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Billionaire Revealed: The Biggest Company You’ve Never Heard Of
- danilocampos 13y agoSo why are we hearing about the company now? Is this how you sell a successful but previously-unknown company?
- chiph 13y agoSounds like what happened is the original reporter in Boston came across him, did some investigating, and found out how wealthy he is. Also sounds like he didn't really want the publicity, preferring to live a quiet life. If he ever intends to sell, his competitors certainly know about him, and I expect equity firms know about him as well.
- rocky1138 13y agoI thought once companies got to a certain size they were forced to go public? Or is that in Canada only?
- bpodgursky 13y agoIn the US once a certain number of people hold stock you have additional financial disclosure laws. But if it's owned by a single owner / family, you're never forced to go public regardless of revenue. That wouldn't make any sense, since you'd basically be forcing the owners to sell their shares whether they wanted to or not.
- abrown28 13y agoIt's not an unwarranted assumption given all the other things our government forces us to do with our money.
- qwerta 13y agoI think in California you have to go public over certain number of employees. Facebook had problems with that.
- atlbeer 13y agoNo. Same issue. They had over the legally allowed number of shareholders
- CyrusL 13y agoThat was also based on the number of shareholders, not the number of employees. Facebook began issuing RSUs, which don't count towards the limit, to employees when they started approaching the 500 shareholder limit, but I believe trading on SecondMarket pushed them over 500. Also I think Facebook was originally a partnership and then converted into a DE c-corp. I don't think they were ever a CA company.
- _delirium 13y agoI took the comment as meaning "go public", somewhat confusingly, in a colloquial sense of "not be stealth" or "go public with their numbers" rather than "becoming a publicly owned, stock-market-traded company". The latter is indeed not the case in Canada; you can have a large privately owned company. But above a certain threshold you have to at last disclose annual revenue figures.
- rocky1138 13y agoSorry, yes, I meant become publicly trade-able. I assume this is done to force companies over a certain size to open their books? Maybe I've misunderstood how it works in Ontario/Canada as well, considering the other comments mentioning the number of shareholders.
- simonk 13y agoNo, in Canada you never need to open your books at any size.
- hudibras 13y agoCargill had over $130B in revenue last year. Their exact profits are unknown (obviously) but probably around $4B a year. Not bad for a family-owned business.
- joonix 13y agoNot at all. What you're referring to has to do with exceeding a certain number of shareholders. In fact many Fortune 500 companies are privately held. Koch, SC Johnson, etc[1], not to mention the myriad large companies that are taken private by private equity firms. [1] http://www.forbes.com/largest-private-companies/ http://www.forbes.com/largest-private-companies/
- rocky1138 13y agoAssuming this is why he is a former president: “I tried to put our name on the trucks and he didn’t want any part of it,” said Edward Albertian, a former C&S president, to Bloomberg. “He wanted to continue to be stealth and operate in this little, dinky Keene, New Hampshire, marketplace.” Little, dinky marketplace that brings in over a 1 billion dollars in sales...
- jlgaddis 13y ago... by 1991. "According to Bloomberg, the company had sales of $21.7 billion last year ..."
- pmorici 13y agoSeems like the no names on the trucks thing could also be about efficiency. How much does it cost to get a truck painted with the company logo?
- wavefunction 13y agoIt costs a meaningless amount for a company of this size. Perhaps the anonymity is more valuable though.
- Houshalter 13y agoIt's not really valuable, most companies want to get their names out there.
- ErikHuisman 13y agoThey are wholesalers. They don't want to compete with the brands of their customers. The unmarked trucks drive business.
- epc 13y agoAlso makes it more difficult for the competition and market analysts to gauge the company's activities.
- lifeisstillgood 13y agoMore tantalising than revealing - he is focused on quanta tive metrics - that's good, he pays extra not to make mistakes, hell that's almost unique (I assume some bonus based on errors in stock reconciliation) - but what are his sales channels look like? Who are his suppliers and how does he handle them? Does operating under the radar give benefits better than just being modest? And yes the big question - why now? And the second big question - how many other quiet billion dollar or even just 8figure companies are out there?
