Xavier Helgesen
@XavierHelgesen
Followers
57,716
Following
2,268
Media
275
Statuses
4,590
Founder & Managing Director, Enduring Ventures.🌳 Founder: ZOLA Electric, Better World Books, EcoSafi 🌳 Book a 1:1 call:
Joined February 2018
Don't wanna be here?
Send us removal request.
Explore trending content on Musk Viewer
FEMA
• 1602165 Tweets
Joker
• 180765 Tweets
Grammys
• 154376 Tweets
1005 CHEERS TO XIAO ZHAN
• 143896 Tweets
Mayorkas
• 138649 Tweets
Mancuso
• 111923 Tweets
Record of the Year
• 89629 Tweets
Best Record
• 87656 Tweets
Ülke
• 67130 Tweets
Pogba
• 66451 Tweets
Fatih
• 60691 Tweets
Uyuşturucu
• 55857 Tweets
#turkishwomenareindanger
• 51375 Tweets
Valencia
• 34917 Tweets
Marseille
• 27839 Tweets
#ikbaluzuner
• 23345 Tweets
Jamie Dimon
• 21426 Tweets
Semih Çelik
• 19984 Tweets
Celtics
• 19138 Tweets
Dolly
• 18942 Tweets
Angers
• 15490 Tweets
Leeds
• 12621 Tweets
Greenwood
• 10644 Tweets
Pinned Tweet
Want to build your own baby Berkshire? (updated for '24)
I've been open sourcing aspects of our unique (but old school) structure at Enduring Ventures.
Read on to learn how I plan to pay 0% cap gains, compound tax efficiently for decades and give my investors and executives the
10
14
139
In 2013, Yahoo! bought Tumblr for only $1.1 Billion.
Today, Tumblr makes $1.1 Billion every 1.1 Billion days.
69
491
11K
As an entrepreneur, I have had amazing Board Members and terrible ones.
Then I became one. But there was no manual, so I made a lot of expensive mistakes.
After 1,000+ board meetings, I decided to write one.
Here’s Good Director/Bad Director:
138
2K
8K
Most startup pitches I see suck.
The products are good.
What is missing is the story.
If you are raising money, the story has to come first.
Here is the framework I have used to build compelling stories that have raised over $200 million for my own startups:
134
1K
6K
I've searched for a climate change "silver bullet" for more than a decade: A globally scalable, tech-enabled solution.
I've finally found it: A way to remove all the carbon from the sky for no net cost.
I'm starting a company to do it. Let me take you down the rabbit hole:
209
908
5K
At least 50% of startup stock options are now worthless.
Most employees don’t know it yet.
Here’s what you should know about stock options if you work at a startup:
95
641
5K
One of my mentors raised over $500 million and went public.
He taught me one remarkable fundraising tactic:
He wouldn’t accept term sheets.
He only SENT term sheets TO VCs with a hard deadline.
I raised over $100 million using the same technique.
Step by step 🧵👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻
82
700
4K
The only plausible explanation for Joe and The Juice is money laundering on a scale the world has never seen.
137
150
4K
Everything you have been told about stopping climate change is wrong.
Buying a Tesla doesn’t matter. Not flying/eating vegan/turning off lights doesn’t matter.
As a serial climate entrepreneur (raised over $200 million), I speak from experience.
Only one thing matters. 👇🏻👇🏻
121
1K
4K
I had coffee with the head of a large family office today, and he said something really profound that I’d never quite put together.
Paraphrasing: “Capital structure ripples through management and ultimately ripples through employee experience”
If you work in a business run for
133
603
4K
Want to build your own baby Berkshire?
I recently lifted the curtain on our unique (but old school) structure at Enduring Ventures.
Read on to learn how I plan to pay 0% cap gains, compound tax free for decades and give my investors and executives the same luxury. 👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻
145
454
4K
SBA loans are the cheat code to American capitalism.
They allow anyone to transform overnight from an employee to an owner.
