2025 Tiny Ltd. Annual General Meeting

This is our third annual general league and I just want to do a quick show of hands. Who here is a local? Oh, I lost some locals. Okay. Who here travel and keep your hand up. Who if if you sorry if you travel more than 3 hours a year. Amazing. Thank you. Uh 6 hours, 10 hours, 15 hours. Okay. Who are the two people that had was that 10 hours? Gerard, I know you. >> Hey, what's your story? >> Why would you this I mean this is so much pressure for us. We run a great show for you. We're honored. >> We're here for you. >> I'm here for Amazing. We run a portfolio of companies there called Sparrow. >> Cool. And Sparrow's kind of been kind of watching you. How you guys doing? Been really sure. >> Thanks so much for coming, guys. Um, wow, that's a lot of pressure. 10 10 hours since travel. Okay. Um, so yeah, like I said, so 2025, that is our third year of being public and it's actually our 19th year business. So kind of a crazy milestone. And whenever we use this AGM, we always have lots of investors and friends come into town. And yesterday Chris and I hosted a lunch at a little Italian restaurant called Zambry's here at town and Chris reminded me of an anecdote. He said um he pointed at one of the tables and said that's the table where Tidy started. And I remember Chris and I at the time had this was in 2014 or so be 2014. >> Yeah. 2014 we sold a business and we had we sold it for $7 million and we held these disastrous companies. So we started about 10 businesses. two of them and worked and we were left with uh this feeling of frustration because we've been building all these companies and we experienced so much failure and when we read about Morphet we realized that we were really doing it the hard way and I remember F and I were talking about it like can we skip the line can we just go and buy wonderful businesses hold them for the long term and make them a little bit better and so we both decided how much money get then and we got started and in 2015 we made our first acquisition and so that was over 10 years ago. So really we've had two careers. We've had this chaotic entrepreneurial startup journey for nine of those years and the last 10 years has been buying businesses and we just had the team just to kind of mark this milestone um we had the team do a bunch of work to figure out how fast we've been growing. We've actually grown at 37% compound annual growth rate for revenue and our earnings have grown at 25% uh alongside that. So it's been a really wild journey and I think at the time our total revenue was less than $10 million. So to move, you know, 19 years in to be the scale we're at, it just feels totally crazy. And really none of this would have been possible without all the incredible people we have around us. So, I just want to take a moment to introduce everybody. Uh, so our intrepid CEO, George Tall, my business partner, Chris, I assume, I CFO, uh, is Reverend here from our head office. Please can you stand up? Anyone from the tiny head office, stand up? This this is your moment to shine. They're all very vast and quiet. >> Uh one moment to introduce our board. Uh Tim M. Where's Tim? >> He's right there. >> Tim, thank you. Uh Carla there. Uh Alex Pony, who I was hoping would give a speech, but he's lost his voice. So, let's go to the mayor. >> Yes. >> Then I wanted to say a big thank you to Shane Parish. Shane was one of our first outside shareholders. Chris and I actually never took any outside capital. And in 20, what was it 2019, we had sold the business. We went to buy. We did our first deal and we let a partner in. And that partner was Shane. And so Shane has been walking alongside us for six or seven years now. He's an incredible partner and uh he just is he just finished his tour of duty on the board but I know he's watching on the live stream so let's give him that round now. Um and then what about tiny CEOs? I saw Gerard Aarcrest is over there. Any other Luke Luke one? Hey everyone, piece of bash stand on here. I promise I'll stop being hit class soon. Um uh so also there's there's some really there's two really really special uh actually three really special people here. Uh four actually down that I see. Um, when I was first starting out, you know, I was just a guy who was naming websites for local businesses and I had no idea what I was doing. And I my hiring strategy when I started was I would just meet random people and offer them jobs. And so that was how I met Chris. Chris was a guy who worked at the bank and we hit it off and I said, "Hey, you know, accounting, you want to be my CFO?" And I had a uh was ever going to start and the first person that I ever hired was Lucely. I think Luke is somewhere. Let's give a round of applause to Luke. >> But Luke is Luke is employee number two. And he's employee number two, not only because he's an amazing designer. He was my girlfriend at the time, best friend's boyfriend. Uh so and then and then my my college roommate Mark Pickles is also here and Mark basically took over Metab. Mark is responsible for much of the growth in Metab. I was a terrible terrible CEO and Mark stepped in and and grew it a ton from what 2009 to 2015 or something like that. Barkley was allstar shareholder. Alli Bosworth is here who's employer number four three something like that. job also my brother Jim who was here was with us along the way for the whole thing any other early OG people I mean Ben Moore is here so Ben Ben uh wrote me an email in 2010 I think and he said uh look I don't know anything about tech but I'm a writer he wrote me this amazing email and he said I just want to work with you and now uh Ben ended uh rising through the ranks. He ended up running one of our businesses. Uh he ended up taking it public with us and then now he runs my family office. So huge thank you to Ben. Uh >> all the copy is done. Sorry about all the clapping. Um so oh and then sorry guys, one more clap. This one's got to be a big big big clap. So none of this would have happened. Like basically Chris and I get the joy of just walking into this and it's all organized and there's pickle ball paddles and there's socks and there's euro presses and everything's amazing and that's all because of Karen Claire are amazing. So huge thank you to you Karen. Um so here's how this is going to go today. Uh we have all the usual uh legal uh formal side of it. So, we're going to read off a very boring script and we're going to do some motions and stuff like that. That should take what five five minutes or so, something like that. We'll we'll get through it as quickly as we can. Uh, and then Jordan is going to walk you guys through what happened over the last year in business and then we're going to get open to Q&A. You guys can ask us about anything you want. You can grill us like grilled cheese. Uh, no no topic is off limits. Um, so yeah, why don't we get started? Mike, do you want to take it away? Sounds good. Thank you, Andrew. >> Oh, your mic you have. >> Yeah. So, before Andrew calls the meeting to order, I would like to state and read the forwardlink statements for today. Remember that comments made during this meeting of sharehource and the management presentation and question period may contain forward-looking information within the meeting of applicable securities legislation which reflects the company's current expectations regarding future events. Forwardlooking information is based on a number of assumptions and is subject to a number of risks and uncertainties many of which are beyond the company's control. that could cause actual results and events differ materially from those that are disclosed or implied by such forward information. These forward-looking statements are made as of today's date except as expressly required by vocal law. The company assumes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forwardlooking statement whether a result of view information, future events or otherwise. We've referred to the company's files on CEARM plus including our annual information form the year ended December 31st, 2024, which identifies certain factors that could cause actual results to differ particularly from those rejected in any for statements made during the meeting. Okay, is that fun? Um, with that being said, it's my pleasure to now call the meeting to order. I'm going to ask Mike McKenna to act as secretary of the meeting and Ireie Lee of Computershare Trust Company to act as scrutinating scrutiny has a good word. Um the purposes of this meeting are to receive the audit and financial statements of company for the fiscal year ended December 31st, 2024 together with the auditors reported on to fix the number of directors of the company at five to elect the directors of the company for the ensuing year to appoint the auditor of the company for the ensuing year and to authorize the board to set the auditor's remuneration to consider and if deemed advisable pass an orhary resolution of the shareholder ers approving certain amendments to the company's 10% ruling omnibus equity incentive plan. To consider and if deemed advisable, pass an ordinary resolution reapproving the 10% rolling omnibus plan of the company. and to consider if deemed advisable pass a special resolution authorizing the company the consolidation of all the issued and outstanding shares of the company on the basis of one post consolidation share for up to every five preconolidation shares or such other ratio to be determined by the board. Specific details of the matters to be put before the meeting are set forth in a company's management information circular. The secretary is guided be with proof that the notice and access notification and form of proxy were mailed to tiny shareholders on May 1st, 2025. I direct that the affidavit of bailing will be annexed to the minutes of the meeting. I will dispense with the reading of the notice of the meeting. Before proceeding with the business of the meeting, I would like to take a moment to discuss the voting procedures. Each holder of a common share is entitled to one vote before each common share held. I propose that all votes or matters before today's meeting be conducted by the show of hands. The bylaws of the company provide that a quorum at a meeting of shareholders shall be one or more four voting persons present and authorized to cast in the aggregate not less than 10% of the total voting shares sorry vote votes attached to all shares carrying the right to vote at that meeting. I have received the screamer's