Andrew Wilkinson and Tiny Capital

These two threads seem contradictory to me:

1> For the employees, [post-acquisition] is business as usual for the most part. The goal is for the employees to not even notice.

2> You can buy companies and replace expensive people with a global remote workforce that is just as good (or better) and cheaper.

Can someone with more knowledge or experience of Tiny acquisitions explain which of these is true? Are they a holding company for SaaS companies with extra best practices, or a cuddly face on traditional PE cost-cutting tactics? The article itself doesn't seem sure. (And, oddly, appears not to notice the contradiction.)

Inflated self-image? Check.

> Tiny is positioned as the good guys of private equity. The Berkshire Hathway of internet businesses.

Usual PE shenanigans? Check.

> A challenge with this model is that it is difficult to acquire tech companies at reasonable prices.

> Often Tiny buys product or designer-led startups that have grown organically. They will raise prices and put standard best-practice marketing and sales processes in place.

> Canadian arbitrage includes lower salaries, not needing to pay medical benefits, SRED, and cheaper currency.

> “Let someone else run the marathon and incentivize them.”

Andrew Wilkinson is someone I've heard of (see his tweets across my timeline every few days), and so his signal gets boosted a lot in trendier tech circles.

Another Canadian company ("Berkshire Hathaway" of software) is Constellation Software. $3.1 billion in revenue in 2019 and is publicly traded [1]. They too are interested in buying SAAS companies and internet properties. I didn't hear about them until I came across it randomly (again on Twitter).

Does anyone know if there's a compiled list of these kinds of operations (software holding co's / Berkshires of SAAS type of thing)?

[1] https://web.tmxmoney.com/quote.php?locale=en&qm_symbol=CSU

I remember visiting designernews often, a community from their portfolio, for robust and interesting discussions, before the acquisition. Through time it became stale, now it looks empty. I wonder what's the success rate for this kind of investment strategy.

Tiny Capital seems to take advantage of three principles:

1. Market of VC chasing next unicorns is very comoetitive. Chasing smaller opportunities is underserved.

2. Selling smaller companies is tough. A lot of founders enjoy freedom more than maximizing financial outcome.

3. There are efficiencies at scale that can be applied across portfolio. E.g. remote hiring.

I agree that delegation is the key to scale. Letting go of things and trusting other people is very hard to do, and the flip side is knowing when things are going wrong and making the decision to step back in. An art form.

Speaking of.. there's also this twitter roll - https://twitter.com/awilkinson/status/1258424937716436992

Edited for clarity: I disagree with this model. There.