At Lagoda, we view each investment as a journey. Our challenge is to determine which journeys are worth our efforts—and worthy of our clients’ capital, time, and risk

Two Distinct Strategies

Our main Owners & Dominators® strategy is a global, multi-cap, diversified strategy that aims to invest in owner-operator led companies, with strong and sustainable competitive moats, with long runways for growth, at attractive valuations.

Lagoda’s “Select” strategy is a very concentrated and highly opportunistic strategy that aims to incubate and actively follow companies which don’t fit into the main strategy at the current time, but could ultimately be introduced in the future. The “Select” strategy also maintains similar criteria to the main strategy, but has a broader sector focus.

Owners & Dominators®

We have found that our trademark strategy of seeking out companies with owner-operators that dominate within their industry can create a powerful and unique indicator for future success.

This high-conviction, long-term-oriented, fundamentals-driven outlook focuses on identifying and investing in companies with a sustainable competitive advantage, alignment of incentives through ownership structure and culture, and opportunistic valuation.

Global and Dynamic Vision

We apply our framework on a global basis without limitation on industry sectors or market capitalization size, focusing on developed economies. Our Owners & Dominators® ‘Main Strategy’ typically holds approximately forty companies, while the ‘Select Strategy’ has a more concentrated focus, looking at fewer sectors and holding in the range of approximately twenty companies. 

Owner-Operators

Owners differ from hired managers in several important ways that, in our view, increase the prospects for better results.

 

Our view is that owner-operators, especially founder CEOs, tend to have a clear vision for the company and a strong commitment to executing that vision. Their organizations tend to have more efficient, less bureaucratic decision-making processes with fewer layers of management. They tend to be especially dedicated to problem solving especially in times of crisis, underpinning their resiliency. They are generally not incentivized to maximize short-term returns at the risk of compromising long-term sustainable performance.

Identifying Dominators

Our team is focused on finding companies that can be classified as dominators within a specific market, whether they are in established or more nascent markets. By seeking out the right core features and combinations of traits, we can identify companies with higher likelihoods of delivering long-term outperformance.

We ask ourselves:

  • Do they have niches within an industry?

  • Do they have dominant intellectual-property positions?

  • Do they exhibit clear superior operational excellence?

  • Is there demonstrable pricing power?

  • Are they first movers/industry pioneers?

  • Are their products/services mission-critical?