The Community – Who We Are, What We Do, and What We Stand For
Who We Are
Welcome to the Intrinsic Value Wealth Report Community.
The Intrinsic Value Wealth Report is more than an investment newsletter. We are a community of investors, entrepreneurs, founders, business professionals, professors, students, thinkers, and lifelong learners who share a common interest in investing, entrepreneurship, economics, business, wealth creation, and the pursuit of knowledge and truth.
What brings us together is not simply an interest in making money. It is a shared desire to understand how an enterprise’s intrinsic value is created, recognize value when others may overlook it, think independently, continue learning, build successful enterprises, make better investment decisions, and ultimately use what we learn and create to improve our own lives and the lives of others.
We think of the Intrinsic Value Wealth Report Community as a community of thinkers and doers.
We believe that success—in investing, business, and life—often requires the willingness to think differently, think deeply, and think value. We combine rigorous financial and economic analysis with practical experience and what we have long called. Un-Common Sense in an Irrational World. We are willing to question conventional wisdom, look beyond headlines and prevailing narratives, and search for opportunities, ideas, and truths that may not always be immediately apparent.
Our roots go back more than four decades. Our investment activities began in 1982; the predecessor of the Intrinsic Value Wealth Report Newsletter began in 1994; and Paul M. Wendee & Associates, LLC was founded in 1998.
Throughout that history, one principle has remained constant:
We strive for excellence in everything we do!
We believe research should be thoughtful. Analysis should be rigorous. Ideas should be challenged. Facts should matter. Intellectual curiosity should be encouraged. And our work should reflect the highest standards of quality, integrity, professionalism, and independent thought that we can reasonably achieve.
Being part of this community should therefore mean something.
We want members to feel good about—and proud of—being part of the Intrinsic Value Wealth Report Community. In one sense, we aspire to have some of the characteristics of an exceptional or exclusive club: a group distinguished by the quality of its people, ideas, standards, knowledge, accomplishments, and shared aspirations.
But exclusive does not mean exclusionary, and excellence does not mean arrogance.
We have no interest in being snobbish. What distinguishes the community should not be status, wealth, pedigree, or title. It should be a commitment to learning, rational thought, intellectual curiosity, integrity, achievement, creating value, helping others, and continuously striving to become better at what we do. Our goal is not to look down on others. It is to raise the bar for ourselves.
What We Do
At the heart of what we do is a simple but powerful idea:
We help enterprises create value, and we help investors recognize and invest in that value.
That philosophy is deeply embedded in the concept of Intrinsic Value itself. Warran Buffett defines intrinsic value this way: “intrinsic value [is], an all-important concept that offers the only logical approach to evaluating the relative attractiveness of investments and businesses. Intrinsic value can be defined simply: It is the discounted value of the cash that can be taken out of a business during its remaining life” (Buffett, 1996).
Markets frequently tell us what something costs. Our job is to think much more deeply about what it is actually worth.
For investors, we provide original research, investment analysis, economic analysis, education, ideas, perspectives, methodologies, and investment opportunities designed to encourage sound, rational, disciplined investment and wealth-building decisions. In essence we are combining an academic perspective with many years of practical, real-world experience and seeking insights that go deeper than headlines and trends.
For businesses and entrepreneurs, we seek to help create enterprise value through:
- Capital raising
- Investment banking
- Strategic and management consulting
- Education
- Networking
- Increased visibility
- Connecting people, businesses, investors, and ideas
- Fractional and advisory management roles when appropriate
- Other activities that can help an enterprise grow, prosper, and create sustainable value
These activities reflect the mission described in our underlying statement of purpose.
But an important part of what we do takes place within the community itself.
Members may begin as readers, investors, entrepreneurs, students, professors, sponsors, advisors, or businesspeople, but the greater opportunity is for the community to become a network in which people share knowledge, exchange ideas, make introductions, identify opportunities, mentor others, challenge assumptions, collaborate on projects, invest in businesses, help entrepreneurs, and learn from one another.
In many cases, our goals are best accomplished together rather than individually.
An investor may have capital but need a great idea.
An entrepreneur may have a great idea but need capital.
A professor may contribute knowledge.
A student may contribute a fresh perspective.
An experienced business executive may become a mentor.
A member may introduce two people who would otherwise never have met.
A researcher may identify an overlooked opportunity.
A sponsor may help bring an important idea or company to the attention of thousands of others.
That is what a real community can do.
We therefore see the Intrinsic Value Wealth Report not merely as information flowing from a publisher to a reader, but increasingly as an ecosystem of people with complementary knowledge, experience, resources, relationships, and capabilities who share many of the same interests and goals.
What We Stand For
Our underlying mission is ambitious:
To help make the world a better place through entrepreneurship, free markets, free enterprise, capitalism, enterprise and economic value creation, investing, education, knowledge, liberty, and freedom.
We believe entrepreneurship and intelligently functioning free markets can be extraordinary engines for human progress.
Entrepreneurs solve problems.
Businesses create products and services.
Investment capital helps good ideas become real enterprises.
Successful enterprises create jobs, innovation, opportunity, and wealth.