report showing that there are in attendance at this meeting persons or by proxy 37 shareholders folding 155 million 96,615 common shares. Accordingly, the total representation at this meeting by shareholders presently in person or by proxy is 82.7% of common shares of the company. I would ask that the secretary file a copy of this year's report with demands of today's meeting. Therefore, I declare that there is a quorum present at this meeting. With the appropriate notice of the meeting having been given and a forum vi, I declare the meeting duly constituted and ready for the transaction of business. Certain persons have been asked in advance of the meeting to make certain motions. This is in no way intended to disprojenate discussion, comments or questions from the floor. Should any shareholder or proxy holder wish to speak on any matter, please do so. I would ask that shareholders or proxy holders identify themselves by stating their name so that they may be recognized by the chair of private seating. I welcome all guests but would ask that any non-shareholders or nonprofit holders refrain from voting. The first item of business is to receive the audited consolidated financial statements the company for the year ended December 31st, 2024 and the auditor's report thereon and the management's discussion and analysis both of which are available for review on Cedar Plus on the company's website. I declare that the audit consolidated financial statements of the company for the year ended December 31st, 2024 and the auditor's report thereon and the management discussion and analysis have been received. The next item of business is to fix the number of directors to company to be directors of the company to be elected at this meeting for the ensuing year. The company is proposing the size of the board of directors to be set at five. Do I have a motion to fix the number of directors of the company at five? I move that the number of directors be set a fly. Second motion. >> All those in favor signify in the usual manner by raising their stands. >> Any oppose? >> No. >> Okay. The motion is carried. We'll now proceed with the election of directors. The nominees standing for election as directors are Andrew Wilkinson, Chris Spartling, Alex Konei, Tim Mane, and Carl Bath. They've all consented to stand for election and I would appreciate a motion to elect those nominated as strikers of the company to hold office until their until the close of the next annual meeting or until their successors are duly elected. I move that Andrew Wson are elected as directors of the company office until close of the next annual meeting or until their successes are duly elected or appointed. That's it. >> Perfect. All those in favor signify in the usual manner by raising their hand. All those opposed? No. Okay. The motion is carried. I now declare Andrew Wilson, Chris Sparlin, Austin Spone, Tim Mlan, and Carla Matson be duly elected directors of the company to hold office until the next annual election or directors unless their office is stated or a successor is appointed in a court by law of the company. The next item of business is to is the appointment of KMG chartered professional accountants as auditors to hold office until the next annual meeting of shareholders out of reuteration to be fixed by the board of directors. I will now ask for someone to move and someone to second the motion. In this regard, >> I move that TKG LLP charter special account are appointed as fathers equal office shareholders at the remuneration by the board. >> All those in favor signify by raising your hand. Any oppose? No. Okay. The motion is carried. The next item item of business is the approval of certain amendments to the company's 10% rolling omnibus equity incentive plan. The amendments are set out in schedule A of the management information circular. I will now ask for someone to move and someone to second a motion. In this regard, >> move that the ordinary resolution set out in the benefit information circular with respect to the amendment to the company's 10% rolling off the US equity incentive plan for our approval. >> Second. All those in favor signify by raising a hand. Oppose. The motion is carried. The next item of business is an ordinary resolution to reapprove the 10% row and omnibus equity incentive plan of the company. The full text of the omnibus equity incentive plan is set out in schedule V of the management iteration circular. I will now ask for someone to move that someone to second motion in this regard. I move that the ordinary resolution set out in the information circular with respect to the 10% rolling talking about equity incentive plan of the company. All those in favor opposed the motion is carried home stretch. The next right of business is a special resolution authorizing the company's consolidation of all be issued outstanding shares to the company on a basis of one close consolidation shares for up to every five preconolidation for such other ratio to be determined by the board. I will now ask for someone to move and someone to second the motion with regard. I move that the special resolution set out an abandonment information circular authorizing the company to complete a consolidation of all the issued and outstanding shares of a company on the basis of one post consolidation share for up to every five pre-consolidated shares or other such for such other ratios to be returned by the board is approved and second. >> All right. All those in favor. All right. The motion is carried. If there's no further business to be brought before the meeting, I would ask for a motion to terminate the meeting. >> I move that this meeting be terminated and second. >> All those in favor? Any opposed? All right. The motion is carried. I declare the formal part of the meeting concluded and I will now open the floors any questions you may have. We will now move on to our business presentation. If you best prefer we do that all over again, what do you think? Shell, you want to do the presentation? Okay, great. I'll pass the mic over. Thank you. Appreciate it. >> Um, first off, uh, I wanted to say thank you for everyone for attending, our uh, our employees, our board, our investors, our barbers. We really appreciate you taking the time out of your day to come and support us. Um, lucky to have partners like you. I I want to say specifically thank you to our employees who helped put this together who helped you know shape this year I'm gonna talk about all the wonderful things that we've done this year and um you know I made some promises last year that I was going to give you updates of course specific banks and I'm excited to tell you that. So thank you. So what we or what I said last year, I I made you guys a promise. I I good up four things or or I said four things to you and I want to be held accountable and I want our team to be held accountable and they were really four simple things. You know, I promised that we were going to try to increase cash flow. That was sort of a combination of both organic growth and through cost discipline. I promised that we were going to look at, you know, making acquisitions in a disciplined way. We were going to evaluate both tuckins. We're going to look at platforms and we're going to focus on highquality businesses with a recurring rate. I said we're going to manage and reduce leverage and and actually to make it even simpler, I said I'm going to tell you how much debt we pay down next year. >> So, I'm going to talk about that a bit. >> And finally, I want to increase um you know, upgrade our disclosure, be more transparent on the service of keeping ourselves tidy um accountable to you. are our shareholders and partners. So, I'm excited to tell you about this stuff. I have an update on each of these and uh and also excited to hear about your questions and and talk to you after the meeting. Increasing cash flow. Um I think the charts really speak for themselves, but I I'm going to talk about some of the highlights we've made. Um when I stepped in, we really thought long hard about our operating structure. We had our look at costs. We had our log management um and we really simplified our operating structure. We simplified our reporting. We found ways to make efficiency in our company. That resulted in $4 million of annualized cost savings. We we also believe there's still more work to do. And I'd also say that this wasn't in the service of eliminating, you know, operational costs or development or or things that are helping us grow. they were really in the service of creating more accountability, putting the right people in place and operating our business in an intelligent way. Um, we have not stopped investing in organic growth. You know, things like, you know, investing in a services marketplace in Dribble or, you know, launching uh, Walter, a recruitment service within Weiwork remotely. These are all things that we think are going to benefit uh Tiny long term and they're starting to really show up in the results in our in Q1 and and Q4 of 2024. We are on a more regular cadence of distributions from our tiny fund for as a reminder this does not show up in our adjusted EBIT DAL figures. Uh we had 2.2 million of distributions in 24 and we had 1 million of distributions in Q1 2025. And finally, we weren't afraid to, you know, devest of certain small non-holy owned subs. It reflects our focus on our core assets. We really want to pay attention to stuff that moves the needle. And I I I I really want to bring it together by saying I'm proud of the results of what we've done. It's showing up in Q4. It's showing up in Q1. Our adjusted EVA margin is now pushing north of 20%. We have a target to get that closer to 25% in the in the short and medium term. And we're going to keep showing the results quarter after quarter. And uh I I'm excited for this year. We talked about acquisitions last year. Um we made three acquisitions in 2024. Two of them focused on recurring revenue. Repeat is going to play a big big part of our organic growth. >> Get closer closer. Can you hear me? I love it. Repeat, a business that we bought within WCommerce, is going to play a big part of our organic growth story going forward in our e-commerce platform. Mediaet is 100% recurring revenue business. Uh VMS software business located in Arizona. Wholesale Pet uh we bought in the fund again speaks to our expertise in marketplaces and we're investing in upgrading that platform. And finally, Sorado, which we'll talk about a lot