July Poll Results: LIV Haters > LIV Supporters

The Long Strange Trip Comes to an End

Last month, The Grateful Dead's most recent iteration, Dead & Company, played their last show at Oracle Park in San Francisco. In honor of the group's final show, this month we're rolling-up five great things about The Grateful Dead, Dead & Company, and Deadheads alike:

1. Humble Beginnings - The Grateful Dead had their unofficial start in 1961 when Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter played their first gig together at a local San Francisco bar. Some had claimed the duo made $50 for the show, which Hunter would later refute - "$50 my (bleep)! We got $5. Decided to frame the check but within a few days needed to cash it for cigarettes." Life of an artist.
2. The Name - A few years and a couple of new band members later, the group went by the name, The Warlocks. Though popular with teenagers everywhere, the band needed a more fitting image. Jerry Garcia recounts how the name Grateful Dead came to be - "One day we were over at Phil Lesh's house. He had a big Oxford dictionary, I opened it, and there was 'grateful dead', those words juxtaposed... So I said, 'How about Grateful Dead?' and that was it." An ironic & iconic name for an ironic & iconic band.
3. More Than Music (and Pot) - The success of the Dead hasn't necessarily been attributed just to their music, but rather the culture and experiences they've created tied to their music (not just the thick Purple Haze hanging above crowds at their concerts). To that point, they've only had one song land in the Billboard Hot 100 Chart with 'Touch of Grey' in 1987. Despite the lack of pop hits, they've kept the Deadheads young and old coming back 40+ years later.
4. Reinvention - Since Jerry Garcia's passing in 1995, the band has reunited on six separate occasions, the most recent iteration began in 2015 with Dead & Company which featured the addition of John Mayer attempting to fill the void of Jerry Garcia. The guy who ran around Atlanta singing "Your Body is a Wonderland" can actually shred the 6-string with the best of them. On the face of it, adding John Mayer's pop success to the Dead's anti-pop legacy is as odd a combo as the name "Grateful Dead". Jerry Garcia is looking down with a smile on his face.
5. The Center that Holds - What is one thing that Nancy Pelosi, Jerome Powell, and Tucker Carlson all could agree on? Not a trick question... they're all Deadheads. In 2019 drummer Mickey Hart, a personal friend of Nancy Pelosi, attended her swearing-in as Speaker of the House - a friendship that started because of her love for The Dead (after all, she is from San Francisco); Jerome Powell was spotted two months ago at a Dead & Co. concert in Virginia (it is claimed that he printed his ticket to the concert); and Tucker Carlson has attended 50+ Grateful Dead concerts and has a picture on his desk with Jerry Garcia from 1988. In a highly divided world - at least we can unite around one thing... being Deadheads.

Morehouse College Intern, Kamar Montgomery

Over the past three months we've had the pleasure of working with summer intern, Kamar Montgomery, through our Morehouse College internship program. Originally from Cleveland, OH, Kamar is entering his senior year at Morehouse, where he is pursuing his Bachelor of Economics with a minor in Mathematics. During his time with the Firm, Kamar has been active in team meetings, participated in the initial review of new investment opportunities, and completed the Adventis Financial Modeling Program facilitated through the internship program. We've enjoyed having Kamar a part of the Caymus Equity team and look forward to seeing where his professional career takes him!

PortCo Spotlight - TriplePoint

Luke Chambers, President of Temp-Con, a subsidiary of our portfolio company, TriplePoint, discusses what Temp-Con's strategic merger with TP Mechanical in 2022 has meant for the Company, in addition to the facility updates they have made over the past year. To watch the interview with Luke, click the link below.

TriplePoint is a full-service mechanical contractor with operations across nine states in the Midwest.

Two Sides of the Same Coin

The start of college football later this month will bring with it a renewed focus on NIL deals and whether or not college athletes should get paid. To some degree, the question seems to have been settled with the Supreme Court, NCAA policy, and public opinion all coming down in favor of athletes receiving compensation for playing their prospective sport. Then why does there still not seem to be consensus on this topic?

The arguments on both sides closely resemble the arguments during the emergence of professional golf and tennis leagues to compete with amateur leagues. For years pros were prohibited in competing in golf and tennis U.S. Opens to “protect the integrity” of the sports. The same argument is the cornerstone of the NCAA’s position, while the opposite side says the only party benefitting from the prohibition of student-athlete compensation is the NCAA itself. It’s no secret that top programs have been paying athletes and their families in top sports for decades, with the only deterrent from doing so being public shaming for those that are caught. The introduction of NIL was the first step in bringing the compensation of athletes out from under the table. Where will it go next?

NIL is designed to allow student athletes to be compensated based on their own personal brand without being paid directly by the schools they represent. Few athletes ever achieve the level of stardom to reach brand awareness, so American ingenuity quickly created the current solution used by most schools: Collectives. Rather than donating directly to the school or athletic program where the money can’t be used to compensate athletes, collectives pool funds from boosters, local businesses, and fans outside the school’s reach (a policy ardently maintained by the NCAA) and are distributed to athletes in return for NIL agreements.

The NCAA’s insistence on forbidding schools themselves to compensate their student-athletes has created a wild-west in the infant stages of athlete compensation. The insistence of “protecting the integrity” that caused the prevalence of under-the-table payments to college athletes has now created a situation where schools have little to no control over the future success of their athletic programs and forcing them to rely on unaffiliated parties to raise money for their student-athletes. As of June 27 this year, 92% of Power 5 schools had a collective. Those that don’t either have to join the pack quickly or face the potential of significant decline in recruiting success compared to those that already have a collective.

The more that I think about it, maybe we should've figured out the “how we pay college athletes” question before we answered the “if they should be paid" question. Then again, maybe those two questions are two sides of the same coin. "Show me the incentive, and I'll show you the outcome" -Charley Munger