Peggy Johnson Quotes

[Cost-benefit analysis is used:] ... to produce lofty academic-sounding reasons for endless inaction.

I'm a very commonsense guy - I just look at the viability of the idea, if I feel the team has the ability to execute the idea. I also look at the investment syndicate, the size of the market, and then a lot of gut married on top of it.

Weighing benefits against costs is the way most people make decisions - and the way most businesses make decisions, if they want to stay in business. Only in government is any benefit, however small, considered to be worth any cost, however large.

When you guys go into some kind of a deal, you know, are you going to do that development or not, are you going to do that renovation or not, you know, you look at the numbers. You try to figure out what's going to work and what's not going to work.

Making an investment decision is like formulating a scientific hypothesis and submitting it to a practical test. The main difference is that the hypothesis that underlies an investment decision is intended to make money and not to establish a universally valid generalization.

We always look at opportunities. We are not aggressively looking to buy something.

The key to making acquisitions is being ready because you really never know when the right big one is going to come along.

I made a cold calculation that I wasn’t going to waste time on a futile struggle.

Every good businessman or woman carefully analyzes all the available facts before making a decision.

A great business at a fair price is superior to a fair business at a great price.

The way deals are done, every idea is looked at 50 different ways. Now, the market continues to change all the time. And we are always looking at everything in evaluating how it fits with our strategy.

Really, we don't look at deals as 'big' or 'small': we look at things that will solve a problem for us.

I know plenty of entrepreneurs who are numbers first. They tend to be highly analytical people, and before they pull the trigger, all the numbers have to line up just right.

Obviously, consideration of costs is key, including opportunity costs. Of course capital isn't free. It's easy to figure out your cost of borrowing, but theorists went bonkers on the cost of equity capital. They say that if you're generating a 100% return on capital, then you shouldn't invest in something that generates an 80% return on capital. It's crazy.

Customers are now driven by trying to optimize value.

When it comes to valuation, there's only one thing stock investors really care about, which is earnings.

You need a different checklist and different mental models for different companies.

I try to look at problems very clearly and think, 'How do we get out of this? What will work? What will be the consequences for the people involved?'

Investing is about intellectual honesty. You want to know what you know. You want to know, mostly, what you don't know.

I was approached by a company in San Francisco called Fantex. I did my due diligence on it. I tried to outweigh the pros and cons. Then I just made a business decision.

Price is what you pay, but value, as Warren Buffett has observed, is what you get.

As a player you need to make whatever decision you think is best for your career.

It's a lot easier to figure out how to scale something that doesn't feel like it would scale than it is to figure out what is actually gonna work. You're much better off going after something that will work that doesn't scale, then trying to figure how to scale it up, than you are trying to figure it all out.

Critical thinking is the most important factor with chess. As it is in life, you need to think before you make decisions.

Trust me: I know a good investment when I see one.