I am not just saying this. I used SBA to buy $2 million of cash flow for $300,000 down as Enduring Ventures’ second major deal.
Here’s how it worked:
85
344
4K
Someone is going to launch an AI that does better work than 99% of tax/accounting firms and Intuit is going to buy it for a trillion.
Accounting is the most rules-based profession. The only reason it hasn’t been automated is the human “consultative” element. Chat AI solves this.
207
262
3K
A friend called me last week, torn up. She had to fire a co-founder.
Here’s what I told her…
Firing is the worst part of entrepreneurship.
But it is also the most essential.
Nobody taught this in business school, so I wrote a manual.
How/why to fire with love:
50
191
2K
Winter is coming.
Many VC backed startups funded in 2020/2021 are going to die in the next 12 months.
Most don’t realize it yet.
My companies survived 2001 and 2009 and I learned a few things.
How not to die:
58
220
2K
I’ve struck 7 figure deals with public companies, raised $250 million, bought 15 companies and sold one.
In that process, I learned some valuable lessons.
Here are 5 fundamentals for getting a deal done.
+ 5 key legal areas to get right.
The real art of the deal:
40
198
1K
One of the greatest mistakes I see smart people making is assuming that the S&P 500 will yield 8% “because it always has”.
I would to introduce them to Japan’s Nikkei 225. If you bought the index in 1988 (!!!) your return would be negative 25 years later.
Turns out valuation
115
158
1K
I think a lot about asymmetric risk, and that extends to my health.
There are certain conditions like aneurysms that have no symptoms but then kill you suddenly.
So, as a healthy 43 year old, I went in for a full body MRI.
What I learned amazed me…
206
86
1K
There is only one solution to this problem.
And as much as entrepreneurs hate to hear it, it is a political solution.
There must be a high and predictably escalating price on carbon pollution globally.
That’s it.
Nothing less, nothing more.
29
229
1K
He’s gonna legit bankrupt half his employees if fintechs stop being valued at 200x revenue.
Personal recourse loan to buy Bolt common stock at $10B valuation?
That’s the plot of a horror movie.
47
69
1K
Have you ever made a bad decision that cost you $100 million?
I have.
It gives me a chip on my shoulder that drives me today.
I’m a bit nervous to share the story on Twitter, but here goes:
57
106
924
Was asked what I would do if I was 22 again.
I would figure out a strategy to buy or build a biz that generates $250k annual free cash flow after paying a general manager.
I would target 3 years to achieve. (Would be GM myself 1st)
You can live any life you want after that.
30
45
896
Today’s my 44th birthday. 🎉🎉🎉
My memo to my 24 year old self:
56
91
882
Everything is negotiable.
Enduring Ventures paid $1 Million to two founders expected $0 because they didn't understand this.
I lost control of a $70 Million business I founded in my 20's because I didn't understand this.
I learned this the hard way so you don't have to...
52
61
829
Good Director knows they only have two jobs:
1. Hire and compensate the right CEO.
2. Approve the budget and strategic plan.
Bad Director thinks their main job is to provide good ideas. They think the board’s job is to micro-manage the CEO.
3
73
778
Thoughts on Private Equity
tldr; Private Equity funds use highly optimistic assumptions. They only make their investors money when interest rates decline - like big, illiquid, leveraged shorts on Treasuries. It's gonna get ugly this decade with rising rates. Most people don't
35
71
700
I’m on my 20th business acquisition, and it still feels like a cheat code.
I get to take the reigns of a business that fundamentally works without the 5-10 years of pain and near death experience that I had to spend as an entrepreneur to get to that point.
33
30
660
Today’s my 45th birthday! 🎉📷🎉
My memo to my 25 year old self:
1// Most “bad” things that happen to you are not as important as they feel at the time.
You can make more money, fall in love again, or start a new company.
You can’t recover time or health lost stressing
50
55
612
A lot of entrepreneurs still don’t fully understand SAFE notes and how to use them.
They are the single most important innovation in startup financing in the past 15 years. (
@ycombinator
)
You can close in minutes, raise only what you need with no legal fees.