more, really represents a transformational acquisition for us and and will highlight some of the things of, you know, why we're excited. But I mean, again, this this kind of growth in recurring revenue, our our focus on this like is really evident in our proforma, you know, we're we're looking at almost doubling our recurring revenue in 2025 and it's, you know, it is going to show up this year. Sorado, we're excited. Um, this is a special business. It's something that doesn't come along every day. Um, I think the best way to put it is, you know, if you ask people about Microsoft Teams, um, their eyes don't light up. Um, you know, like it's not like the the most exciting uh piece of software in the world, but when I talk to people about Sorado and the people that use it, they are evangelists. Like they are excited about this software. This is the stuff they use to have fun, make a living. they're obsessed with it. So, you know, from a brand standpoint, an innovation standpoint, um you know, the the hardware modes, their history of of of technology and culture and shaping this industry, that's what makes this special. You layer that on top of a really strong financial profile, meaning you know 10% compound annual growth rate of revenue over the last 10 years, 62% recurring revenue, highly profitable, highly cash flowing business. You know, this is what makes this an ideal acquisition for us. This is something we've been working on for 6 months. I'm headed to New Zealand on Saturday to spend a week with the team and kick off this amazing opportunity. So, um, this is great. I'm pumped about it. We said we were going to pay down debt. We did. We reduced our leverage from 3.8 times in Q423 to below three in Q125. We paid down almost $40 million of our gross debt throughout 2024. And we're continuing to reduce our leverage through 2025. there is going to be a slight uptake in our leverage which we used to complete Sorado. I think that that it goes without saying you know this is a responsible use of leverage. This is a special acquisition. It was done at a fair price. Um but it doesn't change our target our priority of reducing that leverage to between two and two and a half and actually in the long term below that. Um, I'll also speak to the fact that reducing our leverage really gives us that flexibility to pursue acquisitions like Sorado. Like the only reason we were able to do that was because we paid down our debt. It gave us that flexibility and we believe that that's the right thing for us to do. And finally, uh, holding ourselves accountable, being transparent, talking to our investors, giving you more information. You know, we've held we started our quarterly conference calls. We enhanced our investor materials and our disclosure. You know that means providing case studies our invest on our investments. Um showing you the results of our of our kind of you know sharing of best practices or showing that we have a certain return on invested capital. We started disclosing fund performance revenue related to the fund distributions related to the fund. We're going to try to keep telling you more about our fund and operational highlights. And finally, we're really focused on giving you the key metrics to hold us accountable and and you know, pointing to pointing out to you guys what makes us successful. So, what do I want you guys to ask me about next year? Um, a lot of the same stuff. We're going to keep doing we're going to keep doing a lot of the same things, but you know, there is a bit of nuance to this. Like, obviously, we're evolving. We've done a lot of work in 2024, but we still have more work to do. So, we're focused on profitable growth and acquisitions. That means keep investing in organic growth. It means staying disciplined on cost. We still have more room to go there. Like, there's vendor consolidation opportunity. There's opportunity to save on taxes. Um, I want you to ask me how Sorado went. Like, I want, you know, I want to put up a case study and say, "Hey, this is how the first year went. This was our return on invested capital. Hold us accountable. We're going to continue optimizing our capital structure. That means reducing leverage. Uh it means paying down debt. It means increasing profitability. It means looking at creative ways to make that um more efficient. Um that gives us flexibility to make big acquisitions and do the things like Serato. Finally, we have a big focus on aligning management, our culture. We're working on rolling out a new long-term incentive plan. We're sharing best practices. We're creating a culture of learning. Um we're having our first leadership offsite in Toronto. That's 50 people getting together, sharing what they know, making connections. And then finally, we're going to keep being transparent with you. Like we want to be held accountable and and we're going to keep upgrading our disclosure and reporting and uh telling this great story. So, thank you guys. We appreciate your support. >> All right, with that, should we open it up to Q&A? >> Yep. >> Great. So guys, there's two mics. So if you line up at the mics and we'll just go one by one. Hey man, how you doing? You want to start? >> I start every year. So yeah, let's do it. Uh, so yeah, for all the stragglers and any locals as well, we're going to be meeting at Swans Pub for some beers and some some drinks at about 1:30. It's a 10-minute walk, so feel free to come. Um, Jordan, thanks for answering my question earlier. >> No problem. >> But I do have one other question. Uh, Bitcoin, has have there been any conversations about just adding a little bit of Bitcoin to the reserves? No, that's not something we've really thought about. I I think um we find cryptocurrency really interesting and I as somebody who doesn't like dealing with bureaucracy, I love the idea of being able to say, "Hey, can I buy your house?" And you say yes and then we just have a smart contract do it all and it's automated. But um we're not commodities traders. We don't invest in currencies. So that's not something we really think about. >> Could I convince you otherwise? >> Maybe. Let's talk. Hi, Adam Boswick. Uh, first of all, Andrew, great news that you're not going to invest in crypto. Thank God. >> So, put it all in Dogecoin. Are you guys good with that? >> Good news. >> That's right. Secondly, very hard to follow the Swans beer guy. Um, but I'll try. So, Jordan, great presentation. Well done. I just want to hear about Tiny Capital's philosophy as far as a postinvestment integration into the portfolio. What is your playbook? How do you apply it? And how do you differentiate from someone like Vista Equity Partners? >> I could take that. So I think the biggest I remember um I was talking to this guy and he had sold his business. He had ran an agency business kind of like Metal App back in the day. this is probably 10 or 15 years ago. And he said, "I sold to WPP." Do you guys know what WPP is? It's like this huge advertising conglomerate. And he said, "You know, they were fine to deal with. Uh I was happy with the deal. It was life-changing money. Uh I stayed on to run the business, but the reason I left was because they made me use Workday and they changed the day that everyone got paid. And when I wanted an office chair, they had to order it through their procurement system and stuff. And so I think our strategy has really been that when someone sells us their business, it's a very emotional decision. They're selling they're giving a they're giving one of their children to a surrogate parent and they really want to know that that parent is going to treat them well. And so one of our key things is just nothing changes. So the deal closes and usually all the employees are panicked and they're worried that, you know, someone's going to be in the office changing everything or whatever. We just try and leave everything the same as much as possible. >> So, as a follow on to that, in the event that you're buying out, let's say, a family controlled business, the family wants to retire, take the check, head off into the sunset there. You need a management team. So, what are you going to do? >> Well, there's two scenarios. So, typically, um, there's situations we've had, one example, we had a guy come to us. He was this awesome guy named Mitch Crowe and he ran a meal planning app up island nearby and he emailed us one day and he said, "Look, I've got these two co-founders. They own 70% of the business. I own 30%. They want to leave. They want to go start a new business. I want you guys to buy the 70% and then I don't want to talk to you." And so we bought the business. We bought the 70%. And every six months ago or so, we would have coffee with Mitch and I'd start saying, you know, Mitch, you don't do any online advertising. Have you thought about that? And you just say, "No, just leave me alone." And so Chris and I actually didn't talk to him for years. We' text him. We'd make sure everything was looking good. But we really left him to run his own business. And we ended up selling the business. I think we bought into it for a million bucks. And we sold the business to Albertson's for 30 plus million dollars. So those are the dream scenarios where the founder wants to keep running the business and it's complex. If the founder wants to leave, then it's like brain surgery. You know, you're really doing an organ transplant and you better make sure the DNA matches. And so that's always a challenge for us. But I think over the last 10 years, we've gotten very good at finding people who resonate with the culture of the business, resonate with the founder, and then aligning the incentives so that we all both the employees and Tiny benefit from that relationship. Sorry to continue >> final maybe final question be so just to address the Vista point. >> So one of the differentiators with Vista is that they integrate the backend software they try to propagate it across the portfolio so they can find synergies and economies of scale. So how does Tiny dig into the software component of these businesses? So >> I remember um I've I've been lucky enough to get to know Glenn Clark who ran Jim Patterson Group for a long time. All you locals probably know who Jimmy Patterson is, but he's kind of like the Warren Buffett of Canada. He owns everything. So, every car you see outside, you'll probably see a Patterson sign. Any advertisement, you'll see Patterson on it. And I remember asking him that question and he said, "Look, even our businesses that advertise, we