- systemizer 13y agoSelf-maintained groups and incentives based on performance. It would be interesting to adopt this in the tech area: the amount and quality of your unit tests means you get paid more. You can also do code analysis: look at branching factors; code duplication; runtime performance; etc This might be hard to implement in a company setting; but it may be easier to apply with contracting work.
- tbrownaw 13y agoHow do you quantify whether someone is solving a problem the wrong way, just because that way will score better on the metrics?
- systemizer 13y agoI don't have a good answer for you, but let me shoot a question back at you: "How do you determine whether the code you're looking at is good or bad?" Surely, there's an algorithm you run in your head that looks at specific features of the code and analyses them. All I'm saying is that there may be a way to automate that algorithm and use it to drive incentives. Even if the algorithm is as simple as "make sure X and Y unit tests pass."
- DougWebb 13y agoAssert.IsNull(null); It's easy to make unit tests pass. To defeat this kind of gaming, you'd need extensive code review of the unit tests. But that circles around to your point: when you look at code there's something that tells you whether it's good or bad. That algorithm can't be based on passing tests, because tests are code too and also need review. If you had a team of completely selfless developers, you could probably have code-reviews and peer-reviews drive incentives. But as soon as the team suspects it's a zero-sum game and they're competing for a limited prize, they're going to stab each other in the backs, and your best developer will be the prime target. That'll make your best developer leave, and the next-best becomes the target, until all you're left with are lousy developers who are only good at office politics.
- 13y ago
- adaml_623 13y agoBloomberg acting like a mini little NSA. Finding rich people and violating their privacy.
- mjn 13y agoUnless Bloomberg is coercing internet providers into handing over his emails and getting secret court orders to record his web traffic, it doesn't seem like a very good comparison. Investigating people, especially those with any kind of political, economic, cultural, academic, or other influence, based on publicly available information and whatever people are willing to tell you if you ask, is a pretty traditional part of American public life. There's no right to force people to be disinterested in what you do and refrain from writing articles about it, as long as they collect the information by legal means.
- hristov 13y agoThe financial press rarely acts to piss off rich people. This article was probably written with the billionaire's consent. I don't know why, but I would not be surprised if they planning to take the company public.
- hayksaakian 13y agoComments like these hurt the effort to fight back against the very real violations committed by the NSA. It's not a joke, and your comment is not funny.
- ddeck 13y agoI hope that's a joke. As one reply here mentions, the financial press typically avoid pissing off the rich, but I would not include Bloomberg in that list. Bloomberg have been battling the government in the courts for years over FOIA requests to disclose secret information to the public on a variety of issues. For example they were very aggressive in investigating and publishing details of secret dealings between the largest US financial institutions and the government during the financial crisis: Bloomberg Sues Fed to Force Disclosure of Collateral (Update1) [1] Wall Street Aristocracy Got $1.2 Trillion in Secret Loans [2] Fed’s Once-Secret Data Compiled by Bloomberg Released to Public [3] As well as publishing details on billionaires who manipulate the system from the shadows (e.g. the Koch brothers): David Koch’s Chilling Effect on Public Television [4] Koch Funneled $1.2 Million to Governors Battling Unions [5] Koch’s Iran Link Causes Democrat to Send Donation to Charity [6] [1] http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aKr.oY2YKc2g http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aKr.o... [2] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-21/wall-street-aristocracy-got-1-2-trillion-in-fed-s-secret-loans.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-21/wall-street-aristoc... [3] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-23/fed-s-once-secret-data-compiled-by-bloomberg-released-to-public.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-23/fed-s-once-secret-d... [4] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-09/david-koch-s-chilling-effect-on-public-television.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-09/david-koch-s-chilli... [5] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-23/koch-funneled-1-2-million-to-elect-governors-battling-unions.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-23/koch-funneled-1-2-m... [6] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-18/koch-iran-link-causes-candidate-to-send-contributions-to-charity.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-18/koch-iran-link-caus...