🧵👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻
7
92
549
Going to celebrate all my new followers (thanks
@ShaanVP
) with a thread on why 2021 is the best time in modern history to buy a business and everyone with a pulse should consider it. It is even possible to buy with no net equity. Read on for how and why:
32
43
536
Good Director knows that things always go wrong. They make it safe to share bad news and simply ask: “So what are we doing about it and how can I help?”
Bad Director loses their temper and berates management when they get bad news. They incentivize management to hide bad news.
3
34
518
As promised in my previous thread, here are my standard term sheet and calculator.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer.
@UpCounsel
has all the lawyers.
Every entrepreneur should read my notes below before signing ANY term sheet.
(Link to a public Google Drive at the end.)
14
47
481
Best thing the US could do for its economy is make 2 million Green Cards to skilled Ukrainians and Russians. Not just programmers, but plumbers, chefs and everything else.
Americans need to remember that what made their country rich was continual waves of immigration.
29
25
473
The paradox of entrepreneurship is that it only takes one:
10
82
469
Reintroducing myself:
I’ve bootstrapped to $70 mil rev (Better World Books) and raised $200 mil from Tesla, VCs to light Africa (Zola Electric)
Started from zero to build a post-modern Baby Berkshire 3 years ago. Now 14 acquisitions in, nearing $100 mil rev.
Big on positivity.
15
21
469
Employees get screwed a lot in the startup world.
Company is not funded as promised, they never get equity, etc.
I’m here to tell you it is your fault if this happens.
You need to do diligence.
Here are 6 things I would require before signing (that almost nobody does):
18
62
431
The thing about a bank run is that there’s no upside to keeping your money in the at-risk bank.
Max upside is that you have the same amount of money as before. Max downside is that it is gone.
So the game theory is obvious, and unfortunately that’s bad news for SVB.
27
24
429
Everyone hating on Adam Neumann is missing the whole point.
The guy knows how to swing big and has an uncompromising vision.
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but that’s the VC power law game.
If you want their money, swing that big too.
40
27
411
Good management will be way in front of this on behalf of employees.
Unfortunately, they are big incentives for management to bury their head in the sand and gamble for resurrection.
One more good reason to work with leaders with integrity.
11
23
408
A short primer to understand inflation (and how to protect your savings from being eaten by it):
“Inflation is taxation without legislation” - Milton Friedman
11
80
410
@stripe
has been a leader in paying to put carbon back in the ground.
Corporate action is great, but not sufficient globally.
My wish is that everyone who cares listens to
@GretaThunberg
and realizes there is only one thing that matters: put a price on pollution.
5
29
400
Just saw Sam Altman was fired by his board at OpenAI
No idea what happened, but unless he committed a bunch of felonies, this is the single biggest destruction of value by a board since Apple fired Steve Jobs.
30
18
394
Roughly three years ago I quit.
I quit working for a company I co-founded and grew to 1 million customers.
I was 40, unemployed with two kids.
Since, I bought 13 companies, started 2, had more fun (and grew faster) than ever in my career.
A short defense of quitting:
21
35
404
It definitely felt like the future. A scan of the inside of your body, expertly analyzed and digitally delivered.
I’m a big believer in this technology’s ability to save lives.
If anyone wants to try, you can save $400 with this link:
36
15
395
All fossil fuel business models rely on relatively long-term (20+ years) business plans.
A predictably escalating price on carbon destroys these business models.
It also creates a dramatic financial incentive to put carbon back in the ground.
3
36
392
Good Director trusts the CEO completely until they don’t. Once they don’t, it is time to make a change. There’s no in between.
Bad Director constantly tests and scrutinizes the CEO, making them feel insecure in their role and always on the brink of being fired.
4
20
382
Being a Director is a privilege and a huge responsibility.
It is the highest leverage thing you can do in business. Try your best to be the Good Director (I am still the Bad one sometimes, but I’m trying!)