don't even make them use our radio stations or our signed businesses. If they want to, they can. But we don't do that because when we get involved and we start telling the CEOs how to run the businesses, we get into trouble. And it's that same problem as the WPP situation. A CEO is an elephant and we are the rider on the elephant. The elephant's going to go where it wants to go. We just don't want to get in their way. >> Excellent. Thank you. >> Hi, thanks everyone for making this. Coming from Mexico City, six hours flight. >> Oh wow. Um so my question is uh about your philosophy in terms of generating outsides returns um in the public markets you have like all those factors very direct psychological factors that create inefficiencies. How do you see those inefficiencies in the private markets in terms of um you know like if they're more rational actors like how do you consistently get deals like sat and things like that so you can generate outside returns for the long term? I think a big mistake that a lot of people in finance make is they they go, you know, why wouldn't the founder just hire an investment banker to run a process? And the reality is most founders, myself included, when I owned a bunch of valuable businesses. I thought an investment banker was the guy who gave me money behind the counter at the bank. I didn't know what that was. And so most founders that own great businesses, they're not even really thinking about selling their business necessarily. or if they are, it's in the back of their head somewhere and it requires somebody tapping them on the shoulder and saying, "Hey, I love your business. Would you ever sell it?" And for us, this has happened via happen stance. So, you know, I wrote a book. I'm on social media. I I have a broad network of people and I bump into all sorts of different people. And so, one example is um three years ago, I was in New Zealand. I was there for a philanthropy conference, totally random, and I said, "Who do I know in Auckland, and I looked through my LinkedIn and I found there was this guy, Matt Buchanan, and I'd been using this app called Letterbox to track my movies." And I thought it was really cool, and my brother uses it. And so I said, "Oh, I'll go over coffee with Matt." And we sit down and I start asking him questions about the business. And he says, you know, we started about 10 years ago and yeah, it kind of blew up during COVID and now we're at like 10 million registered users. And I was like, whoa, like record scratch. How many how big is this? And he started walking me through the business. And I said, well, what's your endgame? What what do you want to get out of this? Do you want to sell or do you want to keep running it? And he said, 'Well, you know, we've always thought we would sell for the right price. And I just stopped him. I said, well, what's the right price? And he said, a number. And I said, "Okay." And that was that. And we met at the Auckland airport. Me and Zoe, we were at in the Air New Zealand lounge eating lamb or something. And we sat there and we hashed out a letter of intent. And so I don't believe that the best deals are really just relationships. And so we've been lucky enough to have a lot of relationships and find these incredible opportunities. >> Yeah. I I would even add to that like I think the Sorado acquisition is a perfect example of that too in terms of a lot of buyers are not only financially oriented, right? Like they are looking for a real long-term home for their business. They want a partner that understands their long-term vision if they want to roll a piece of of equity or they want to, you know, take a piece of tiny back. Like these were all extremely important factors in determining whether Sarata was going to sell to us. like they had an offer from a private equity firm. We're not private equity. We're long-term owners of these businesses. We, you know, we think differently than, you know, a a traditional Vista equity or or even a strategic that might replace the entire management team or try to smash things together. And that and that really played a massive factor in getting, you know, Steve West and AJ Wilderland to to partner with us. And and they, you know, we're happy to have them along for the ride for the next 10 plus years. That's that's the kinds of business or those are the kinds of businesses that we're looking for. >> It's going to going to sound cheesy, but we call it nice has a competitive advantage, right? Like there's two elements. One is just being normal. Like I remember Chris and I would meet all these private equity guys and they would be like, "Well, what's your kagger? What's your IBIT? All these finance terms." And honestly, we didn't know what they were talking about because all we knew was net profit, what's in the bank, our P&L. And it just confused us. And I think being able to speak founder is a very unique thing to be able to say, I've been in your shoes. I know what it feels like. I know the stress. I understand what your employees might want. And for us now, I know what the CEO wants. Right? There's a lot of different stakeholders. It's not just the founder selling. It's also the management team and the employees and all these other kind of intrinsic details. >> Hi, John Kennedy coming from Seattle. uh many of your businesses or many of the portfolio companies rely on software development to uh compete and software development is going through a fundamental change right now. Do you have a portfoliowwide strategy to move the companies to AI powered development? >> Absolutely. I mean I'm spending probably 50% of my time right now getting to the metal. So that's been using the tools and trying to learn them myself and figuring out where we can apply them within the portfolio. and we've been rolling that out throughout. And the other is trying to uh you know really get to the metal with open AI and anthropic and all the people leading those companies and ask them questions about what's coming so that we are prepared. Uh and we're being very aggressive about rolling that out throughout the business. Like if there's a business we own and the developer is not using copilot and windurf and cursor like that's a problem. and and I would say there's a there's a ton of benefit to having a portfolio of 25 plus different types of software companies using different tools and then sharing all that knowhow and best practice and like that's something that's very important to us like we're pushing hard on it like at our offsite like the the number one theme is going to be hey what are you getting out of this show everyone and it it works like I mean the best way to get the leverage and to get people using this stuff is through showand tell so it's it's Okay. >> Hello. Uh, I'm Jonas in from Pender Island today. Um, I had a question about a word you guys use on your um web and in some of your writing and it's the word wonderful. We buy wonderful businesses. Can you talk about um that word maybe I'm zooming in on on it too much uh but what that means uh qualitatively for you guys um and I appreciate the word myself. children have wonder. Sorado Aerero Press I can see in uh Happy Fun Corp that element of wonder shows through. So I just wanted to ask how you guys think about about that. >> Yeah, I mean I think um so much of what we do is following our passions. So if you think about it um you know as a barista we bought Aeropress. I love coffee. Uh I love movies we bought letter boxed. Uh, you know, I used to DJ who bought Sorado and I think um we we really looking for businesses that people feel warmly about. And if you think about what Jordan was talking about with Sorado, there's 2 million DJs, some of them in their bedroom up to like Diplo performing at Burning Man that are obsessed with Sorado. And to me, that makes me feel really good when I talk to people and they say, um, you know, I bought I bought a, you know, distress business for 50 cents on the dollar and then I sold it off in bankruptcy and I made, you know, x amount of money. Like I can be impressed by the financial engineering, but it doesn't make me feel warm and fuzzy. Nor does it give a lot of people an amazing living and benefit the world in a broader way. So I think that's kind of how we think about wonderful. And obviously a component of that is it has to be a wonderful business financially. And what we've found is that usually when people are crazy about a business, the numbers take care of themselves. So usually those are the businesses we see that have very strong margin profiles and growth profiles naturally. >> Thank you. >> Hi, I'm Curtis. I I live down the street. Um the gentleman before me was talking about AI AI and LLM driven development but it was kind of in the context of the cost side. So can we get our engineers using co-pilot? Can we make sure they use cursor but what about the top line in the revenue side? So if I'm thinking about it me personally I've got a Shopify store. I have several $100 a month plus SAS products that I've used that I decided one day I don't want to pay this anymore. I open up cursor and claude and four hours later I grab the Shopify API, grab transactional email API and I'm like, you know what, this works. I built it myself. This is amazing. And I fire my paid SAS. How are you dealing with customers and people out in the world deciding they don't need software anymore because they can build their own? >> I think um >> Oh, good. >> Sorry. No, no, you go. Yeah, I I just want to say like I've found that there's a lot of tools I've tried to do that with and I've vibecoded my own solution, but I find it still requires maintenance and overhead and time. And I think what what's really going to happen is there's just going to be more software in general and more competition. So, I don't know if you read our annual letter, but we talked about over the last year or two, we've passed on many many many businesses that previously we would have jumped on. software businesses growing at amazing rates with high margins and retention. And what we're looking for now is if we're going to do software, we need a reason why people stick with it, right? So, we need a network effect. We need a hardware lock in like with Sorado, something like that. I think software in general is about to get way, way harder. You might have seen on Instagram there's all these kids that are bragging about how they've made $50,000 a month making like a calorie app with AI. And I think that's awesome that