Companies age, just as individuals do, and they don’t often do so gracefully, again like individuals. In this presentation, the speaker plans to start with a description of what he see as the corporate life cycle, starting with inception (as a start-up), leading through young growth, mature growth, stability and eventual decline, with transitions at each stage. He will use this life cycle to examine three themes that he has returned to over and over again over the last few years:

1. Dealing with Uncertainty: The magnitude and type of uncertainty that you face as managers and investors changes as you move through the corporate life cycle, requiring different tools, skill sets and psyches to adjust at each one.

2. Pricing versus Valuation: There are two games at play in markets, with the pricing game being driven by mood and momentum and the value game determined by cash flows and growth. The pricing game dominates early in the corporate life cycle, when uncertainty is greatest, and the value game comes into its own later in the process. Ironically, the payoff to the value game may actually be greatest where it is used least.

3. Narrative and Numbers: Valuation is about connecting stories to numbers. Early in the life cycle, the narratives tend to be both more critical, and there is more disagreement across investors, leading to much bigger variances in the numbers we attach to young companies. As companies age, the narrative is much more tightly constrained by history and numbers, leading to more consensus on value