50M coming in the door for revenue. But there are expenses, so their take home may only be 10% of that amount or $5M. This would mean that they have $5M available to transfer to their balance sheet to put to work.
On the other hand, if they focused on more efficient and opportunistic deployment of the $1B they had available on their balance sheet then this same 10% target would yield $100M but they get to keep all of it (ignoring taxes in both scenarios for simplicity).
This is where compounding kicks in. If the first scenario, that $5M they took home if it gained another 10% the next year would yield $500K in additional value on the balance sheet (total now $10.5M). However, looking at the $100M generated from utilizing the balance sheet instead would generate an additional $10M the next year (total now $110M).
You can start to see the impact here of this happening year after year. But this is misunderstood because the markets have taught us to largely overlook balance sheet strength as a method for valuations. Most often, when balance sheets are evaluated it is to point out that companies have accumulated massive amounts of cash and they can't find ways to deploy it so we start looking for dividends or acquisitions.
MSTR is in constant deployment mode. They made the determination that they will ensure their balance sheet is 100%+ deployed into a new asset they believe will allow them the benefit of compounded value over potentially hundreds of years. This approach to time horizon focus is new in the corporate world, and is why so many don't understand the strategy. They take a short term view while ignoring the evolving nature of the world and capital.
Summary
So in summary, you are witnessing a corporation shift from focusing on income to focusing on net worth. This is a strategy that builds for the long term future.
This is an approach everyone should apply to their own lives. Stop thinking short term about the next thing you want to purchase. Set your sights decades out and make the best use of the assets you accumulate early to achieve those goals.
We always hear "work smarter, not harder", well for your personal wealth this is what that means.
Spend the time working to build your assets, so your assets can get put to work building wealth for you.
I acknowledge this is a simplified overview which skips nuances of leverage, MSTR's access to capital markets, etc. But I think it is a core concept people need to really think about and understand as a foundational component for both their personal lives and for how they understand the strategy MSTR is deploying at a basic level.
Have a great rest of the weekend everyone!
Trigger Warning: It's long, but not as long as yesterday.
Income vs. Net Worth
These are 2 concepts that most people understand at least at a high level in their personal lives. For this example, we will consider your income to simply be the salary from your job.
Net worth is slightly more complex but is essentially what comprises your personal balance sheet (if you've never built one, please do). The formula for your net worth is quite simple, it is Assets - Liabilities = Net Worth. This is essentially saying the value of the items you own less any money you owe on those items (or in general).
The main categories that fall into the assets for most people would be things like cash, investments (401K, IRA, Brokerage, #Bitcoin, etc.), real estate, vehicles, high end jewelry and collectibles. There are many other items that are assets, but these are some of the big ones. When talking assets, it's often worthwhile to split out your "financial assets" from your other less liquid assets. This helps you to focus on categories individually when you are strategically deploying them to create more wealth (i.e. increase your net worth).
So when you are looking at your options to generate wealth, you are focusing on a combination of your income and your net worth. However, society has essentially told us that your value is tied to your salary and that this should be your sole focus. Every year when review time comes all employees stop what they are doing and look at ways to cleverly try to show their bosses their value in an attempt to get a raise. Often, those raises disappoint so people will shift their focus to opening a job search in hopes of increasing their salary that way. It's exhausting (i've done it too). Who has time for investing?
I'll give some unsolicited advice that I don't typically give. For the first decade of your career, hyper focus on your income (salary). This is where your assets will initially be acquired from. However, you have to make sure you don't allow lifestyle creep to take over and eliminate your "net" income (income left after paying your living expenses). This net income is what you can transfer to your balance sheet (through investments, acquiring assets, etc.).
The reason I say the first decade is because when you start out in your career, the most valuable asset you have to create wealth for yourself is time. Time is the magic input for compounding, and the more time your assets have to compound in value year over year the more impactful they will be to securing your freedom. So ignore everyone else buying flashy things or spending your time wondering how they could afford them (I can tell you, debt). Hyper focus on funding your retirement accounts, HSA accounts, brokerage accounts, buying Bitcoin, etc. These assets being in place early gives you a superpower that most people will not understand until they have lost the most value periods of time they have to kick starts the compounding engine.