those people are doing that, but there's going to be a thousand copycats in 20 minutes because people like you and me can whip those up ourselves. So I think software is becoming less and less investable over time. Thank you. >> Hi, I'm Shane. I flew in from Texas. >> Yeah, thanks for coming, Shane. Good to see you. >> It's nice to see you, too. I've got a two-part question. Uh, Andrew, you talked about Letterbox and I really like the story about how the investment came about, how it was organic, and you were just kind of doing something personal. Um, along that line, I was curious if you could tell us a little bit about how Letterbox is growing, specifically how many monthly active users it has, how many that's grown over the past year, things like that. >> So, when we bought it, I think there was 10 million registered. Now, we're at 20 million registered. Jordan, do you have the more precise MAU numbers and stuff? >> I I c I can't disclose exact MAU, but I can tell you that it's growing at a clip of, you know, 60% plus a year. Um, it's actually accelerating. Um, revenue is also growing at a at a comparable clip. Uh, the business is doing really well. We're we're really excited about the prospects of the business. The the most fascinating thing about Letterboxed is it was these two guys in New Zealand who are just designers and they started this social network and before they knew it they had this incredible business. They built this network effect with no venture capital and they still I think they only have what 12 or 15 employees or something >> a little bit more maybe more 20 something like that and are running really really solid profit margins. So, it's it's a fascinating business and I think that we really haven't scratched the surface. Like, if you apply typical social network monetization numbers to that size of registered user base, I think we can grow a lot. It's really a matter of it's always a delicate balance. We don't want to get in there too aggressively and try and overetize it before we've built the lightning in a bottle. So, we're proceeding cautiously, but the revenue is growing alongside the user base. >> So, that's the second part of the question. Even using the member number as opposed to the monthly active user number, if you put Facebook's multiple on that, it would imply the value of the company is worth something like $2.5 billion. But even if you took something like Pinterest, you know, you still get to a number that's bigger than >> Shane works for Bill Aman and he it's worth two and a half billion. So let's let's go with that. Yes, >> those are those are the things those are the things we look at too. But I I I agree with Andrew around there is something magical about letter box around the authenticity around you know this delicate balance of advertising monetization community this like vintage internet appeal to it like this ability to connect with people that are really passionate about something that you love. So it's like you know that magic is so important. So, how do we grow this business responsibly while maintaining that really magical component? And I actually believe Matt, Carl, and and and we to be honest because we're working alongside them, we're doing a good job of that now. So, we're we're balancing that line. >> The if you think about it, you know, Letterbox has so much data on film that I think one of the things we've been talking about, for example, is right now all of the advertising is handsold. So somebody comes in and they say, you know, A24 or whatever comes in, they say, "Hey, we've got this movie. We've got a budget. We'd like to buy some ads." And they will hand select an audience or whatever. I think where we could move in the future would be Tarantino is coming out with a new movie, show only to people that are in cities where the movie is showing and they've rated Tarantino movies four stars plus. And we can hyperarget and then even track, did they convert, did they go buy movie tickets and stuff. That's not where we're at right now, but I think that's kind of a vision for the future of where we could go. We just are so sensitive to not upsetting the community and not messing with it. So, we're being very delicate. >> So, just the last thing I'll say is I do want to caveat that multiple was illustrative. I don't think that Facebook is exactly sure. Even if you take other, you know, internet companies that have active users and apply a similar multiple, you a number that's significant. It's a very it's a valuable business and we feel very lucky that we were able to make the investment when we did and we've been blown away. I mean even at the Emmys and stuff people are bringing up letter box. It's pretty wild. >> Yeah. So where I was going with that is uh from a tiny limited investor standpoint when can we expect to see more disclosure on these great businesses that you have that are kind of hidden under the surface? >> So I mean we're walking a line where it's a subsidiary. We're a minority investor, right? We're an LP and then we own 50% of the GP directly. I own the other 50% of the GP and I've been giving all the distributions to Tiny. So, it's a bit of a nuance thing. Mike, do you want to just speak to a little bit of the work we've been doing with the auditors and accounting to what we can disclose. >> Yeah. And I think >> Oh, you got to go closer to the mic. >> Sorry. Q1 was a good example. Right. We did provide a bit more information on a consolidated basis for the fund companies, you know, both at the revenue level and then with their distributions, right? So, we're going to keep trying to work every quarter to provide a bit more information. Um, you know, there is an audit piece of this that as a public company, we have to be mindful of, right? Uh, but we are working very closely with our auditors and our, you know, legal council to ensure that, you know, every quarter we can try to enhance the disclosure, right? And whether that can get down to a company level, I think we're working through some of those questions internally. Um, but I think hopefully you'll see that, you know, with the with the the example of the of the first quarter of the year, right? we we're on the path now to to trying to disclose more uh and and that's part of our overall objective. So, >> and also anyone that is a direct I know there's some people that are shareholders in the public company as well as in the fund. I believe you guys are you guys obviously we can disclose all that if you just send me an email. We can get get you all that information. >> Yeah, we we want everyone to know. We we we get it. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> It's Yeah, we would love to share it all. It's just there's Yeah, accounting and stuff like that. >> Thank you. Thanks, Shane. Hey, Gwen. Gwen. >> Hello. How's it going? >> Good. >> Um, so I just wanted to start out by saying thank you. I've been here for three years now. And >> Oh, you gota go closer to the mic. >> Oh, it's closer to the mic. There we go. Okay, working. Uh, it wasn't high enough, I guess. Um, so I just want to thank you. I've been here coming here for three years now. And, uh, former analyst at Tiny. And uh if it weren't for the environment that I think Andrew and Chris um gave their analysts, I don't know if I would have the business that I have today and be the analyst that I am. So I'm very grateful to you both. Um so for someone who is running a business now and self-sustaining, it's bootstrapped, it's profitable, um but also has the problem of being kind of a bit of a tumble weed. Uh when I speak I'm, you know, I'm classically awkward. I'm just kind of like tumbling through the wind and then I say something weird. Um, as someone who speaks so eloquently, what advice would you have for someone who doesn't speak? Um, or >> I remember um I often will meet people that are like 22 and they're starting a business. And I I they they come to me and they say, "Well, I've got this business and this business and this business, I'm doing this and I also am doing this." And and I just I go, "Oh my god." And I remember being at that stage and I realized that people want simplicity and they want stories. So if you tell someone what you do, that's very different than storytelling. And so one of the things you might notice Chris and I have spent a lot of time figuring out how do we answer questions with stories. So, I could have said, you know, when when I got that question about uh letter boxed or an acquisition or how we source, I could say, we have a proprietary deal sourcing strategy of meeting people and making offers on demand. Instead, I told a story about beating Matt and it's just more accessible and memorable. And I said one thing, not 20 different things. So, as someone who's spazzic with ADHD, I also suffer from this and I've had to learn just to tell one story as an answer. I highly recommend the book Storyworthy by Matthew Dixs, specifically when it comes to how to craft a narrative like that. Uh I think everyone here would benefit. >> Amazing. Thank you so much. >> Hi. Um my question is around transitioning from the co-CEO's role to chairman, vice chairman, and then bringing Jordan as CEO. So it's more like in the in the angle of the philosophy of when do you kind of like uh decide that you aren't doing the best job you could be doing and decide to step down or move aside and you've talked about doing this plenty times along your career among companies among the faces of the company. So how do you think about those uh yeah like transitions and when to do them? Yeah, I think um for me personally, I like running businesses that are about 15 people to 20 people and that's where I tap out. I think that's where I'm really good. And I think for the first seven or eight years of tiny, you know, we had a very small head office and we had a handful of CEOs we were managing. And so that worked out pretty well. And I found that when we got to the point of where we own, you know, we own 30 businesses and we have 15 20 people in the head office, I just realized I'm not in my zone of genius and I'm getting dragged into all these things that I don't enjoy and I'm not very good at. Um, you know, I recently heard a uh someone said, um, if you're if you're not waking up every morning excited to get to work, that's a signal that something is wrong. And I think I felt that for six months to a year and Chris and I had a lot of long conversations about that and we realized that it made a lot of sense