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- bch 13y ago> "[Cohen] has lots and lots of customers. And he delivers all of his goods in unmarked trucks, so that's how he stays secretive. C&S... does not have its branded trucks as other companies, like Sysco (SYY), its competitor, would so he's able to stay under the radar." This makes no sense. "Under the radar" from who? Joe and Jane Average on the street maybe, but stores that are making orders are going to have reps dropping by, and the suppliers are going to KNOW that if Store A is carrying product XYZ, and it's not getting it from (e.g.) Sysco, it's coming from somewhere else. I can't imagine unmarked trucks keep C&S off the radar from anybody who actually cares. Edit: On re-read, maybe it -is- supposed to be stealth from Joe and Jane Average. Initially I thought they might be attributing "stealth" to the success of C&S. I guess they really just wanted to be quietly (to the public) doing their work. In that case: great job invading privacy Daily Ticker. "Nobody's Business" indeed.
- pmorici 13y agoPerhaps under the radar from politicians who would otherwise demand political donations as protection against onerous government actions? It says the local town council was even unaware of how major an employer the company was.
- andyakb 13y agoThat's not exacty how polticians treat billionaires, or anybody really. I'm not saying its free of corruption by any means, but almost nothing that transparently corrupt occurs
- pmorici 13y agoSure it is. They wouldn't describe it as I have in plain language but that is basically what goes on albeit with the veneer of propriety provided by campaign fundraising events and congressional horse trading.
- nhebb 13y agoYou should look into how the mayor of Beaverton, OR tried to annex the unincorporated land that the Nike campus sits on back in 2005.
- Radle 13y agoI find this post is awful, i mean don't people in Britain do have rights on Privacy? Their Photos etc?^^
- Houshalter 13y agoWhat are you referring to?
- mdisraeli 13y ago“We’re the biggest company no one has ever heard of”, aka "My huge company/daddy is bigger and more obscure than yours!". Although in this case, they might actually hold a better claim on that title than others it is often given to
- noonespecial 13y agoI've resigned myself to the fact that most really rich people became so doing things I'd have never in a million years imagined you could get rich doing.
- w3pm 13y agoMany of these "I'd never have imagined you could get rich doing... (groceries|steel|lumber|shoes|silverware|bandaids|etc) examples take generations to build the business large enough to actually "get rich." They're definitely not "get-rich-quick" schemes but slow, methodical progress made on capturing a portion of industries with billions worth of turnover per year. Obviously counter-examples exist (Cotsco, etc.) but by and large these stories involve generational contributions to the business.
- HeyLaughingBoy 13y agoYou can get rich doing anything that people will pay money for. It's really that simple; the rest is up to you.
- JonCox 13y agoAnyone else notice the similarities with Madrigal from Breaking Bad? Low key, large profits, extensive distribution network. I may be paranoid but... (Okay, probably just a coincidence/I've been watching too much tv recently.)
- ig1 13y agoAnyone at all interested could have found out about the company, it's been near the top of Forbes list of largest private companies for years (which is even mentioned in the companies Wikipedia article): http://www.forbes.com/lists/2010/21/private-companies-10_land.html http://www.forbes.com/lists/2010/21/private-companies-10_lan... I'm guessing most people haven't heard of half the companies in the top ten, unless you're a consumer business you can be huge and almost no-one will recognize your name. Here's a little test, how many of these companies do you recognize: Bazaarvoice, Conduit, Klarna, nicira, Homeaway, Workday, Changyou, ServiceNow, Giant, Guidewire, DealerTrack, SuccessFactors, SourceFire, ArcSight, Popcap, ExactTarget. They're all tech startups with valuations estimated in the billion+ dollar range. Unless you've used them you'll probably have never come across them.
- Hectic1015 13y agoC&S is a fascinating company. As a former employee, the insight for me is that you can make a lot by disrupting a large, old industry. What they don't highlight is that they grew from about $500m in revenue to $20bn in about 20 years from 88 to 2006: http://bit.ly/1a12pkU http://bit.ly/1a12pkU. C&S did this by innovating on management models at the warehouse, having a capital model which grew its cash position as it expanded, and helping to support the business case for private equity acquisitions of major US Grocery Chains. This article also misses one major point. Rick is innovating again. ES3 (http://www.es3.com/ http://www.es3.com/) is the largest automated warehouse in the world. As this warehouse scales, it could take a full step out of the grocery supply chain for the east coast.