Welcome to the group

Let me explain how a deal moves through OWG. Most investment

groups try to do everything in one meeting.

Somebody presents for forty-five minutes. There are fifteen

minutes of questions. Then everybody is supposed to decide whether

they like the deal.

I think that’s ridiculous.

The presenter has spent weeks preparing. They know the deck. They

know which numbers to emphasize. Everybody else is seeing it for

the first time, trying to understand the company, the price, the

access and the structure all at once.

That’s how first impressions, famous names and FOMO take over.

So we separate the process across three calls.

The first call is the presentation.

This is where the situation gets put on the table.

What is the company or asset? Why is this coming to us now? What

is the thesis? What do we know about the price, the seller, the

access and the structure?

We listen. We ask questions. We identify what we understand and

what we don’t.

We are not trying to give the deal a Kiss or a Kill on the first

call.

The purpose of that call is to leave with a better list of

questions than we had when we entered.

Then we have time to work.

We can check the numbers. Look at the market. Examine the

structure. Talk to people who know the industry. Ask the presenter

for documents and answers.

Members who have relevant experience can tell us where the

presentation matches reality—and where it doesn’t.

The second call is the core teardown Working Group call.

Now we put the situation in the hot seat.

We go back through the company, the price, the access and the

structure with the benefit of a week’s work.

What held up? What changed? Which questions were answered?

Which answers created new questions?

This is usually where the real deal begins to emerge. Sometimes it

becomes stronger. Sometimes we discover that what looked like

access wasn’t access, or that the structure is more complicated

than we were originally told.

And sometimes the whole thing falls apart.

That is not a failure. That is exactly what the process is

supposed to uncover.

### The third call is final thoughts.

This is not another presentation.

We lay out what survived the examination, what changed and what

remains unknown.

What is the strongest case for the situation?

What is the strongest reason to walk away?

Nobody is forced into a group answer. Some members may like it.

Some may not. Others may decide they still do not have enough

information.

The purpose is to close the examination with clarity.

Once this process is running, you may see three different

situations on the same Friday call: one being introduced, one in

the Working Group stage and one reaching final thoughts.

One comes in. One is being worked. One reaches the end.

That gives us a continuous pipeline instead of starting from zero

every Friday.

If a situation reaches the end and there is a reason for it to

move forward, the work of OWG stops there. Any transaction process

happens separately.

I’ll explain that boundary in the next video.