for us to focus where we were really good and to have someone focus where we were weak and so it's actually worked out incredible for us and uh we're super happy with it. Chris, do you have anything to add to that? >> I think you said it well. I do think it's one of our unfair advantages is the ability to actually get out of the way. And uh I meet with a lot of founders who are very eager to try and elevate someone up to take the reigns, but they just end up swooping and pooping. And I really do think that it we're not as quite aware of just how much of a superpower that tends to be. Um it's hard. We've always said >> this one especially I think was really hard was actually transitioning out because it's our baby. Yeah, >> we we've always said we're teflon for tasks, right? So I think that's a great heruristic as a entrepreneur is to try and be teflon for tasks where the only tasks that you do are the things you're truly great at. And I feel like over the last year Chris and I have been able to focus where we're really strong which is connecting with founders, telling the story and allocating capital, not day-to-day operations. >> Yeah, I actually think we're far more thoughtful now than we ever were before when we were getting inundated with all these other things. >> Thank you. Hi, my name is Walden. Um, my question is when you come across a great business, um, how do you decide which pool of capital to use and what is your how do you envision the optimal long-term makeup for revenue to be derived from either the tiny hold code or the actual fund? How do you decide what to do? >> Yeah, for clarity, so we raised about I think it's roughly 222 million Canadian uh back in 2021. We that was our first fund that was before we were public and we fully deployed that in 2024 I believe is that correct so that's fully deployed and we don't have any expectation that we'll raise another fund and so going forward everything sits in the public company which uh which bucket it goes within which operating group is often a question um but everything's going to be in the pubco going forward >> thank Hey there, Ryan uh from Victoria here. Uh my first uh tiny AGM and um uh given how human focused I've I've heard you talk. Um I am really curious about your AI strategy and like philosophy at the core. when you're a publicly traded company, you have to think revenue and bottom line, but I've heard you really lean into like the human elements of the business and the unfair advantages, which I really appreciate. And so I'm curious about your AI philosophy and strategy and like how can you how are you balancing those um uh innovation, revenue, and the and the human displacement. I think a lot of people make the mistake where they hear like there's a story of um there's a Swedish company fintech company called CLA and CLA did a partnership with OpenAI and they said we have now automated our support team right and so people think oh my god they're just going to have no support people and their margins are going to go up and what typically happens in a business is that they just do a lot more work so if you think about Excel you know Excel came out or or spreadsheets came out in the 80s And everybody said, "This is the end of bookkeeping. This is the end of accounting. What are all the accountants going to do?" Well, as we all know, the accountants found things to do. They are still very busy and there's a lot of them. So, uh, I think it's really just pivoting what people focus their energies on ultimately. Um, and I think we are forced to compete. You know, if you if you don't embrace these technologies, you're just going to operate at far lower margins than anyone else. And we have to add these sustaining innovations. >> I keep thinking, oh, >> well, just real quick, is that uh you never want to mistake a clear view for a short distance. And this is one of those things where we all see it coming and we're all very aware, but trying to time that can make you a fool pretty quickly. And so we're being pretty cautious, but we're very aware >> and and even and even as a kind of just tiny case study example and it's specific to support like clean canvas, one of our theme businesses was one of our first to adopt like an AI first approach to to support and it was all in the service of enhancing those customer support representatives and actually upskilling them. So they became success people or sales people actually revenue generating you know tasks and stuff like that. And I think it's almost the wrong question. Like I think if there's a support person that's saying, "Oh, is this going to replace my job?" That's the wrong question. Like you should be asking, "Well, if I don't learn this and automate this part of my job and start upskilling and actually doing, you know, all these other things and enhancing margin, then you know, what are you doing here?" So I like it really is about enhancement. >> Yeah, I could agree more. So thank you for that, Jordan. present. >> Thank you for sharing. Very inspiring. Uh my name is Gregory and I'm from Armenia, very small landlock country with like 3 million people. Um so I'm wondering how for small countries with more like local focus of like entrepreneurship and like how ideas and how like the society works more through global market where it's like larger more connected. you mentioned like New Zealand, US is nearby like all this uh more larger global thinking in terms of like people and how like the society works at large. What advice do you have in terms of like escaping this like local mindset to more like global mindset of taking risks and uh maybe trying to start something? >> Funny you asked that. I was meeting with a a a another shareholder talking about this and I I where we landed on this was you are the sum of your five best friends. So I think you need to find those people that are doing the things you want to do that are entrepreneurial. And what I've been surprised by is even in Victoria, BC, where we're a sleepy government town and there's not a huge tech scene, there's a lot of really interesting entrepreneurs out there and we've just collected them. We find them over time and we get to know them and they become our friends. And I think there's a real advantage to being outside of a bubble like Silicon Valley. You know, if you talk to someone in New York, they'll say to you, um, you know, I went to this school and then I worked at KKR, right? That's status. If you're in Silicon Valley, they'll say, I was at this cool unicorn company and we raised from Sequoia, right? And so the nice thing about being in Armenia or Victoria is you probably don't have all that mimetic signaling about what you should do. And I think you get freedom of thought. And in terms of accessing global markets other than raising capital, which sometimes being in a big city, you benefit from I think um you can access global markets from anywhere on the internet. I mean, we're a testament to that. It's not like Chris and I spent all of our time wheeling and dealing and closing deals down in the States. Uh we've built the whole business from here. >> Thank you. Hi, Mike Lesley, uh, CEO of Reilla here in Victoria. Um, you mentioned your philosophy of, you know, being very hands-off, letting founders sort of like run their own op, you know, ship and do all the operations and stuff and hiring everything. Um, but you also have some pretty strong opinions on like, you know, leveraging things like AI and using tools internally. How do you balance that like you know desire to like have an influence I assume on the companies making sure that they are being competitive in the market and they're taking that stuff seriously but then also respecting that kind of like philosophy of giving them space and being autonomous. So, we've learned this lesson a million times, but when we hire a CEO, what we used to do, we would hire, we would be talking to CEO candidates and they would say something like, "I think the way to grow this business that you might put me in charge of is via enterprise sales or marketing or whatever it is." And we would say, "Well, wow, we really like this person, but we actually think the strategy should be DTOC e-commerce or or something else." And we've learned that when we hire someone, they do what they say they're going to do. You can't convince them that, you know, to use the elephant analogy I used before, to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Man or woman with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And these CEOs are going to go where they're going to go. And so we just focus on choosing CEOs who we are aligned with. I remember um Chris and I were in New York and we met with Gerard and we said, "Gerard, what would you do if we gave you the keys to Aeropress?" And you know, he talked for 20 minutes about all the things he would do. And at the end of it, we looked at each other, we said, "Yeah, that sounds pretty good." And he's done what he said he's going to do. And there's been other situations where we've had someone, you know, deliver a pitch and we haven't quite been aligned. And it almost always ends up that way um for better or for worse. So now we just try and ensure we're aligned on strategy. >> Is that ever a barrier to bringing on new companies where the CEO is going to stay? Yeah, definitely. I mean, >> absolutely. During during the diligence process or during our our management meetings and things like that, like I think what's important is setting expectations and being clear like I never want management to be surprised, you know, after, you know, post acquisition day one and it's like, oh, hey, hey, we want you to do this. Like that's a mistake, right? like we're talking about what the plan is, what the expectations are, what our vision for the company is versus what yours is. And you know, I mean, Sorado is a great example of that. We spend so much time talking to management about their vision and our vision and agreeing and and saying all the same things that like, hey, next week when I go spend the week with the management team, like it's just talking about all the things that we talked about for the last six months, like let's go and do them. So setting expectations, being clear, being transparent is so important before the deal closes. >> Got it. Thanks. >> Hey, I'm calling in from here and looking for a good story potentially with uh what's one thing you have for Tiny that you've always wanted to do but you haven't done yet. >> You mean like a