Follow
@XavierHelgesen
for more of this sort of thing.
30
18
381
Let’s start at the beginning: what’s the problem?
The problem is that it is free to pollute the atmosphere with CO2.
Because it is free, lots of business models make sense.
Examples: oil extraction, gas stations, global container shipping, international air travel, etc.
11
65
379
Good Director hits a home run once or twice a year. Typically a recruit, strategic partnership, new investor, etc. They are always looking for opportunities to help.
Bad Director just shows up for the meetings and otherwise doesn’t think much about the company.
1
22
372
1. Demand transparency. How much has company raised? does it have any debt? What value could it raise at now?
2. Ask for a new 409a and more options at a lower strike price.
3. Unfortunately, you probably gotta leave if they don’t do 1 or 2, unless it is a rocket ship.
8
28
370
“What have been your best investments at Enduring Ventures?”
IRR? Jyve. 7,000%. $100k to $7 million equity value.
Cash on Cash? Abstract. 100% of cash returned within two weeks.
Meet Arising Ventures. The team that did both is now a dedicated HoldCo.
The story 👇🏻👇🏻
It all
48
18
359
Eventually this became untenable.
So they settled on a more durable strategy: climate change is a matter of personal responsibility.
If you think about it, this is absurd.
Just because I didn’t personally spill oil in the Gulf of Mexico doesn’t mean it’s ok if BP does.
4
27
339
Here’s the inside story of how Enduring Ventures acquired
@upcounsel
, a company once valued at $50 million, for $200,000, relaunched it as a SaaS company, and raised on a $28 million valuation 18 months later.
Read below for the playbook to buy a VC-backed company. 👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻
11
37
341
Tired: Grind for 20 years to make Partner at a Law Firm.
Wired: Buy a Small Business when you’re 25 with 5% down and double it with three years of hard work.
19
14
313
My learning from the comments thus far is that most people haven’t remotely grasped how quickly AI will improve and how good it already is.
Handling complexity, understanding laws and dealing with imperfect humans are going to be AI’s strong suits, not weaknesses.
19
10
332
If you think this is cool, please DM me for the full white paper.
We need lots of help - especially capital and talent.
1. Follow me
@XavierHelgesen
if you don't already
2. RT the tweet below to share this thread with your audience
I've searched for a climate change "silver bullet" for more than a decade: A globally scalable, tech-enabled solution.
I've finally found it: A way to remove all the carbon from the sky for no net cost.
I'm starting a company to do it. Let me take you down the rabbit hole:
209
908
5K
52
79
331
Some Twitter anons seem to think building a business that cash flows > $250k is like winning the lottery right after you are struck by lightning.
Would love anyone to reply with an anon biz they know that earns in excess of this. I will start (we don’t own these):
46
25
335
My advice on business buying in one sentence:
Look for high margins, small niches and rich owners.
11
13
331
The bullshit asymmetry principle (Brandolini’s law) states:
The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.
Keep this in mind as you read on.
Two of my core principles are courage and loyalty.
Some friends have recently been
51
6
327
Weird but true in my experience… psychologically, most people have more financial freedom with $25k in monthly cash flow than $10 million in assets.
Most people will want to protect their asset base regardless of size. They will invest much of it in long duration investments
26
19
326
Unfortunately, it worked.
Green became cool, electric cars became cool. People had climate guilt and bought offsets.
Urban liberals convinced themselves they were doing something about the biggest problem of our age.
But they weren’t.
Because pollution was still free.
3
29
318
So to pull this all together:
1. Setup parent C Corp. Founders buy all common stock.
2. Sell preferred shares to investors to raise capital
3. Buy or start companies as C Corp subs.
4. Compound.
5. Buy back shares out of cash flow from investors.
6. Much compounding
30
25
313
Good Director knows that management can only focus on 1-2 things at once.
Bad Director forwards an article they read with the subject line: “Why Aren’t We Doing THIS?!?!”
5
18
319
Some carbon emitting activities, like international flights and Kobe beef, can withstand a high price on carbon.