After a decade of hyper focus on accumulation of assets, you can essentially let time take the wheel (this doesn't mean quit making money, it means that the value of your assets will start to grow without you needing to do much and hopefully eventually in increments that exceed your total salary). The compounding impact of returns will build wealth for you over time without needing to spend all your time worrying about getting a raise, getting laid off or sitting in a job you hate burning years of your life you can't get back. Your assets will ultimately buy you your freedom and time back, and that needs to be the goal. Life is finite, and the more time you have to focus on passions and not on "surviving" will help make the ride overwhelmingly more enjoyable.
Please always remember, it is very easy to look rich. It is very difficult to become rich.
Alright, enough of my own personal philosophy rambling let's get back to how this pertains to MSTR.
How does this apply to the MSTR Strategy?
MSTR has the same setup. The markets have conditioned us to look at companies and assign value based on how quickly they grow their revenue (salary in our personal example) and net income (take home pay). Markets are constantly looking for growth, but because of that most companies don't get to accumulate assets on their balance sheet from these earnings. They need to redeploy them into the company to fund expansion/sales/hiring/facilities/etc. to continue to show growth in the revenue that will indicate to the market that they are on the trajectory to being a "rich" company despite many showing thin margins.
MSTR started this way as well. For the better part of 3 decades, they focused on building their software products, deploying sales and implementation teams to get companies onboarded to their BI product, and each year had to hyper focus on squeezing every dollar out of their platforms and contracts that they could get. But once growth slowed, the markets determined there was little of value here due to the forward looking nature of valuations.
So Saylor shifted his focus. What he did do during the early periods was create a company that was providing him with steady cash flow that was accumulating on his balance sheet as an asset. They had removed meaningful liabilities, and were actually very strong from a balance sheet perspective (company net worth) and very unencumbered by debt.
Now MSTR had a decision to make. Was it a better use of their time to try to foece a 5-10% raise in their salary (revenue) every year even if it meant little in the terms of take home, or was there a different way to generate wealth?
They turned to utilizing their assets. They initially deployed there cash in to a harder, stronger asset that had a better anticipated return (infinitely better than the negative return of cash) which could generate increasing asset value on their balance sheet. If your asset growth outpaces your liability growth, your net worth is increasing. So MSTR decided their time was going to be better spent accumulating assets than spending all their time and capital on sales/growth efforts (obviously they are doing this still, but you get what I'm saying).
Think of it like this. Let's say that their revenue (salary) was $500M and their net worth after all those years of building the business was $1B (i'm making these up for illustration). Where would their efforts be better served in the long run for generating value through trying to generate a 10% return?
Well, if they increase their revenue 10% that means there is another $50M coming in the door for revenue. But there are expenses, so their take home may only be 10% of that amount or $5M. This would mean that they have $5M available to transfer to their balance sheet to put to work.
On the other hand, if they focused on more efficient and opportunistic deployment of the $1B they had available on their balance sheet then this same 10% target would yield $100M but they get to keep all of it (ignoring taxes in both scenarios for simplicity).
This is where compounding kicks in. If the first scenario, that $5M they took home if it gained another 10% the next year would yield $500K in additional value on the balance sheet (total now $10.5M). However, looking at the $100M generated from utilizing the balance sheet instead would generate an additional $10M the next year (total now $110M).
You can start to see the impact here of this happening year after year. But this is misunderstood because the markets have taught us to largely overlook balance sheet strength as a method for valuations. Most often, when balance sheets are evaluated it is to point out that companies have accumulated massive amounts of cash and they can't find ways to deploy it so we start looking for dividends or acquisitions.
MSTR is in constant deployment mode. They made the determination that they will ensure their balance sheet is 100%+ deployed into a new asset they believe will allow them the benefit of compounded value over potentially hundreds of years. This approach to time horizon focus is new in the corporate world, and is why so many don't understand the strategy. They take a short term view while ignoring the evolving nature of the world and capital.
Summary
So in summary, you are witnessing a corporation shift from focusing on income to focusing on net worth. This is a strategy that builds for the long term future.
This is an approach everyone should apply to their own lives. Stop thinking short term about the next thing you want to purchase. Set your sights decades out and make the best use of the assets you accumulate early to achieve those goals.
We always hear "work smarter, not harder", well for your personal wealth this is what that means.
Spend the time working to build your assets, so your assets can get put to work building wealth for you.
I acknowledge this is a simplified overview which skips nuances of leverage, MSTR's access to capital markets, etc. But I think it is a core concept people need to really think about and understand as a foundational component for both their personal lives and for how they understand the strategy MSTR is deploying at a basic level.
Have a great rest of the weekend everyone!