business we wish we could have acquired or something? >> Whatever it might be. Yeah. What gets you most excited? the mission you haven't accomplished yet. >> You know, I actually don't know. We're not big on planning 10 years out and having some crazy vision. Like I know a guy, remember I was talking to this guy 10 years ago and I said, "What's your endgame?" And he said, "My endgame is to own the New York Jets." Right? I I wouldn't say Chris and I have that. And I think if you'd asked us what our endgame was 10 years ago, we would have said we want to be doing $5 million of profit and that would be an amazing win. So, we don't really think that way. And are there businesses that we admire? Absolutely. That if they dropped in our lap, we'd be very excited about. I don't want to say any of them publicly because we have a list of kind of companies we really admire that we're always in touch with the uh leaders of, but um but no, I wouldn't say there's any big looming kind of goal or thing like that. I'd say it's more anti- goals. I feel like uh we could talk adnauseium of things that I don't want my life to look like or things I'd rather avoid and we even do an often we often like an annual exercise of even just writing those out and that's much more of a guiding principle for us than a shiny north star. >> Maybe maybe I could add one point as just being here for a year. Um, I've seen this in action with this recent Srorado deal. Uh, when the guys wanted to get behind something and support it and say, "Hey, this is really important for us to grow and develop our company." Um, they put uh their money where their mouth is or behind their words. So, I think, you know, we just saw this uh play out and I think it's going to be able to keep playing out um because they're committed to doing that. So, a little piece of anecdotal information from the new guy. I got excited when Andrew talked about the New York Jets. So, I mean, maybe we'll buy the New York Jets. I don't know. But if it's a good business, I don't know. >> Thanks, guys. Like hearing about the adventures. >> Awesome. >> Thank you. Thank you. >> Uh we've really been appreciating this uh what you guys are demonstrating with a commitment to competence and discipline and also community and culture and supporting leaders. And I guess my question is um like what do you see as this example that you're setting with how you're doing this work which is a little bit different than typical market patterns. Uh you know what is what is the potential of the example that you're setting in the market with how you operate and also how do you think about um how these patterns of developing entrepreneurs um could apply in local ecosystems? M well I think if there's one if there's one thing that is unique about our story it's that we're not competent like we're not we're not people that came from some crazy pedigree and went to a great school. >> We're island bumpkins Julie. I think if we can do this anyone can. >> Hey I'm from Edmonton. >> Yeah. I think I think like like just the idea of like I've always whenever I talk to young entrepreneurs I always say like start where you want to end up right so often you'll hear people and they'll say well first I'm going to go into investment banking and then I'll go work at deoid and then you know when I'm about 32 I'll raise my first private equity fund because I really want to buy businesses and I'm always like look you're 22 like now is the perfect time go buy a business just start where you want to end up um and I think we've just we've just really focused on that so my hope is that more people see an unconventional path and that finance doesn't have to be this thing in a suit that you know you have to work 16our days in New York and hate your life. So if anything I mean Chris any thoughts? >> No. Well honestly I was saying it just a moment ago which is uh you know what do I hope the impression that is left on others and I it really is that if we can do this anyone can and we're really not that special and we are just trying to sit on our hands and make thoughtful decisions. So I appreciate the question. Yeah. And and how do you kind of balance this contrast between finding opportunities kind of all over the world and also connecting with entrepreneurs here in Victoria in a local community? >> Well, I mean, there's lots of our friends here who are entrepreneurs. I mean, I can look through this whole group and there's tons. Um, mostly it's just friends and having things in common. Like, we don't love to do too much business locally because, you know, it's great to just be friends with everybody. Uh although we do have some local businesses. Um and sometimes we're just scratching an itch. Like truly with Aerero Press, Andrew was making an AeroPress and said, "Who owns this?" And we looked up thinking it would be some private equity group and found out it was the founder himself who still owned it. >> Like often we're just scratching our own itches and trying to like investigate. >> Thanks. >> Over here. >> Hi. Um my name is Matt. I'm a local here in Victoria and uh thanks for for this and posting on your story. So I found out about an hour ago. >> Oh, funny. >> That's how Yeah. Um anyways, um so mine's more of a personal question. Um so I'm stepping into a business that's thrived, a local business that's thrived the past, you know, 30, 40 years working internationally. Um basically just off word of mouth and referral. And as someone stepping into the business who's not necessarily trying to build a business in terms of clients, um how would you recommend someone like me um develop the brand? Um what what are like three strategies that you could recommend for a guy like me to um increase brand recognition? So >> you're saying the brand right now is not wellknown or it is wellnown? >> It's not. No, it's not just because it's been um it's been a company that's just been word of mouth and referral. >> I mean I really like the word uh the rule of five. So, it's like if someone sees your company name five times, they think you're everywhere. And so, I don't know what line of business you're in, but I think that if you could figure out a way for people to just have you in their brain, right? So, an example of that, um, do you guys remember there was that all those podcasts about maybe 10 years ago and they would say brought to you by Mailchimp. Anyone remember that? Yeah. Like everywhere. And when I went to go do email marketing, without even thinking about it, I just typed in Mailchimp because it's a weird name, very memorable, and I just heard it everywhere. And so you see, there's some local businesses that do this, like Tedford Garage Doors. They have a teddy bear as their mascot, and you see it on every bus. And so if my garage door breaks, I just think I'm going to call Tedford. So I would think about that rule of five. Chris, >> I totally agree actually. Yeah. >> Okay, perfect. Thank you so much. Hi. Uh, my name is Lynn. I'm a third year going into fourth year at uh, UIC. And, uh, this question might not be as fancy as everyone else's, but I know Tiny invests in awesome businesses. And so, I was wondering if you guys have ever considered like in investing in like individuals with like high potential. >> So, I would say we do that usually in terms of leadership, right? So, we'll take a chance on putting someone in that shows a lot of gumption. And there's a lot of examples actually of people that have rose up through the ranks where I mean I told the story of Ben before, right? Ben was like a Ben was like, I'm a writer. What can I do? And then he rose through the ranks to become CEO and do all these other things. >> Think about Kima. >> Sorry. >> Kima. >> Kimmy. I mean there's a yeah there's a guy named Kima who's amazing and he came to us and um he said look all these companies that you own they're spending too much money on software no one's negotiating any any of it and Chris and I when we were running the business dayto day we would negotiate everything like I'm talking like the IKEA desk the coffee beans in the office everything and as we got bigger we we realized that was a function that was lost because ultimately employees just don't care as much as you. And so we built this business with Kima and uh he ended up selling that business and going off to work at RAMP. And then we actually did the same thing with another guy. We built a business called TechSource and now that's basically our procurement internally, but it's a business that works with other people and is profitable. So we love taking chances on people, but most of the time it's via a need or a business we already own. >> Awesome. Thank you. Hello, my name is Ryan. I'm from Vancouver. This is uh my third year in attendance. Thank you for putting it on. Um I don't know if it was I believe it was you that uh made a comment that boredom builds moes. And I was curious is that if you've ever looked at kind of old boring baby boomer kind of led legacy type companies that are maybe you know attached to ash fault, waste management, construction. Just the reason being is that most of the businesses that you guys look at are very kind of tech based except for I believe last year's um bio attempted bio steel acquisition. Now do you ever come across like old boring kind of like concrete rebar type those types of companies? The reason being is that a lot of these companies are run by older gentlemen that are looking for an exit and young people don't want to do this. They're not. It's not sexy. And you know, this touches in my wheelhouse cuz that's all I understand. I don't understand half the businesses that you guys are involved with. >> I'm not a tech guy. You know what I mean? You want to build a building? Okay. Now, let's have a conversation. >> So, um, when Chris and I started tiny or we when we pivoted from starting businesses to investing, we were really looking at Warren Buffett as an example and going, we should really buy more old school businesses. there's probably all these opportunities to grow them with modern marketing and uh process and stuff. And I remember we met this guy. He'd been running his business for 50 years or something. He had this huge walrus mustache. He had a flip phone and finally we got a meeting with him and we're in the basement of his office and he just sits down like this. >> Who the are you? >> Right. >> Yeah. >> All redneck billionaires. Redneck billionaires. >> He was really He's an amazing guy. He's actually really nice, but