Putting the *Permanent* in PE
Let me jump straight to the punchline – the firm formerly known as adventur.es is now Permanent Equity. Our new web address is PermanentEquity.com, and we couldn’t be more excited about it.
What’s the purpose of a name? It should be memorable, convey at least a hint of the company’s mission, and be easy to find. And whatever you do, make sure the name is easy to pronounce and that it doesn’t contain an unusual spelling.
Adventur.es bombs those last few criteria. Just this past week, potential sellers called us ad-ven-toor-dot-e-s and frustratingly say they couldn't find our website, only to discover they were searching “adventur.es.com”. We’ve been asked how we buy U.S. companies from our headquarters in Spain (.es is Spain’s top-level domain) and our emails frequently get rejected from email servers because of it. People inquire if we’re a venture capital firm, or a marketing firm, or a consulting firm.
The name came from our origins in the marketing space and is an homage to the adventure that is life and business. While the latter will never change, the former hasn’t been true for many years. We own companies in construction, manufacturing, distribution, and business services. While the name has demonstrated our “difference” and begged explanation, it hasn’t helped anyone understand what we offer.
Google was originally called BackRub. Pepsi was called Brad’s Drink. Phil Knight’s shoe company was named Blue Ribbon Sports. DrivUrSelf became Hertz. Pete’s Super Submarines became SUBWAY.
We’ve been discussing a name change for years. Some combination of momentum, sunk costs, and laziness would always derail it. But a recent discussion surfaced “Permanent Equity” and immediately it felt like home. In fact, it’s a term we use frequently to describe the firm, so much so that our two funds are named Permanent Equity I and Permanent Equity II. Sometimes the best things are hiding in plain sight.
I first started using the term four years ago when meeting with potential investors. I vividly remember the first time I met Patrick O’Shaughnessy and he asked me what we did. My response was, “We buy companies and hold them. It’s like private equity, but permanent. I guess you could call us permanent equity.” Thankfully, he liked that term so much that he not only became our anchor investor for the first fund, but also registered the domain shortly thereafter.
Our name now tells the world who we are (permanent) and what we do (invest equity).
Some visual consistency will be maintained in colors, and the mark will be an evolution of the “a.” we used historically.
Our $300M+ capital base is extraordinarily rare, with no off-ramps for 27 years and the option to renew for another 25 years. It’s functionally permanent and it gives us the ability to do things differently. We can patiently build relationships. We can commit to being good partners to leadership teams. We can encourage long term decision-making. We can make probabilistically excellent reinvestments that won’t pay off for many years. We’re never a forced seller. We can watch the wonders of compounding.
While we’re happy to work with (good) intermediaries, our primary strategy is direct-to-business. The less you know about adventur.es the less the name makes sense. The opposite is true of Permanent Equity and it provides a solid foundation to ramp up our efforts. Our goal is for every family-owned business to know about Permanent Equity, what we stand for, and how we can serve them. This means that we need to educate their wealth advisors, bankers, lawyers, CPAs, and insurance agents, as well as their friends and family. It’s no small task and certainly challenging. The new name is a step in the right direction.
We couldn’t be more excited for the future. We greatly look forward to serving families, leadership teams, customers, vendors, and communities with a new name and the same ethos. Thanks for being on the journey with us.
Long live Permanent Equity.
For more on what it means to be “Permanent,” we invite you to read our Foundations.