There are low carbon, carbon neutral and carbon negative substitutes for nearly everything in our lives.
What is missing is the economic incentive.
3
34
315
Good Director will request the materials 48 hours or more in advance and will have read them. They will say “We have all read the materials, so let’s dive right into the most important things.”
Bad Director will show up having read nothing and expect management to read aloud.
4
18
319
Whatever money you would have spent on solar panels and electric cars, apply it where it matters: putting a price on pollution.
Make it untenable for a politician (left or right) to run for office without solving this problem economically.
6
34
316
If you want to go deeper down the rabbit hole, check out and share this video on the company:
4
29
316
Let’s take your Tesla.
You retire your gas guzzler and go electric: you reduce your personal emissions.
But what happens systematically?
That incremental gallon of gas is still sold. All you have done is slightly decrease demand.
Congrats, you just made gas cheaper.
18
32
306
I don’t know Ryan at Bolt, and he seems like a nice guy, but the whole announcing a 4 day workweek like you have revolutionized capitalism when you run a massively money-losing startup in an ultra competitive industry had some serious Dan Price taking a paycut energy.
12
10
309
@JamesClear
Working class neighborhood, nobody there speaks English, there will probably be a few dogs.
The cook appears to be a the 70 year old father of the owner. Don’t even bother ordering off the menu. Just ask them to feed you.
La Fata Turchina
5
9
305
Five things you need to understand to build your tax efficient conglomerate:
1. QSBS
2. C Corp Dividend deduction.
3. C Corp redemptions
4. ESOPs
5. C Corp consolidation.
Sound boring? What’s not boring is Buffett’s effective 1% tax rate. Here’s how he achieved it.
9
19
301
To conclude the thread, I think many people underestimate how smart and evil the opponents of global action on climate change have been.
They have effectively coopted the goodwill of smart people who care into irrelevant solutions.
Let’s get smart on this and let’s solve it.
11
28
299
1. Why now?
Something in the world just changed and that’s what created opportunity.
Otherwise, there would be lots of people doing it already.
e.g. “AI is now cheap enough that we can embed it into a stapler. Meet the world’s first smart stapler.”
4
23
297
In boxing, you get knocked out if you don’t do something counterintuitive (step with your rear foot first).
Smart, capable people become first time CEOs/managers and end up knocked out because they ONLY do intuitive things.
10 essential counter-intuitive CEO skills:
13
42
301
On the left: we don’t need a “green new deal”. That doesn’t solve the problem. We need a clear economic incentive to not pollute.
On the right: carbon pricing is a transparent incentive for business to do the right thing for the planet. Even Exxon supports it.
12
33
293
Good Director has extremely high standards for board meetings and communicates them clearly. That means clear presentation, timely financials/KPIs, focus on strategy not reading materials out loud.
Bad Director takes whatever management gives them as “normal”.
1
18
295
Ludicrously claiming you increase revenue 60% (“*based on customer reporting”) when you are a glorified to-do list. 🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩
25
0
293
Only upside of this SVB situation is that All-In Pod is gonna be a banger this week.
@Jason
10
9
293
I’ve turned around two failed venture backed companies. (made both profitable in under 90 days)
Twitter today is run like a bloated VC backed co. Too much spending, too little accountability.
Here’s my first six weeks if I were in charge of turning Twitter around:
8
24
289
This is a containerized modular bioreactor.
It uses pyrolysis to convert wood waste into biochar and biogas.
Biochar is incredibly useful and valuable, most particularly as a way to add carbon back to soil.
Biogas can generate green heat, electricity and even hydrogen.
12
15
285
Most “bad” things that happen to you are not as important as they feel at the time.
You can make more money, fall in love again, or start a new company.
You can’t recover time or health lost stressing about what went wrong.
2
20
277
The optimal retirement strategy is to spend your career building streams of cash flow (business, real estate, etc) that are (or can be) professionally managed by someone other than you.
$100,000 of yearly cash flow is more valuable than a $1,000,000 portfolio in retirement.
