Colin Keeley

I wrote an Operating Manual for Mark Leonard, CEO of Constellation Software. Mark has bought 500+ niche software companies over the last 25 years. And turned $25 million into a $32 billion empire. This is how he makes it work. colinkeeley.com/blog/mark-leon…

@RohunJauhar Which full-body MRI do you recommend? Is the $499 Ezra one good enough?

your weekly reminder to spend $2,000 ASAP to potentially save your life: 1. CCTA + Cleerl 2. Full Body MRI 1 hour and $2k to save your life from avoidable catastrophe

@MehtabKarta @Mike_Scully_ Exactly right. x.com/ColinKeeley/st…

@Mike_Scully_ Ph has way way way worse culture than LATAM. We stopped hiring out of there completely.

Hiring from the Philippines OnlineJobs is an underrated cheat code - $500/mo for full time hire - Perfect english - Work harder than you - Very respectful - Loyal and trustworthy Fiverr or Upwork don't come close You'll get hundreds of applications too (Tip: Get them to send you a video to apply)

@Mike_Scully_ Hiring in the Philippines is a mess with timezone and cultural issues. Save the headache. x.com/ColinKeeley/st…

8+ football coaches make $700k+ a year at the University of Texas.

@tferriss Skip hiring in the Philippines. Timezone and cultural differences are massive. Latin America is the future. x.com/ColinKeeley/st…

Has anyone used Athena for virtual/executive assistants? If so, from 0-10 (no 7 allowed), how strongly would you recommend and why? Thanks! 🙏

@jaschneider28 Certainly an option!

Wow from buying a keyboard iOS app for $10k in 2013... to taking down Vimeo for $1.38 billion 12 years later.

@CoFoundersNik I got you x.com/ColinKeeley/st…

I’ll be 40 next month 🫣 I need a heart scan done but what else should I do? I don’t want to go through my PCP or insurance. I just want to call, schedule and get it done in under a week. Any company recommendations?

@david_perell Love it!

When you’re with Joe Liemandt, you can feel the waves of time and space bending to the tune of his vision. He started with software. Now he’s hell-bent on fixing education in America — and he’s actually succeeding. I’ve spent hundreds of hours with him, so to accompany his first interview in 25 years, here’s a crash course into what he’s taught me about business and education: - A boss’ job is to raise their team’s quality bar, tell them exactly where they’re falling short, and elevate their conception of self. You should expect more from your team than they expect from themselves. - Your job as a leader is to have the highest quality bar of anybody you work with. And in order to do it successfully, you have to set a high quality bar, define what quality looks like, and maintain that quality bar with iron determination in a world that’s constantly trying to lower it. - When you make a bold bet, people will think you’re insane. - At the end of our first year working together Joe gifted me three 100-point wines alongside a simple message: “These are in honor of your 100-point quality bar… never lose it.” - Joe’s core insights about education are decades old. They’ve been trapped in a forgotten field called learning science. Joe’s core insight was to take them seriously, while other educators were ignoring them, and pair those age-old ideas with the cutting edge of AI and software. - Education should be more like a video game than a movie. It’s better to gamify the learning and make it interactive than it is to create a sit-back-and watch experience. - In a profile, @JeremySternLA captured his way of operating, both in business and education: “Record, capture, and minutely measure all the data possible; feed it into a system which operates and compounds on logic and predictability; continually abstract people from the system; precisely define what should and shouldn’t be done by the people that remain; promote and pay the overachievers well; and cut or replace the rest." - Most companies’ biggest mistake is to not charge enough for what they do. - The core bottleneck in education doesn’t have to do with information delivery, which is what most people focus on. It has to do with motivation. It doesn’t matter how effective your teaching is if students aren’t motivated to learn in the first place. - Quantify everything. The first cardinal principle at Joe’s school is that kids should love it. But on its own, that sentence is flimsy. So Joe asks every kid: “Would you rather go to school or attend vacation with your family?” Then he measures his success based on the percentage of students who prefer school to vacation. - To the point about quantification, good goals are concrete and ambitious. Look for divisive and edgy words that there’s no escape from. For example, “we’re going to help students learn faster” isn’t as good as “we’re going to help students learn 2x faster than the average public schooler in America.” That second one is much more concrete and easy to measure. - Feed the Fatties: Try a bunch of stuff, be quick to shut down things that fail, and go all-in on the things that have momentum. I’ve seen Joe fail at more projects in the past four years than everybody else I know… combined. But he moves on like nothing happened and concentrated his chips on the things that are working. - Unlike most software entrepreneurs, Joe compensates people for profit margin instead of growth. People always want to grow and empire-build. Profitability doesn't excite them as much. - Doing is better than listening. Lectures are an extremely ineffective way to learn, and yet, they comprise the majority of what kids do in school. - Your customers have all the answers. At most school events, the principal will sit with the parents. Joe sits with the kids and asks them questions the entire time.

@PEoperator Book summary x.com/ColinKeeley/st…

Highly recommend this book. A little dated, but a quick read with highly actionable ideas. Especially good for anyone new to their business (PE CFO, SMB owner, post acquisition) looking for practical ways to manage costs. Read it years ago but was recently sent to me by a PE MD who loved it. Great reread too.

Here's my discount code my.functionhealth.com/signup?code=CK…

Poor Man's DIY Longevity Clinic: - Function Health 100+ Lab Tests ($500) - Prenuvo Whole Body MRI ($2,500) - Grail Cancer Blood Test ($900) - Coronary Calcium Scan ($300)

@sweatystartup Full-body MRI is more effective for early-stage cancer detection. For now. Grail has fewer false positives, but higher miss rates for early-stage cancers. x.com/ColinKeeley/st…

Everybody with a net worth over $5 million should do a Grail Liquid Biopsy every year. My wife, me and my parents all do it annually. $1k to do it. Every 3 years for $1-5 million net worth. Can give you super early detection on 50 types of cancers.

C-Corp is the default for software companies because everyone thinks they need VC-funding. But Basecamp is a much better goal. - Distributes tens of millions annually to the founders - Profitable every year since start in 1999 - No outside funding - Set up as an LLC

@geoff_l 37signals LLC

@ColinKeeley basecamp is an llc?

Do you go LLC or C-Corp for a new software company today? Quick way to think about it... Run it for cash flow? Go LLC to minimize taxes (30% vs 40% tax on dividends). C-Corps get double-taxed with corporate and personal tax rates. Expect a meaningful stock sale in 3-5+ years? Go C-corp to qualify for QSBS in a sale. Pay 0% if it sells in an equity sale in 5 years. Note: Most small software companies sell in asset sales and don't qualify. Plan to reinvest or make acquisitions for growth? Go C-Corp since it can keep cash in the business at the lower corporate tax rate (21%). Talk of Trump decreasing the corporate tax rate from 21% to 15% to make these dividend taxes more even and a C-Corp the obvious choice, but it looks unlikely now. Cashflow is the far more likely path for most software companies, but the tax savings with QSBS are huge (0% vs 24%) if it does sell in an equity sale after 5 years. What are you choosing? Why?

@PEoperator This from @ColinKeeley does as good of a job as any at addressing the most important topics. It's written at the right altitude. colinkeeley.com/blog/mark-leon…