he ran all these industrial businesses. And as we were talking about what we did, we just realized that we didn't speak his language. We didn't have any ability to say, "Look, you know, we understand all your businesses. We take great care of them." For us or for him, we're a gamble to do a deal. The other problem is so many of these industrial businesses, like let's say like a gravel business or portaotti rental or fence rental business, people don't choose them because they're the best. They choose them because they show up and they're a commodity and they ultimately negotiate the price. So for us, we've looked at hundreds of traditional businesses and we've really only invested in Aeropress, which is a, you know, the coffee maker business. Um, that's one we could understand and made a lot of sense to us where we could add value, but and and we felt it had a brand moat, but most of these businesses, they just don't have a brand. Um, so we've we've struggled to invest in that space and never say never, we would love to buy more traditional businesses. That just hasn't been where our unfair advantage is. >> Yeah. And and I mean even just, you know, touching on a buffetism like it's just, you know, maybe one day we'll be in our circle of competence. We we we we look at them, we consider them, we learn, we like, but today this is what we're good at, so we're focusing on that. >> Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. >> Hi. Uh just to follow up on that last one, I wasn't going to ask a question this year, but uh then I heard that and um so last year I asked a very similar question if you had any interest in buying non- tech type businesses, especially like I mentioned a specific one that was a very traditional >> Sure. Do you mind tilting the mic? >> A very traditional type business, but that there was an additional technology that could uh transform the thing like tremendous unfair advantages. And at the uh AGM last year, uh I got a very favorable reaction from you guys. But then uh after a brief conversation with Andrew after the meeting, I signed up as a venture capital scout and then I was, you know, put in contact with Pedro and told to put everything through him and Austin. But when I brought that same deal to Pedro, he said, "We don't really invest in that kind of thing. We're really just looking for tech companies, websites that make money." And I'm like, "So, should I be looking for those kind of businesses for you guys or not? And if so, is there some sort of problem with sending them up through the way that venture capital scouts normally do?" Cuz it was totally blocked. Hm. I mean, I would say this is uh sometimes the tragedy of having a organization where there's a lot of different people someone can talk to and sometimes, you know, a great deal comes to us and someone doesn't understand it or discards it. And that's happened with me like I've discarded many deals and then one of like someone from Austin's team is like, "Oh my god, this is actually a gold mine. This is amazing." And we do the deal. Um I can't speak to that exact deal. I don't remember it. Um, but you should talk to Austin corner right there >> and find out what Yeah, let's find out what happened with that deal and we'll root it out. >> Okay. >> Yeah, I appreciate you mentioning that. Thank you. >> All right. >> Hi, my name is Josh. I'm from Squamish. Uh, would love to know from each of you at the table uh what is the segment business segment you're most excited about going forward? So, you have talked about deal flow, lots of great questions recently about different types of businesses. What types of businesses in the pipeline get you most excited? Well, I'll I'll take this one before you steal it from me. My I have a bit of recency bias and because I'm going to New Zealand next week and we just made this acquisition and it's fresh. I'm I'm really excited about Sorado. I'm really excited about the long-term prospects. Um I'm excited about the potential for for tuckins and organic growth investments. So, of course, I love all my businesses equally, but that that one is exciting at the moment. Yeah, it's hard to choose a child that we love them all. But, uh, honestly, I do think that Sorado is such an important acquisition for us. You know, the dilution was hard, but I think without a doubt, it's going to define Tiny for a decade to come. Without a doubt, I think it's probably the most important thing we've done. And in terms of pipeline of what's in there, I'm not going to weigh too much on on, you know, which verticals we're most excited by. Sorry. >> Yeah. You're like, you're at a family dinner asking us who's your favorite child and uh And Luke is right there eagerly looking at us. >> I mean, honestly, I love all my children equally. So, >> to clarify, it wasn't about which of the businesses that you own you're most excited about. It was more so on the future verticals. >> Yeah, I understand. Oh, I see. Yeah, that's what I was saying. Like, I have a feeling you're looking for >> pipeline. And I'm not looking to figure out what you're looking to buy. It's more so just are there segments, you know, web- based uh other >> I love I love coffee. Like, I really love coffee. I think it's highly addictive, but actually good. But, but good for you. very good for you. There's lots of studies that back this up. Uh and people will be drinking it in 50 years and I think that it's a very interesting vertical and uh you know we've got obviously got a taste of it with Aeropress but I I think that's a space that I'm I always have my eye on. there's more of an aversion in my mind of um you know it's less of what we're most excited by right now and more of what's changed our thinking when we look at the pipeline and so much of it is you know a lot of the AI questions we're coming up so much is you know does this have the same staying power um in the future given the risk of AI and I'd say that more than anything has changed how we view the pipeline and what we're saying no to >> yeah I go ahead I was going to say like I think you know we've we've publicly stated we're looking at kind of technology focus on recurring revenue software and stuff like that. But I think Andrew also said it really well around like we have a really maybe more disciplined approach on that and like in having with the lens of AI and risk and like you know what will exist in 10 years and what are the tie-ins around data and maintenance and and moat or future proof. So like I think it's just evolving that preference over time but it it hasn't really changed. >> Yeah. Like the way I always put it is that we're building or buying sand castles on the beach and the tide used to be predictable in technology, you know, and now the tide has changed and so we're having to be a lot more thoughtful. We're having to be a lot more conservative in our underwriting of where the placement of our different sand castles and what we're buying. Um, so it's it's really interesting right now. >> We're quoting the annual letter here, by the way. Uh maybe let's do two more two more questions. >> Great. >> Um so it's um about your philosophy on stockbased comp compensation. So I think you you've said before that you aren't particularly enthusiast about just giving out stock but also aligning with the most important metric they have on their business. And I think you've recently opened up to the idea of more stockbased compensation. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I've seen a little bit more on that respect. And I wanted to ask you your philosophy in that specifically like how you structure that incentive and how you think about those things and also about from the um shares outstanding delusion perspective and also financing acquisitions through more issuing shares and things like that. Well, I would say that shares are our most precious asset and we don't like giving out lottery tickets certainly to employees. So, we think really thoughtfully about uh or we're very thoughtful about how we incentivize people. And I'd say it's one of the many tools in the toolkit and every CEO and every leader is different. And so, how we think about incentivizing the staff at the head office would be different than how we might incentivize a platform leader versus a CEO in an individual business. So, it's one of many things that we look at. Uh, I would say we're not rushing to issue equity, that's for sure, for any acquisitions. Uh, and we're not looking to roll out a massive stock option package or anything like that. Jordan, though, has been thinking a lot about how to get all the CEOs aligned. So, Jordan, do you want to speak to that a little bit? >> Yeah, I we we are in the middle of kind of refining a long-term incentive plan. And I think, you know, where we've landed is tying, you know, compensation and incentives to long-term growth and the intrinsic value of that particular business, like what you have a sphere of control over, right? And what we think is is really important with Intani is growing revenue and cash flow responsibly over time, right? So, we're free from the market. We're going to set some benchmarks. We're going to set valuation criteria and if someone hits a home run, they should be compensated on that and that's win-win for us, for shareholders, for them. Um, and it's aligned. So, that's that's what we're headed to. >> Great. Final question. >> Hi. Um, my name is Carrie Mcclelay. I'm a local uh Victoria business owner. Um, social uh I own a social enterprise. uh very successful. Um fortunately, I also um work as the uh director of um fund development and community engagement for the Victorian Native Friendship Center. I am indigenous and um I just want to say thank you so much for your commitment, your responsibility to people in need through your foundation. I want to thank you for your generosity in assisting people who are struggling with homelessness, uh, mental health issues and also food insecurity. I really admire what you're doing and thank you very much. >> Oh, thank you. That's very kind. Thank you. >> Oh, thank you. Well guys, I really appreciate you listening to us drone on about all sorts of things and uh and you know uh we'll try we'll try to cut down on the the legal readings next time, but it's kind of the it's one of those things we got to do. Um thank you so much for coming and especially to the some of the people who came like 10 15 hours. That's amazing. Uh we're so lucky to have you guys all here. So thank you very much.