F01 · markets
Preference Is Not Permission
A buyer can want the outcome and still be unable to authorize the purchase.
Read the insight ↗
Marco Nicolayevsky · Houston, Texas
I like problems that are harder than they look.
I have built, operated, invested in, and exited businesses in three arenas with almost nothing in common. In each one, the problem that mattered was rarely the one that first walked in the room.
Far enough out to see the whole picture. Close enough in to understand what is really happening.
Built it. Operated it. Invested in it.
How I look at a business
The answer is usually hiding in a smaller place than the strategy.
Most business problems look different depending on where you stand.
From far enough away, you can see the business as a system: the market, incentives, channel, economics, and decisions shaping everything downstream.
Up close, it is a handoff nobody owns. An assumption nobody has challenged. A customer detail, an operating habit, or a decision made years ago that is still quietly running the business.
Selected insights
Ideas earned in real businesses.
Each one began in a specific business and holds up outside it.
F42 · operations
Not Every Bottleneck Deserves a System
The urge to fix friction with software is not the same as a business case.
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F26 · assets
Real Difference Is Built In, Not Written In Later
Premium is a set of early decisions, not a finish you apply at the end.
Read the insight ↗The record
Businesses that changed the way I think.
1996 · MisterArt.com
Art supplies online in 1996, before anyone knew what e-commerce was supposed to look like.
Case study: Building e-commerce before the playbook ↗
2010–2022 · Specialty Valve Group
Founded and wholly owned. Built Xanik's U.S. oil and gas channel to roughly eighty percent of the Mexican manufacturer's output. Acquired in 2022.
Case study: Gatekeepers are the market ↗
Ongoing · Element Ranch
An ultra-luxury private estate near Round Top, Texas. Conceived, funded, built, and operated from raw land.
Case study: Differentiation built into the asset ↗
A final thought
The work is usually more interesting than the answer.
Good businesses are full of decisions that look settled until someone asks a better question. That is why I keep writing about them.
If something here made you look at your own situation differently, that is enough. And if it lands close to home, you can write me.