Investors who allocate capital intelligently help determine which businesses, technologies, and ideas will shape the future.
And education, research, and the free exchange of ideas help all of us make better decisions.
At the center of all of this is value creation.
But there is another principle that is equally important to us:
The pursuit of knowledge and truth.
We believe knowledge is itself a form of wealth.
The ability to understand something more clearly today than we did yesterday makes us wealthier in a very real sense. The pursuit of knowledge helps us become better investors, better entrepreneurs, better businesspeople, better teachers, better students—and, we hope, wiser human beings.
The pursuit of truth is equally important.
That means being willing to question our own assumptions. It means following facts and evidence even when they lead somewhere we did not expect. It means recognizing that popular opinion is not necessarily correct, that markets can be irrational, and that conventional wisdom deserves to be examined rather than automatically accepted.
It also means maintaining intellectual humility: we will not always be right.
The objective is not to defend a predetermined conclusion. The objective is to get closer to the truth.
That philosophy is closely related to our belief and focus on using Un-Common Sense in an Irrational World, which because of its importance, we include as a tagline in our newsletter. We want members of this community to think independently, examine evidence carefully, remain curious, challenge conventional wisdom when appropriate, and continually ask better questions.
Wealth Is More Than Financial Wealth
The word wealth is part of our name, but our definition of wealth extends far beyond a brokerage account or balance sheet.
Financial independence and financial security certainly matter. Creating and preserving financial wealth can provide freedom, opportunity, security, and the ability to help others.
But wealth also includes:
Knowledge.
Wisdom.
Truth.
Education.
Freedom.
Independence.
Relationships.
Health.
Purpose.
Opportunity.
Experience.
Achievement.
The ability to create.
The ability to contribute.
And the ability to help others.
Ultimately, some of life’s greatest forms of wealth cannot be measured in dollars.
Some of the greatest happiness and wealth comes from helping others.
That is why our broader mission extends beyond successful investing.
We want to create wealth for ourselves and for others.
We want to help entrepreneurs build enterprises.
We want to help investors make intelligent decisions.
We want to help students learn.
We want to help people exchange ideas.
We want to connect people who can help one another.
We want to encourage entrepreneurship and value creation around the world.
We operate on a global basis with various programs and initiatives to help people around the world build their businesses to create a better future for themselves and their families.
And whenever possible, we want the knowledge, relationships, resources, experience, and capital within this community to be used collaboratively to accomplish things that none of us might accomplish as effectively alone.
A Community Built Around Excellence
We want the words Intrinsic Value Wealth Report Community to stand for something.
They should represent:
Independent thinking.
Intellectual curiosity.
High standards.
Rigorous analysis.
Quality.
Integrity.
Knowledge.
Truth.
Entrepreneurship.
Value creation.
Sound investing.
Continuous learning.
Collaboration.
And helping others succeed.
Membership in this community should carry with it a certain quiet sense of pride—not because we believe we are better than other people, but because we aspire to exceptionally high standards for ourselves.
We want to surround ourselves with people who are intellectually curious, thoughtful, ambitious, constructive, open-minded, and interested in creating value in all its various forms.
Some will bring decades of experience.
Others may be just beginning.
Both have something to contribute.
What matters is the common commitment to learn, think, create, share, contribute, and improve.
At the End of the Day, We Are Many Things
The Intrinsic Value Wealth Report Community sits at the intersection of several disciplines and activities.
We are:
A Wall Street Research Firm
Providing investment research and analysis, with award-winning research and stock selection dating back to 1994.
An Economics Research Firm
Studying the economy, markets, economic forecasting, value creation, and the forces that influence enterprises, investors, and society.
An Investment Banking Firm
Helping businesses create value, raise capital, pursue strategic opportunities, and connect with the financial resources they need to grow.
An Investment Fund Manager
Searching for and evaluating investment opportunities and putting investment principles into practice through real-world capital allocation.
A Publisher
Creating and sharing ideas through:
- The Intrinsic Value Wealth Report Newsletter
- Books
- Articles
- Research reports, educational materials, commentary, and other publications
An Educational and Intellectual Community
Bringing together practitioners, academics, investors, entrepreneurs, professors, students, and others in the pursuit of knowledge and better decision-making.
A Network and Connector
Bringing together people, capital, ideas, businesses, opportunities, experience, and expertise—and encouraging collaboration among people who share common goals.
And an Organization Trying to Make the World a Better Place
That may ultimately be the most important thing we are.
Our Community
So, when you become part of the Intrinsic Value Wealth Report, you are joining something larger than a newsletter.
You are joining a community of thinkers, investors, entrepreneurs, builders, learners, educators, and problem-solvers.
We may come from different professions, countries, generations, backgrounds, and levels of experience. But we share many common interests and aspirations:
To learn.
To seek truth.
To think independently.
To create value.
To recognize value.
To build wealth.
To create successful enterprises.
To identify opportunities.
To help one another.
And to leave things a little better than we found them.
Sometimes we pursue those goals individually.
Whenever possible, we pursue them together.
That is the community we are building.
And we are glad to have you as part of it.
References
Buffett, W. E. (1996, June 1996). An owner’s manual. Booklet. Omaha, NE.