13
18
274
Because lots of business models ONLY make sense when pollution is free, a very well-funded PR and lobbying machine sprang up to keep pollution free.
At first, they tried to convince people that climate change was not manmade.
They said it was a “natural climactic cycle”.
4
24
265
@AutismCapital
Terrible take. If you are an executive at a company, as Mira was, and you are asked for confidentiality from the board, it is your fiduciary duty to respect that.
Telling him beforehand might seem heroic, but it wouldn’t have changed anything and is legally extremely dangerous.
7
2
264
A few years back, I did something a little reckless… I put my calendar on X for anyone to book a 15 minute call with me.
I got booked solid for two weeks - over 100 calls. Lost my voice by the end.
On call
#57
, the caller opened: “We did $2 million in profit in our first
41
10
265
Would you listen to a podcast where it is random entrepreneurs calling in with their struggles and I give them advice?
That has been at least half my first day of Calendly meetings. Sort of like Dear Abby but for business.
I love doing it.
32
1
264
I’m pleased to announce that we have closed our acquisition of Scribe Media.
We are building the first great book publisher of the modern creator era.
I’m especially excited about partnering with the new CEO: someone I greatly respect and admire who is investing alongside us.
49
6
261
Good Director never undermines the CEO in front of their team. Any difference of opinion is resolved privately and with ultimate deference to the CEO.
Bad Director will be unaware of who is on the email thread or in the room and will be “fast and loose” with their words.
1
15
258
We are taught we should save for a down payment when we are young.
I believe you should rent and save that down payment money to buy a business.
Here’s why:
12
23
261
The largest acquisition we did in 2022 was the result of me putting my
@Calendly
publicly on Twitter.
I did 120+ 15 min calls, lost my voice, but connected to one unbelievably good business.
My lesson: If you’re not feeling lucky enough, go make some more luck.
13
9
257
You will never be too old to:
1. Road trip with your friends.
2. Make new friends.
3. Learn new skills.
4. Start new companies.
5. Invent new technologies.
6. Reinvent yourself.
7. Get stronger.
8. Get healthier.
9. Get wiser.
7
25
258
You can access the files here:
Just hit "duplicate" to make your own copy.
Thank you!
12
13
259
There’s a world of potential entrepreneurs out there who have families and so need benefits/paycheck from day 1.
One of the smartest things we have done is put two of them on salary and built together. +2 amazing startups resulted.
Anyone want to build with us? DMs open.
14
13
248
If you live in a capitalist country, the economic system is optimized for owners rather than workers.
You can spend your life complaining about this fact or figuring out how you get on the ownership side of the fence regardless of where you started.
Choose wisely.
16
21
238
To make a dent in the carbon balance of the planet, these reactors must:
Be manufacturable at automotive scale.
Be decentralized globally.
Produce economically useful commodities as outputs.
Leverage waste feedstocks as inputs.
Generate the bulk of their own energy.
1
6
239
Addenda
#2
- The full solution is two parts:
1. A high and predictably escalating price for carbon.
2. A commitment to pay to put an equivalent amount of carbon back in the ground as your nation has historically emitted.
Lots of nuance, but that’s the North Star.
7
32
235
At Enduring Ventures today:
1. I prioritize strategic focus over everything.
2. I have an insanely high bar for talent and I just don’t hire if I can’t find it.
3. I know doing the right thing for a long time compounds value.
4. No toxic people ever. :)
5
19
237
In honor of
@MainStSummit
(I’m speaking at 3:30 on Weds - Ragtag Theatre 1), here’s everything I know about buying businesses after 20+ acquisitions and looking at thousands.
1. Owner operated businesses are super efficient. Owner does six jobs. You will probably spend more to
21
17
234
Note I didn’t talk about market size, financial models, org charts, burn rates, etc. Those are for later.
People only invest in startups and founders they fall in love with.
Your job is to convince a fellow hominid whose ancestors told stories by the fire to fall in love. ❤️
1
20
228